Celebrating Pura Belpré’s Birthday! February 2nd is Pura Belpré’s birthday – for those of you playing along at home, she’d have 119 candles on the cake! Continuing my unofficial, non-sequential series of how to incorporate multicultural offerings in every program, we’re going to see how we can make Pura’s award winners come to life! But first… Who was Pura Belpré? For those of you just joining us, Pura Belpré was born in Cidra, Puerto Rico. By serendipitous circumstances, she ended up in New York City for her sister’s wedding and was hired by a public library. Huge emphasis on this, folks: it was 1920 and they were looking to hire young women from ethnically diverse backgrounds! Imagine that! Almost 100 years ago! Her career took her from the Bronx to the Lower East Side, where she spread the love of stories in English and Spanish – which had never been done before. As…