World Poetry for El día de los niños

I love that National Poetry Month ends on the celebration of El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day). Also known simply as Día, it’s all about advocating literacy for children of all linguistic and cultural backgrounds, culminating every year on April 30.

Poet and writer Pat Mora has authored a brand new picture book commemorating Día: Fiesta!: Celebrate Children's Day/Book Day; Celebremos El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Rayo, 2009). Booklist reviewer Andrew Medlar wrote, “How very appropriate that the first trade book about Children’s Day/Book Day should be enthusiastically penned by the founder of this holiday, celebrated annually since 1996 on April 30, the same date as Mexico’s Day of the Child. This call to arms for connecting kids and books exhorts everyone to read and have fun in whatever language and locale they choose.”

Backmatter includes ideas and suggestions for celebrating Día in your community. Plus, you’ll find tips at Pat's Web site, at ALSC headquarters and at the Texas Library Association web site.

And if you’re looking for poetry to celebrate world cultures, I’d like to make a plug for a book I mentioned earlier this month (a 2009 White Ravens list book), and just got my hands on (thank you, Dani). Yes, it comes from New Zealand, but it makes a completely unique contribution and is worth the hunt. It’s My Village; Rhymes from Around the World collected by Danielle Wright (Wellington, NZ: Gecko Press, 2008).

Not only does Wright include simple folk rhymes from a variety of countries (New Zealand, China, Australia, Norway, Ireland, Tonga, Jamaica, Japan, Zimbabwe, Fiji, Indonesia, Denmark, Iran, Germany, Samoa, Switzerland, Russia, Brazil, France, Holland, Iceland, and India), but she includes the poem in three versions (when applicable): in the original language and the native alphabet, the transliterated version in the Roman alphabet of English, and also in English. That’s a grand slam!

Here’s one fun example from RUSSIA:

Hush You Mice
from Russia

Hush you mice! a cat is near us,
He can see us, he can hear us.
--What if he is on a diet?—
Even then you should be quiet!

Wright, Danielle (Ed). 2008. My Village; Rhymes from Around the World. Wellington, NZ: Gecko Press, p. 40-41.

Plus, the English versions are quite charming and musical, don’t you think? That’s not an easy feat when translating multiple languages, as well as in conveying the terse verse of nursery rhymes. Impressive! The illustrations by Mique Moriuchi add so much appeal (see a sample on the Web site) with colorful tissue paper collages.

GOOD NEWS: if you just cannot get your own copy of this book, Wright keeps a rich Web site with an extensive collection of “International Nursery Rhymes” organized in general by the continents: Europe, Asia, the Americas, the Pacific and Africa. Lots of good stuff here, too. Happy Día!


Image credits: www.harpercollinschildrens.com;http://www.itsasmallworld.co.nz/

Posting (not poem) by Sylvia M. Vardell © 2009. All rights reserved.

Happy El Día de los Niños/El Día de los Libros

Today is El Día de los Niños/El Día de los Libros also known as Children's Day/Book Day. For the annual April 30th celebration, both the Reading Rockets and Colorin Colorado Web sites are offering suggestions for library and classroom activities. The Association for Library Service to Children also lists Día events around the country. As the national home of Día, one of the things ALSC does is to provide a database where people can enter their Día events and/or see what else is going on near them and anywhere in the nation. It's wonderful to see everything that's going on, and to see how this initiative, originally conceived by Pat Mora, with REFORMA as a founding partner, has caught on and grown in the past 12 years.

In addition, Pat Mora, the Grande Dame of Día has established her own blog now-- ShareBookJoy-- which is a wonderful resource on Día and so much more. Pat is a gem and a giant, a force to be reckoned with, and an author, poet and advocate with a gift for storytelling AND empowerment. Be sure to check out her Web site, too.

In honor of Día, I would like to mention a new poetry collection just published by Bloomsbury: Come and Play, Children of Our World Having Fun. The poems are written by children under the guidance of their teacher, Ayana Lowe, in response to photographs that are provided by Magnum Photos, the “most highly celebrated photographic collective in the world.” The images of children come from around the world and from over the last 50 years. Thumbnails, captions, and maps in the backmatter let the reader know a bit more about each photograph. And the poems reflect the clever word coining and fresh abruptness of children’s language. Here’s one example:

A Tight Squeeze
(Accompanying a photo of a crowded beach scene in Wonsan City, North Korea, 1982)

Wet and happy.
The beach is hot.
I’ve saved you a spot.

From: Lowe, Ayana. Ed. 2008. Come and Play; Children of Our World Having Fun. NY: Bloomsbury.

