Take a Poetry Pause
Gracias for new Día Dynamos
November: the month for giving thanks. This year, as we prepare for Día’s 20th Anniversary next April, I am deeply grateful to each of you, our creative and persistent Día Dynamos. Gracias.
I’m pleased to introduce our new Dynamos, my friends, Dr. Dan Moore (Vice President-Programs Retired, W.K. Kellogg Foundation) and Dr. Kay Moore (Dean and Professor Emerita, North Carolina State University, Retired), both long-time Día supporters. I’m sure they wonder if we’ll ever have a visit when we don’t discuss Día’s future. Dan supported Día from its beginning providing ALSC organizational support while he was at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The Moores then enhanced the The Estela and Raúl Mora Award supporting of the Mora Honor Awards in recent years and have now contributed to our upcoming Anniversary. Gracias, gracias!
Dan and Kay Moore
Congratulations Duncan and Margarita!
Congratulations to Duncan Tonatiuh at having his FUNNY BONES: POSADA AND HIS DAY OF THE DEAD CALAVERAS selected as one of the 10 Best Illustrated Children’s Books for 2015 by the New York Times, and to my friend Margarita Engle for a fine review of her middle-grade memoir, ENCHANTED AIR, in the same paper.
El día de los muertos, All Souls Day
This is the first year that The Remembering Day/El día de los muertos is available to families and those who work with children. I hope this origin myth is a helpful way to create the tradition of remembering and honoring the family and friends who are no longer with us.
Cultural humor can at times be hard to understand. El día de los muertos which can include the Mexican humor of laughing at death has produced and produces a rich array of folk art including a special Day of the Dead bread. Many books have been written about the tradition of visiting graveyards in traditional parts of Mexico and about humorous skull art.
I am again grateful to Texas librarian Sandra Rosales and her colleagues who created this tribute, in Spanish an altar, in honor of my parents.
Family Remembrances at the Lan Su Chinese Garden
Last summer, my husband and I visited Portland. I was going to have the pleasure of speaking to educators which I always enjoy. We had been to beautiful Portland a number of times, and because I love gardens, we had visited the Japanese Tea Garden. This year we discovered the Lan Su Chinese Garden and was I pleasantly surprised when we entered a room that had a family remembrance.
As I say in the author note of my new book, The Remembering Day/El día de los muertos, many cultures have the tradition of honoring their departed.
