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The Latino parents in the room, recent immigrants who spoke little English, thanked their local librarian and stood quietly, watching poet and author Pat Mora read to their children. After she finished and the children went outside for refreshments, Mora approached the parents and spoke with them in Spanish. She told them about the importance of the library and of books and that they were always welcome there at the Riverside, Calif., public library.

"It was a very moving experience to me when I looked at a group of parents who don't speak English, and yet I knew they, like most parents, had that deep desire to help their child succeed, and they came to this country because they wanted their child to have better opportunities," Mora said.

One year later, as she prepares for the 2009 El Dia de los Ninos/El Dia de Los Libros (Children's Day/Book Day), Mora says she can still see them in her mind.

"Dia," as the event is commonly called, is an annual multicultural celebration of children and books held at schools and libraries across the country. It comes to Greensboro Saturday as a keynote event of Poetry GSO.

"Dia is a way of linking all kids to books, languages and cultures and of involving families in a very direct way," Mora said.

The goals of the event are to honor and celebrate children and childhood, promote literacy and libraries, involve parents in family literacy and honor many languages and cultures.

"We all need annual reminders, so I love the idea that it's about kids, it's for kids, but it's about their well-being in terms of the literacy necessary to be part of this democracy," Mora said.

Mora, an award-winning adult and children's book author and poet, started the event in 1996. The idea came to her after an interview on a public radio station at the University of Arizona at Tucson.

"The interviewer asked me to read some of the work in Spanish, and I asked her why, and she said, 'I'm going to play it for El Dia del Nino,' " Mora said. "I had never heard of it, and she told me it was a celebration of children held annually in Mexico."

The annual Mexican holiday is celebrated April 30 and grew out of a world conference for children's well-being held in Switzerland in 1925.

"As a mom to three children, I thought about the fact that kids always say, 'Why do we have Mother's Day and Father's Day and not Kid's Day?' " Mora said.

She also considered how society encourages children to become readers, particularly as it becomes more and more visually focused.

"Walking away from that radio station, going away to have lunch with some friends, I thought, 'Well, what if we combine that? What if we celebrated kids and celebrated linking them with books?' " Mora said.

Members of the University of Arizona's faculty and Tucson's chapter of Reforma, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking, supported Mora's idea, and on April 30, 1997, the first El Dia de los Ninos/El Dia de los Libros was held in the United States. The state of New Mexico and the cities of Santa Fe, N.M., Austin, Texas, El Paso, Texas, and Tucson, Ariz., all held events. The movement found financial support from Dan Moore at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

"That combination of having this vision, having this group and having this friend who said, 'We can provide a little funding' -- that wonderful triangle was what really allowed Dia to grow," Mora said.

With Reforma's chapters all across the country, more and more librarians became involved, and the event spread to other cities and states. Last April, Mora attended a Dia event at the U.S. Senate.

"We all learned that every day is a day for celebrating kids and linking them to the books," Mora said. "Over time, we learned it's a daily commitment, but we have an annual big celebration."

More than 350 libraries have committed to this year's event, and that's only the libraries that have sent their information to Mora's Dia Web site.

"It's taken a lot of work on the part of a lot of people," Mora said. "These librarians are very, very committed to making this work."

What distinguishes Dia from other literacy events, Mora said, is its multicultural emphasis.

"I think when we started it and when we weighed whether the calendar needed another literacy event, we felt that they were not reaching all of America's young people, that the books that were used, the songs that were sung, did not reflect the wonderful diversity that is America today," Mora said.

At the heart of the event, Mora said, is "bookjoy" -- the word she uses to describe the intense pleasure of books that readers often experience.

"Dia is an opportunity for readers to come together and to let the excitement spread a bit," Mora said.

Mora stressed the importance of literacy in American democratic society.

"I feel that without that ability to sit quietly and to not only savor text but to understand text, young people's horizons are limited," Mora said.

She added that the ability to appreciate other cultures and other languages is becoming more and more important in today's global environment.

"I love to see the words in all the languages spoken in the United States, so I encourage librarians to use the home languages of the people they serve," Mora said. "Languages are wealth, cultures are wealth, and we're all strengthened by diversity."

Dia also integrates the family in a unique way.

"It's about family literacy," Mora said. "It is about the kids, but it's about working with families to celebrate kids and working with families to promote literacy."