About The Bookjoy Journal

The Bookjoy Journal is an independent magazine about Día, the celebration of children and books held every April 30. The magazine explains what Día is, tells its history, guides the choice of multicultural and bilingual children's books, walks librarians and teachers through planning and funding a program, and helps families build bilingual reading routines at home. It is written in US English for librarians, teachers, bilingual families and the volunteers who run community story times.

What the magazine stands for

The name comes from bookjoy, the word author Pat Mora coined for the delight a child feels when a story lands, and the magazine takes that delight as its subject. Every page is built to be useful: a planner should leave with a timeline, a parent with a routine, a teacher with a book that works tomorrow morning. The Texas Library Association, the American Library Association, REFORMA and the authors and librarians who built Día are covered as institutions and public figures, in the third person. The magazine sells nothing and represents no organization.

This domain's own history

texasdia.org spent its first decade hosting the Texas Día program of the Texas Library Association: a committee, application based grants for member libraries, a press kit and a tool kit of downloadable chapters. That program ended, and after years offline the domain was acquired for this magazine. The tool kit's structure was worth keeping, so it is rebuilt here chapter by chapter, and the history of the celebration and of the Texas program is told in full on The History of Dia. Nothing on this site claims the old program's authority or its voice; the debt runs the other way, to the librarians who wrote those chapters first.

How the magazine is organized

Four sections carry the subject. Dia Basics holds the foundation: what the celebration is and where it comes from. Book Lists covers selection across ages, from bilingual picture books to Own Voices chapter novels. Library Programs is the planner's manual: tool kit, event timeline, crafts, funding. Reading at Home carries the family side, from the nightly read aloud in two languages to the summer plan that keeps both alive.

How the pages are written

Each page answers one question and links to the next one in the order a reader actually meets the decisions. Facts about the celebration's history and about literacy practice are drawn from named public sources: the Día pages of the American Library Association, the author's own account at patmora.com, the guidance of Colorín Colorado and Reading Rockets, and the archived record of this domain itself at the Internet Archive. Where a number or a date matters, the page says where it comes from. Where a program changes, as grant programs do, the page says to verify the current round. Corrections are welcome and the contact page explains how to send one.