UPDATE: Due to the great response we’ve received, we’ve decided to extend the deadline to enter this contest by one week. Please click on the graphic above for updated information. Thanks for your support!

For more than a year now both Ana and I have been trying to come up with a way in which SpanglishBaby could give back to the bilingual community we so wholeheartedly support. We always knew we wanted to make sure we incorporated bilingual literacy in the project we ended up choosing. Today, as we’re getting ready to celebrate the 15th anniversary of El Día de los niños/El Día de los libros at the end of the month, it thrills us to no end to be able to announce what we finally came up with: My Bilingual School Library Contest.

While our children are not yet school-aged, we’re aware of the huge need dual language elementary schools, schools with ELL programs and those that teach Spanish to their students at the elementary level have in terms of reading material in Spanish (or bilingual). We’ve heard from many teachers in these schools that they have such small budgets that they end up bringing their own bilingual or Spanish books to share with their students. We believe so strongly in the importance of literacy when raising bilingual children that we decided to help change this by stocking one bilingual school’s library with as many books as we could get.

To that end, we’ve joined forces with some of the major bilingual/Spanish publishing houses we’ve been working with in the last two years and they’ve graciously agreed to donate a total of $500 worth of books to ONE very lucky bilingual school library.

To enter this contest, we’re asking each school to have either their second or third graders come up with a poster celebrating Día. Once it’s completed, we’d like it to be emailed to us together with a short paragraph explaining why their school should win this contest and what winning would mean to them.

We will be accepting entries for My Bilingual School Library Contest from today until May 8th, 2011 May 15th, 2011. Then, we’ll upload all the submissions that follow the guidelines and we’ll open up the voting process so that people can vote for their favorite entry once a day for five days. Once we close the voting period, we’ll tabulate the votes to find out which school will be winning $500 worth of bilingual and Spanish books for its library.

If your children go to a dual language school, you are a teacher at one, or you know a school that would benefit from My Bilingual School Library Contest, we urge you to encourage them to enter. Our hope is that this book contest will give Spanish teachers an opportunity to foment their students’ love for reading in Spanish by providing them with a variety of books to choose from.

We’d like to thank the following publishing houses for believing in us and in this worthy project. Without their support, My Bilingual School Library Contest would not be possible. ¡Muchísimas gracias!

Children’s Book Press

Arte Público Press

Cinco Puntos Press

Bilingual Readers

Lectorum

Lorito Books

Groundwood Books

BrickHouse Education

Candlewick Press

and

Cheerios Spoonful of Stories

For all the rules and regulations for My Bilingual School Library Contest, please go here or click the banner above.