I hadn’t heard of Día until I came to Colorín Colorado, but I quickly found that one of my favorite parts of the job was to learn more about multicultural children’s books and the work of authors like Pat Mora. One of the early things I did as a website manager was to update our Día resources, which gave me a great introduction to the celebration.
Every year I track Día events around the country through news stories; it has been wonderful to see Día spread like wildfire as more communities begin to look for ways to bring Latino families together around reading and books. I think Día gives educators and librarians who may be new to working with Latinos a familiar model that can serve as a multicultural/multilingual bridge. It also encourages them to take a fresh look at their bilingual/Spanish-language books, resources, and literacy programs so that they can start building their own outreach efforts to the Latino community.