El Día de los Niños / El Día de los Libros (Children’s Day / Book Day) is a daily celebration of children, families, and reading that culminates yearly on April 30. The celebration emphasizes the importance of literacy for children of all linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
The origin of Children’s Day began with a holiday that took place in 1925 following the World Conference for the Wellbeing of Children in Geneva, Switzerland, to bring attention to the importance of children. Each country selected its own day for the celebration – Mexico and many other Latin American countries chose April 30.
In March of 1996, while being interviewed in Tucson, Arizona, Latina author and poet Pat Mora learned about the holiday celebrated in Mexico. Realizing that the United States didn’t have a holiday like this, Pat proposed linking Children’s Day, the celebration of childhood and children, with literacy and bilingualism, creating a new holiday: El Día de los Niños/ El Día de los Libros.
With assistance from members of REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking, Mora further developed the concept and began planning for the first celebration, to be held on April 30, 1997. Other organizations, including MANA del Norte, a women’s group in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and librarians, including Oralia Garza de Cortés and Veronica Myers, quickly offered their support for the celebration.
REFORMA later voted to endorse this celebration of family literacy and became a founding supporter and leader in promoting the initiative throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. On April 30, 1997, the first El Día de los Niños/ El Día de los Libros celebrations were held in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Tucson, Arizona; and El Paso and Austin, Texas.
For more information, please visit the official website for El Día de los Niños/ El Día de los Libros.
Check out some of the children’s books that our Count On Me authors have written:
A Doll for Navidades – click here to purchase
by Esmeralda Santiago
In her first picture book, Esmeralda draws on her Christmas memories to tell a moving story. Sanchez’s clear, bright, artwork shows Esmeralda, seven, and her poor Puerto Rican family celebrating and attending Misa de Gallo (midnight mass) on Nochebuena (Christmas Eve).
Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush – click here to purchase
by Luis Alberto Urrea
Be careful growing up in the green, wet, mango-sweet Mexican village of Rosario, where dead corpses rise up out of the cathedral walls during July when it always floods; where vast silver mines beneath the town occasionally collapse causing a whole section of the village to drop out of sight; where a man with a paintbrush, to wit Mr. Mendoza, is the town’s self-appointed conscience.