The Dia Tool Kit

This page rebuilds a tool kit. In the years when this domain hosted the Texas Día program, planners downloaded a stack of chapters called the El día de los niños/El día de los libros tool kit: an introduction, a history, a bibliography, chapters on bilingualism, booktalking, storytelling, readers theater and reading aloud, plus sample documents. The files are gone from the live web, but the structure still works, so the chapters below walk the same path with current sources. Read straight through for a complete program plan, or jump to the chapter your program is missing.

Chapter one: what the kit must produce

Before any craft paper is cut, write down what your Día program promises. The sturdy version, borrowed from the national sponsors at the American Library Association, has three lines: honor children, connect them to books, and welcome every culture and language in your service area. Every later decision gets tested against those lines. A performer who entertains but involves no books weakens the promise; a room of English only displays in a bilingual neighborhood fails it. Keep the three lines on one sheet of paper at every planning meeting, and the kit below will do the rest. The context and origin of the promise are on The History of Dia.

Chapter two: the program outline

A two hour program carries a Día afternoon comfortably. Open with a welcome in the languages your families speak, then a shared story time of two or three books. Follow with activities at stations: a craft table, a book browsing table staffed by someone who can talk up titles, and a table for library card sign ups. Close with a group moment, a song, a giveaway drawing or a family photo wall. Leave fifteen minutes of slack. The station model matters: it lets a hundred people attend a program sized for thirty at a time, and it lets shy families join at their own speed. The full timeline, room layout and day of run sheet live in How to Plan a Dia Event at Your Library.

Chapter three: the bibliography habit

The old kit shipped a bibliography as a packet of pages. The modern habit is better: build your list fresh each year from living sources. Start with the annual Día book lists published by the Association for Library Service to Children at dia.ala.org, grouped by age from picture books to young adult. Add titles from Colorín Colorado's bilingual collection guidance. Then apply the checks that matter for your room: does the book pair English and Spanish text usefully, does it present a culture from the inside, and will it survive being read aloud? The selection checks are detailed in Bilingual Picture Books for Story Time and Own Voices Chapter Books for Older Readers.

Chapter four: booktalking for a browsing table

Booktalking is the craft of making one book irresistible in ninety seconds. Hold the book up, give the situation in two sentences, read one passage aloud, and stop before the ending. Say who it is for: this one is for a five year old who likes trucks, this one is for a reader who just finished a graphic novel. At a Día table, run booktalks on a loop every ten minutes and let families wander between them. The test of a good booktalk is simple: count the copies that leave the table. A stack of booktalked books empties; a stack of displayed books waits.

Chapter five: storytelling beyond the page

Storytelling, told from memory or read with voices, is the heart of a Día program. Pick stories that repeat their structure, so a child who arrives late can still join. Use the languages in the room: tell one story in English, one in Spanish, and let a bilingual book carry both at once. Keep each story under ten minutes and put the strongest reader on the schedule's weakest slot, usually right after the welcome. The home version of the same craft, for parents rather than performers, is taught in Reading Aloud in Two Languages at Home.

Chapter six: readers theater for school age children

Readers theater turns a story into a script children read aloud from chairs, no memorizing, no costumes, no stage fright. Take a folk tale with four to six speaking parts, rewrite it as dialogue at one sitting, hand out the parts, and let the group perform it twice: once for practice, once for whoever walks by. Teachers use it in the weeks around April 30 to keep a book alive after story time ends. Libraries use it as the anchor of the school age station, because it occupies eight to twelve children for twenty minutes with two adults supervising.

Chapter seven: reading aloud, the parent session

Most Día programs include a moment aimed at grown ups, and the strongest one is a ten minute reading aloud demonstration. Show the three habits that matter: read the same book more than once, let the child turn the pages, and talk about the pictures instead of testing the words. Hand out a one page tip sheet in English and Spanish. Parents who see one confident demonstration leave doing something different that night; the demonstration is worth more than any flyer you could print. Reading Rockets, a national literacy project, publishes read aloud guidance worth folding into your handout.

Chapter eight: sample documents to steal

The old kit ended with sample documents, so this one does too. You need four: a one page timeline running eight weeks out from your date, a partner letter that asks a community group for one specific thing, a supply list priced from a general merchandise store, and a day of run sheet with names in the slots. Each of those four is built, with numbers attached, in the planning and funding chapters of this magazine: Planning a Dia Event and Funding a Dia Program. Print them, cross out what does not apply, and the kit has done its work.