Broward County Knows Día!

by Luis Francisco Vargas -- Críticas, 3/1/2008

Florida’s Broward County Public Library (BCPL) knows how to celebrate Día de los niños/día de los libros (Children’s Day/Book Day). Last April, patrons got to enjoy a week-long multicultural book festival where Maya, Miguel, and Dora the Explorer, along with several other characters from popular children’s literature, visited the system’s libraries big and small.

No wonder BCPL was one of eight library systems in the nation to get a grant in 2007 from the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) and Target to help promote last year’s Día. Other recipients were El Paso (TX) Public Library, Hennepin County (MN) Library, Public Library of Charlotte-Mecklenburg (NC), Queens (NY) Public Library, Riverside County (CA) Library System, Providence (RI) Public Library, and Phoenix (AZ) Public Library. The grants provided these “Super-Sites” $5000 plus a suite of Día themed promotional materials. Funds were established for purchasing culturally relevant books for giveaways during programs. Sites were selected for their outstanding Día programming in past years.

BCPL’s week long series of Día programs in 2007 exceeded not only their own and REFORMA’s expectations but also those of the Día’s Mora Award committee, earning BCPL the coveted Estela and Raúl Mora Award. Libraries must apply to be considered for the award, which was established in 2000 by poet and author Pat Mora in honor of her parents, and the judges consider each library in terms of rigorous guidelines. BCPL is one of the largest and busiest library systems in the nation with five regional libraries and 29 branch libraries. Other librarians at libraries of any size, and their administrators, can learn from Broward’s success with Día, and hopefully embrace it as a core program each year.

BCPL on a mission

Lucía González, Broward’s associate director for programming, literacy, and youth services, has been in charge of the library’s last three years of Día celebrations. Each year the county continues to improve, and she has just been named an Library Journal Mover & Shaker for her innovation in outreach. She advises all librarians planning their own Día celebrations for the first time to collaborate with outside agencies and involve them from the very beginning.

In November 2006, BCPL’s first planning committee started working around the central theme “Celebrating Books, Celebrating Children.” Meetings involved representatives from community organizations, children’s librarians, and program coordinators. In the following six months partnerships were solidified, grants secured, and with the generous support from Broward’s Library Foundation, the budget was set at about $40,000. Kathy Toon, from the State Library of Florida and ALSC’s national advisory board chair for Día, recommends that librarians ask public officials to make proclamations at the state and county level in support of Día celebrations. Proclamations resonate with elected officials and help put the library in a good position to petition for funds.

Broward also gained support by including multiple ethnicities in the celebrations. Katy Mullon, children’s special event coordinator at Broward, recruited talent from the many cross cultural groups represented in the county and ended up with a line up that included Haitian, African American, and Lakota speakers.

Freda Mosquera, graduate intern and the brains behind Broward’s terrific bilingual promotional strategy, is a model of creative and passionate staff that can make a difference. Broward is a system where multicultural competencies are valued grown and promoted. Add ambitious ideas and support from colleagues to passion and creativity, and you’ll have the ingredients for success.

It’s no wonder that in the end BCPL’s numerous branches, regional libraries, and main library all took part in the week-long festival. In addition, quality multicultural storytimes (with a strong emphasis on Latino themes) were staggered throughout, alternating English and Spanish in areas with large Latino populations. Mosquera noticed a large number of families attending one program would stay for both programs and responded with back to back programming. The Weston, Northwest Regional, and Hollywood libraries simultaneously pulled off large scale all day Saturday celebrations, from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon. They included a range of multi-ethnic storytellers, musicians, artists, and authors such as Antonio Sacre, David Diaz, and Jaime Riascos. Broward also invited Ella Jenkins, Dovie Thomason, Eric Kimmel, and Diane Ferlatte to represent other cultures. Add to this already impressive line-up of local vendors and publishers that sponsored book giveaways of over 2000 books to attendees, including books in the children’s home languages.

The draw is unmistakable, and goes far beyond the regular library users. According to Austin Public Library’s Elva Garza, Día is the best tool for reaching out to all of the ethnic minorities in your area. Garza conducted an informal poll and found that on average 38 percent of the people attending her library’s Día are non-library users.

Design in complementary programming

[confusing—is this a separate program all together?]Educators, caregivers, media specialists, and library professionals were also invited to the bilingual 20^th Annual Conference on Children’s Literature, a learning experience for those who select and provide books for children. Hosted at the Nova Southeastern University, it included free hands-on workshops geared for librarians and teachers to gain skills in promoting multicultural literature. The theme, Children’s Books: Windows to the World (¡Ventanas al Mundo!), carefully crafted to fit in with Día celebrations, attracted 350 attendees, officially making this a full-fledged library-mania week.

To top off the celebrations, the renowned Moonlight Tales: Storytelling Under the Stars program had a strong Latino flavor. Hosted at the main library in downtown Fort Lauderdale, it provided a unique outdoor venue for story time with a line up of Latino, African-American, and Native American storytellers from 7 p.m. until 9:30 p.m.

Promoting Día

“We do this because it’s our moral duty,” says Mosquera referring to the work involved in the trickiest part of a successful program: promotion. Between coverage on the weekly radio shows for Radio Caracol (Colombia’s largest media outlet heard throughout Florida), finding community partners, printing and distributing 25,000 bilingual flyers in panaderías/bakeries, and writing articles for local and community newspapers, Mosquera and her team successfully promoted Día.

As Mora explains, Día is an “easy bridge for librarians and teachers to reach out.” However, community relationships take time and commitment over a long period of time. It is crucial to establish your library in the community before you take on a large celebration, but start even small celebrations now. Mora also believes that seasoned librarians should develop professional development opportunities at the national and state level to further prepare the new generation of librarians for success. A kind of face-to-face in-service combining old wisdom and new (out of the box) ideas that make programs like Broward’s a reality.

If there is one thing past Mora Award winners have in common is a history with community partners. Garza, for example, made a partnership with a small local church for Austin’s first Día celebration. Today Austin’s committee is overwhelmingly made of community partners ranging from the Girl Scouts to the Mexican Consulate. Mosquera will be the first one to admit one of her most prized and newest partners is Elite Art Editions, which presented Latino oriented hands-on art programs and provided art experiences for children throughout the festivities.

The future of Día

Día began with a handful of grassroots REFORMA up and comers from the Southwest—Oralia Garza de Cortés, Rose Treviño, Mora, and Garza, for example. “We envisioned a community that celebrates its children through its cultural traditions, but also one that recognizes that children’s future is rooted in new cultural traditions that involve books, reading, and public libraries” says de Cortés, REFORMA’s operational coordinator for Día and REFORMA’s past president. Through passion, talent, and corporate and professional sponsorships, Día is just that.

In 2008, ALSC officially recruited Dora the Explorer to Día; libraries can register their programs at the ALSC website (ala.org/dia/) and receive complimentary brochures, posters, and other promotional materials. In 2008, awards will be extended to exemplary school libraries for the first time. It is not too late begin planning for Día 2008, whether is a huge large scale celebration or a local simple genuine outreach story time at a local church. ¡Sí, se puede! (Yes You Can!)