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By Amanda Riddle
Arizona Daily Wildcat
September 12, 1996
The University of Arizona and an international book fair have combined resources to offer a new, three-credit course that will take place in Mexico.Cecilia Gonzalez, a representative of the Guadalajara International Book Fair, spoke Tuesday in Spanish to a crowd of about 20 in the Modern Languages building. She said the class is an important cultural experience for bilingual teachers and students.
"I am very proud of the class. I see it as the beginning of a relationship between the UA and the fair," Gonzalez said through an interpreter during an interview.
Gonzalez discussed the fair and the class again yesterday in the College of Education.
The 10th annual book fair will be held Nov. 30 through Dec. 8 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. It will feature the display of more than 75,000 titles in Spanish, the participation of 875 publishers from 26 countries and the attendance of thousands of visitors, including librarians, teachers, students, booksellers, distributors and wholesalers.
The Department of Language, Reading and Culture, within the College of Education, is offering the class from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1, which overlaps with the book fair.
The class will include presentations and seminars on bilingual education and multicultural literature. Students will also visit a public school in the city and attend the fair, said Mary D. Shelor, program coordinator in the Department of Language, Reading and Culture.
Anyone interested should register by Nov. 1 with the department, she said. The class is being offered for both graduate and undergraduate credit.
In addition to students and faculty at the university, teachers of the Tucson school districts are invited to enroll, she said.
The cost of the class is $315 for tuition plus $610 for the cost of the conference, which includes hotel, meals, books and materials.
Topics for the presentations and seminars include Building Literacy in Two Languages; Theater for Young Children; Celebrating Children, Motivating Children to Read; and Combining Literature and Mathematics, Shelor said.
Arminda R. Fuentevilla, director of Bilingual Projects and a professor in the Department of Language, Reading and Culture, will be teaching a seminar on the two kinds of bilingual education programs in the United States.
"It will be difficult not to convey how I value bilingualism, but my presentation will be an objective view. We need to present the facts the way they are. I hope the students will raise questions and form their own conclusions," she said.
Fuentevilla, who has attended the conference three times, said it is not a book fair in the American sense of the word.
"It is a professional conference about children's and adolescents' literature written for children who are learning to speak, read and write in Spanish," Fuentevilla said.
"Teachers have an excellent opportunity to review what is available," she said. "I come back with suitcases with children and adolescent books."
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