Title: Book Fiesta
Author: Pat Mora
Publication: 2009
This is by far one of my favorite books by my author study, Pat Mora. This book has an interesting concept in that it promotes Mora's idea behind her "Children's Day/Book Day" on April 30th every year. She coined the word "bookjoy," which describes the joy one gets from reading, and uses this day to celebrate. I would love to use this concept in my classroom and celebrate reading and children on this day. In the back of her book, she describes how teachers, schools and communities can celebrate this day.
The book itself celebrates the joy of reading and how reading can become part of a person's daily life. She gives scenarios of different ways and places children can read, to celebrate the great gift of books and reading. I love that she uses diverse characters, in that they range in race and gender. This allows more kids to be able to identify with the characters in the book. The drawings are marvelous and really draw the reader in. They are all super colorful and almost look like the images have been cut out by hand and put onto the page. They have a magical, surrealism effect to them as well that takes the reader to a whole other planet - or magical world - when reading.
My most favorite part of the book is how Mora incorporates the Spanish language into her writing. On each page, she presents the English version of the text, followed by the Spanish version. I think this is a great idea because if students are either learning Spanish or English, presenting both languages allows all readers to better connect the two languages together. I don't think it's all about pronouncing or reading it perfectly in both languages. I believe it is great to simply expose the students to both languages, so they are more familiar with the words. Through Mora's brilliant use of two languages, students will be able to better match Spanish and English words together because both texts are seen side by side.
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