Libros, música, cultura, comunidad, y celebración was at the forefront of the city of Santa Clarita’s Dia de los Niños/ Dia de los Libros event last Saturday at the Canyon Country Jo Anne Darcy Library branch.
In celebration with the nationwide program put on by the American Library Association, several libraries including the Canyon Country branch transformed into a haven of arts and crafts and colorful performances aimed to promote literacy and the joy of reading.
The free family event anticipated seeing approximately 600 people attend, according to children’s librarian Alyssa Holzschuh, who added that the importance of exposing the youth to different cultures is to “build empathy to the world around you. It ties to giving people a connection to maybe something they don’t know about.”
“It gives them something to pursue, to learn, to study and it kind of opens up everyone’s world to something new,” Holzschuh said.
Among the different activities available were story time with a local author who wrote a children’s book in both the Spanish and English language, as well as a Los Angeles-based artist who creates piñatas, and performances by the Newhall Community Center’s ballet Folklorico and children’s mariachi group.
In one of the more quiet rooms of the branch, Paola Lopez was preparing to read the book, “Ya nos vamos a dormir/Now We Go to Sleep,” to a small group of children and their parents.
Lopez grew up in the Santa Clarita Valley and developed a passion for writing between third and fifth grade when she was given a young authors award during her time at Valley View Elementary School.
Although she pursued a career in the medical field, becoming a mother and reading to her children regularly led to Lopez seeking a hobby, which led to the creation of her book.
For Lopez, writing a bilingual book is an accomplishment both on a personal and professional level. Her children, who may be too young to understand how unique it may be, will eventually understand the impact of being an author.
“There is not a lot of us who write English and Spanish. There’s a lot of books that we grew up with that are then translated into Spanish, but we don’t have a lot of Latino or Latina authors that are actually writing them, but we’re such a large portion of the population, even here in California,” Lopez said. “It’s important that we put more of that work out there to keep our culture alive and our language alive, because raising bilingual kids is hard.”
The Dia de los Niños event saw a larger number of people attend compared to previous years and that may be because “people become aware of the importance of early literacy. The point of this program is to bring that awareness,” city Librarian Gina Roberson said as she took a break from welcoming families.
She added, “We have Spanish-speaking families in all of our libraries. That’s just a part of our community, so to be able to celebrate that part of our community intentionally and have a program designed to cater to everyone in our community, but really recognizes the importance of bilingualism in our community is super rewarding. We see more and more younger kids becoming part of the library fold and family and so that’s really exciting to us, because early literacy is really the driving force of later literacy.”
