BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mora, Pat. 2007. Yum!¡MmMm! Qué rico! Americas’ sproutings Ill. by Rafael Lopez. New York: Lee and Low Books Inc. ISBN-10: 141697986 ISBN-13: 978-1-58430-271-1
PLOT SUMMARY
Yum!¡MmMm! Qué rico means mmmm delicious in Spanish and who better to introduce us to her first collection of fourteen haiku mouthwatering poems than Pat Mora? She is celebrating the Americas’ native foods. Americas’ sprouting blueberry, chile, chocolate and eleven more foods will have your tummy rumbling for more. Disfrutelo! (Enjoy It!)
CRITICAL ANALYSIS (INCLUDING CULTURAL MARKERS)
Pat Mora’s collection of haiku poems introduces us to the foods that are native to the Americas. Alphabetically you will enjoy blueberries to vanilla, with the description of the food on the left-hand page and the poem on the right hand page. The poems, paired with Rafael Lopez’s colorful pictures are a pleasure to devour. The beginning of the book includes a map of the Americas and ends with Mora offering the reader some of her thoughts on writing haiku poems, which are seventeen-syllable poems of Japanese origin, and some comments on the native foods. The rhythm of these poems can be felt from clapping them out and reading them out loud. Pat Mora shows this by offering a fun activity using fast-clapping or jump-rope rhyme with the foods from the book.
It is always a pleasure reading her books and I really like how she incorporates Spanish words in her poems. The cultural markers are evident in the foods found in South and Central America. The illustrations show the physical characteristics of Hispanic origins. The people have darker skin, hair color, skirts with bright colors, wide brimmed hats, scarves all showing bright colors of yellows, oranges, reds, and blues. The poem about corn shows a Hispanic family making tortillas and eating them with salsa. Each page shows the various foods being enjoyed by children or families in Hispanic culture. The page with the jalapeno shows the cultural markers in the Hispanic man with the young boy in the background. His facial features, hair color, and clothing all depict Hispanic markers. I also love the bright Mexican artwork that is so evident of Mexican culture. This is a fun book for reading and looking at the pictures.
Blueberries, cranberries, prickly pear fiesta,
Tomatoes, chile, corn; spicy, spicy salsa.
Lime for papaya, cream for pumpkin, butter for potato.
Yum! Vanilla! Peanuts! Chocolate. ¡Mmmm! ¡Qué rico!
(Mora, pg. 30)
Rafael Lopez draws from his rich cultural heritage growing up in Mexico City and being surrounded by the infusion of colors. The colors burst off the pages, while absorbing the reader into the pictures with the expressions and natural Hispanic heritage of the people, birds, insects, reptiles and history; we all share as Americans - from Canada to South America. The illustrations are rendered in acrylic on wood panels. The text is set in Egyptian 505 and Mex Regular.
REVIEW EXCERPTS
From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 3—This concept book serves as a delicious introduction to 14 types of food, all of which have their origins in the Americas. Snippets of information and a haiku poem accompany each one, ranging from blueberry and chili pepper through papaya, prickly pear, and vanilla. Using English and a smattering of Spanish words, Mora crafts a playful introduction to each one, as in "Pumpkin": "Under round luna,/scattered tumblings down the rows,/autumn's orange face." The sense of whimsy is further underscored in López's colorful acrylic on wood-panel illustrations. Artful compositions and brilliant complementary colors bear out the book's multicultural themes. The art conveys an infectious sense of fun, as smiling suns and moons beam down upon happy children and animals, along with a trumpet-wielding peanut-butter sandwich and a dancing pineapple. Teachers will find this a welcome addition to their social-studies units, but it should also win a broad general audience for its inventive, fun-filled approach to an ever-popular topic: food.—Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills Public Library, CA
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Review
"This inventive stew of food haiku celebrates the indigenous foods of the Americas." --Booklist
"Mora's descriptive poetry features wonderful word choices and gets it right to the essence of each food...Perfect for sharing as part of the curriculum or just for fun." --Book Links
"Teachers will find this a welcome addition to their social-studies units, but it should also win a broad general audience for its inventive, fun-filled approach to an ever-popular topic: food." --School Library Journal
"In this cross-curricular treat, imaginative...acrylic illustrations...are paired with playful haikus and a paragraph of information to introduce 14 foods indigenous to the Americas..." --SLJ Curriculum Connections
AWARDS/HONORS
Amérias Award for Children’s Literature, 2008, Consortium of Latin American Programs
Texas Bluebonnet Award (TBA) Master List, 2008-2009
ALA Notable, 2008
Chicago Public Library's Best of the Best Books, 2008
Bank Street Best Children's Books of the Year, 2008
Lasting Connections, Book Links, 2007
Great Lakes Great Books Award master list, 2008/2009
CONNECTIONS
Visit Pat Mora’s website
http://www.patmora.com/
Vanilla
Quick! Lick white river
running down the cone cooling
your warm summer laugh.
(Mora, pg. 29)
A great book for introducing haiku poems to younger children. Haiku has three non-rhyming lines which is sometimes hard for children to understand. This is why using foods was a great way to visualize how these poems work. After discussing the foods, reading the poems, counting the seventeen-syllables, I would like for the children to take turns choosing a topic and together building some haiku poems that we can add to our anthology books as a class. Then as an added treat, make some coffee can ice cream using natural vanilla bean.
To celebrate the finished anthology book, we could have a Yum!¡MmMm! Qué rico! Americas’ sproutings eating party. Students could choose one of the 14 foods in the book and could bring a dish to share with the class. Students could also dress up like the people in the book for the foods celebration.
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