National Library Week, April 13-19

The library is for everyone, la bibloteca es para todos. National Library Week begins today, which gives us an opportunity to honor the nation’s libraries and the amazing work librarians do everyday. Libraries have the power to truly transform their communities. They are places where people of all ages and backgrounds can come together for community meetings, lectures and programs, to do research with the assistance of a trained professional, or even to get help finding a job.

To celebrate National Library Week, we’d like to call attention to a very special book that tells the story of a remarkable librarian and the magic she brought to her community.

In The Storyteller’s Candle, award-winners Lucía González and Lulu Delacre pay homage to New York City’s first Latina librarian, Pura Belpré, for her service and life-long commitment to immigrant communities.
 
The Storyteller’s Candle offers a heartwarming tale of how Pura Belpré inspired Puerto Rican immigrants living in El Barrio during the Great Depression to discover the public library and its potential to be the living, breathing heart of their community. As the first Puerto Rican librarian to be hired by the New York Public Library System in 1921, Pura Belpré actively advocated for the Spanish-speaking community by instituting bilingual story hours, buying Spanish language books, and implementing programs based on traditional holidays. Over the course of her long career, she inspired generations of young people through her imaginative storytelling and puppetry. Today, there is an award named after Ms. Belpré, given by the American Library Association, to honor Latino writers and illustrators whose childrens books celebrate the Latino cultural experience.
 
“I would like to bring back to the classroom the joy and excitement of storytelling,” says author Lucía González. “I would like children to learn or remember that the public library is a wonderful place for them and for everyone in the family.”

Through Lulu Delacre’s stunning oil washes and paper collage and Lucía González’s prose, The Storyteller’s Candle captures the vision and dedication that Pura Belpré brought to New York City’s Latino community in the 1920s and 1930s, which forever changed the way libraries interact with the families in their neighborhoods across the United States.

For more information about The Storyteller’s Candle, click here.

For additional resources on National Library Week, visit the American Library Association’s official website.
 

Submitted by Childrens Book Press on Monday, April 13, 2009 3:44pm