Meryle Leonard with her son Jay.
Colorín Colorado Manager and Día Dynamo Lydia Breiseth has been a loyal and creative Día supporter for years, maintaining a Children’s Day, Book Day page on the Colorin Colorado website with resources, videos and planning ideas. This year she also sent a survey to find out about Día celebrations in schools–if you know of a school planning a celebration, please share the survey with them!
April Children’s Day, Book Day celebrations can be found in many different places–here are two examples happening this month:
Community Organizations
ELLAchattanooga is a community arts organization in East Lake, Chattanooga, TN who has an annual Book Fiesta. This year’s event will be on Saturday, April 14 from 1-4. Inspired by Pat’s Book Fiesta, they set out to bring her book to life in East Lake Park, inviting the whole neighborhood out to read, play and create in English & Spanish! Enjoy this video of last year’s celebration:
Public Libraries
Ana Ruiz Morillo
Parents: plan a gathering for family and friends. You can select a book for the party theme, plan some games and activities, and prepare a feast–but don’t forget to #ShareBookjoy at the party!
Teachers: Decorate school hallways and classroom doors with multicultural book covers, share poetry with The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations and pair readers of different age levels for read-alouds.
Librarians: Launch your Summer Reading Program with books that honor America’s many cultures and languages, have a book parade–invite children to dress as their favorite characters and create a display of bookjoy quotes from authors and patrons.
Don’t forget to share Book Fiesta! Celebrate Children’s Day/Book Day, Celebremos El día de los niños/El día de los libros!
Illustration by Rafael Lopez from Book Fiesta!
Librarians are important Children’s Day, Book Day (Día) advocates and April give us a chance to celebrate them all month long.
April is School Library Month, the American Association of School Librarians’ celebration of school librarians and their programs. The 2018 theme is Making Connections at Your School Library.
April 8-14 is National Library Week. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the celebration with the theme Libraries Lead.
April 10 is National Library Workers Day, a day for library staff, users, administrators and Friends groups to recognize the valuable contributions made by all library workers.
April 11 is National Bookmobile Day, celebrating our nation’s bookmobiles and the dedicated library professionals who provide this valuable and essential service to their communities every day. (Bookmobiles are a great place to have a Día celebration!)
Photo courtesy of Rural Bookmobile Northeast/New Mexico State Library, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs.[/
April is National Poetry Month, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. It’s a great month to share poetry and to #ShareBookjoy!
The Best American Poetry 2017 blog shared Pat’s poem Metamórfosis as part of a partnership between the blog and Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies (ILS).
Have you heard about Poetry Boxes? Similar to the Little Free Libraries, they help share poetry in unexpected places! Here are two young poets in Tucson investigating a Poetry Mailbox–and one of them sat down and wrote a poem on the spot to contribute.