Individual poets are not named, which gives the reader the impression of a collective voice of childhood speaking. (Their energetic signatures cover the end pages!) The oversized format juxtaposes a poem in a large colorful font on a black background on the left with a full-page black and white or color photograph on the right. Very dramatic and accessible. And I love the opening page featuring this quote from Poet Laureate Rita Dove:

“I think all of us have moments,
particularly in our childhood,
where we come alive,
maybe for the first time.
And we go back to those
moments and think, ‘
This is when I became myself.’”

It begs for imitation—gathering photographs from family, magazines, or the Web to prompt children’s own writing, and then creating their own collective books of poetry and pictures.

Happy Día!

Picture credit: http://sharebookjoy.blogspot.com and Amazon.

Poetry for El Día de los Niños/El Día de los Libros

It’s hard to believe that it’s been ten years since the first celebration of El Día de los Niños/El Día de los Libros, (The Day of the Child/ The Day of the Book) on April 30, 1997, sprung from an idea that poet, author and literacy advocate Pat Mora had, and that REFORMA supported. It has since mushroomed into a grassroots effort on a national scale. And this year for the first time, a Día event is planned for the U.S. Senate. Senators will read to children from the nearby Oyster Bilingual School, ALSC President KT Horning and a representative from La Raza will speak, and children in attendance will receive goodie bags filled with books donated from publishers, plus bookmarks, stickers, and magnets.

Pat Mora continues her efforts as a literacy advocate in promoting El Día de los Niños/El Día de los Libros held every April 30th. Many of her own works are written in two languages (English interwoven with Spanish words and phrases), and in bilingual editions. She reflects her own feelings and experiences growing up in the Southwest in her poems in This Big Sky (Scholastic, 1998), creates rhyming ABC and counting books for younger children with ¡Marimba!: Animales from A to Z (Clarion, 2006) and Uno Dos Tres, One, Two, Three (Clarion, 1996), and writes for middle grade kids and teens with Confetti: Poems for Children (Lee & Low, 1996/1999), and My Own True Name: New and Selected Poems for Young Adults (Arte Publico Press, 2000). Mora has also created an anthology of poetry by other Latino/Latina poets in Love to Mama: A Tribute to Mothers (Lee & Low, 2001).

Start planning now for your own Día celebration for next April 30! Look for poetry that celebrates the unique cultures and languages in your own community. And for connecting with communities across the globe, look for these collections of poetry for young people by poets OUTSIDE our U.S. borders:

Agard, John and Grace Nichols, ed. 1994. A Caribbean Dozen: Poems from Caribbean Poets. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick.
Benjamin, Floella, comp. 1995. Skip Across the Ocean: Nursery Rhymes from Around the World. New York: Orchard Books.
Brenner, Barbara. 2000. Voices: Poetry and Art from Around the World. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society.
Cashman, Seamus, 2004. Something Beginning with P; New Poems From Irish Poets. O’Brien Press. (See entry for March 17)
Delacre, Lulu. 2004. Arrorró Mi Niño: Latino Lullabies and Gentle Games. New York:
Lee & Low Books.
Gunning, Monica. 1998. Under The Breadfruit Tree: Island Poems. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press.
Ho, Minfong. 1996. Maples in the Mist: Poems for Children from the Tang Dynasty. New York: Lothrop, Lee, & Shepard.
Lee, Dennis. 1999. The Ice Cream Store. New York: HarperCollins.
Mado, Michio. 1998. The Magic Pocket. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books.
Nye, Naomi Shihab, comp. 1998. The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings From the Middle East. New York: Simon & Schuster.
___, comp. 1992. This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World. New York: Four Winds Press.
___, comp. 1995. The Tree is Older than You Are: A Bilingual Gathering of Poems and Stories from Mexico with Paintings by Mexican Artists. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Orozco, Jose-Luis. 2002. Diez Deditos: Ten Little Fingers and Other Play Rhymes and Action Songs from Latin America. New York: Dutton.
Pomerantz, Charlotte. 1982. If I Had a Paka: Poems in Eleven Languages. New York: Greenwillow.
Prelutsky, Jack, comp. 1997. Dinosaur Dinner with a Slice of Alligator Pie: Favorite Poems by Dennis Lee. New York: Scholastic.
Rosen, Michael, comp. 1992. Itsy-bitsy Beasties: Poems from Around the World. Minneapolis, MN: Carolrhoda Books.
Schmidt, Annie M.G. 1981. Pink Lemonade: Poems for Children. Translated and adapted from the Dutch by Henrietta ten Harmsel. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Yolen, Jane. 2000. Street Rhymes From Around the World. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press.
For more suggestions, see also posts for April 2: International Book Day and Sept. 22: Poetry Around the World

Every poet is a big child.
And every child is a little poet.
Childhood is the poetry of life.
Poetry is the childhood of the world.
Boris Novak, Poet

[From: Kordigel, M. (1995). "Every poet a big child": The Slovene poet Boris A. Novak. Bookbird. 33, 1, 36-37.]

Picture credit: http://www.texasdia.org/