Author and Poet Pat Mora, founded the yearlong literacy initiative “Children’s Day, Book Day” (CDBC) in 1996. Her partners include REFORMA, the American Library Association, First Book, and NCTE. CDBC aims to link all children and families to books and bookjoy. Annually on April 30, children-and-books celebrations occur across the country in schools, libraries, and parks. A former English teacher and university administrator, Pat is author of books for adults, teens and children, and a presenter on creativity, inclusivity, and bookjoy. She received Honorary Doctorates from North Carolina State University and SUNY Buffalo, is an Honorary Member of the American Library Association, and received a Kellogg National Leadership Fellowship and a Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Pat was born in El Paso, Texas, lives with her husband in Santa Fe, NM, is Mom to three wonderful adults and Cita to her granddaughter. Pat’s next children’s book is My Magic Wand: Growing with the Seasons.

Alfredo Celedón Luján is the president of NCTE as well as an English teacher at Monte del Sol Charter School in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where his students were featured in a segment of CPB/ Annenberg’s The Expanding Canon: Teaching Multicultural Literature. He hails from Nambé, northern New Mexico. He received his bachelor of science degree in education from New Mexico State University and his master of arts in English and master of letters from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. He has been a writer-in-residence at the Noepe Center for Literary Arts at Martha’s Vineyard and with the multicultural Artists in Schools Program in Alaska. He has been a recipient of three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and was named one of New Mexico’s Golden Apple Award winners for excellence in teaching in 2015.

Visit here to see a list of Pat Mora’s books. To browse or to purchase, please click through to our Bookshop page. NCTE and local bookshops receive a small commission when you purchase through this link.

TOOLKIT

This Children’s Day, Book Day Toolkit will help you celebrate bookjoy in your classrooms and communities. Download it now.

• Build Your Stack Poster
• Printer-Friendly Bookmarks
• Printer-Friendly NCTE Position Statements
  • NCTE’s Statement on Independent Reading
  • NCTE’s Statement on the Act of Reading
• Reading Resources to Share