Yum! Mmmm! Que Rico!: Americas' Sproutings (Module 3)

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mora, Pat. 2007. Yum! Mmmm! Que Rico!: Americas' Sproutings. Ill. by Rafael Lopez. New York: Lee and Low. ISBN: 9781584302711.

2. PLOT SUMMARY
Crops local to the Americas are presented in haiku with bright and colorful pictures. Each one featured also includes a paragraph with historical facts and geographical information. Some of the crops featured are blueberries, chiles, and vanilla.

3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS

A smattering of Spanish is woven together with English in this Japanese form of poetry, Pat Mora has written a fun book with great poetry in the Japanese tradition of haiku. The poems are succinct and yet full of wonderful images as good haikus are supposed to be. Also found in the poems are themes of family and the love of traditional foods common to the Hispanic culture.

The illustrations are colorful and full of whimsy as they take the metaphors in the haikus to an even greater level. Many of the illustrations are so bold and fun that they make the book and the haikus easy to remember. For example, the chile poem speaks of the fire within and the illustration shows Dad as a fire-breathing dragon. Lopez, a Mexican illustrator and Pura Belpre Award recipient, brought into his artwork the bright colors and bold lines that are often found in Mexican artwork with a surreal edge to this very real topic of food and its origins.

This nonfiction book informs and keeps the reader's interest. Each page has a paragraph with more details on the food and its origin. There is also a final author's note that shares some of the debates about the origins of the foods that are featured along with a “jump-rope” rhyme of all the foods in the book. Informative and imaginative, Yum! Mmmm! Que Rico!: America's Sproutings will make students hungry for food and more information.


4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

• Library Media Connection: “With the sparkling words and the alluring illustrations, the reader will crave something to eat.”
• School Library Journal: “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.”
• Booklist Starred: “From blueberries to prickly pears to corn, the acrylic-on-wood-panel illustrations burst with vivid colors and stylized Mexican flair.”

5. CONNECTIONS

• Use a map and point out the areas where each food is grown. Place a pictures of each food on the map it the correct area. This can also be down digitally with Google maps and pinpoints. See WikiHow for information on how to do this.
• Bring in examples of each type of food mentioned. Some students may have a lot of experiences with the foods but for others they may have never seen a vanilla bean before. If possible, allow students to taste each food (be careful with those the chiles!).
• Yes, there are loads of students writing terrible haikus all the time. However, don't feel that this means you can't try to lead your students in writing some as well. Analyze how Pat Mora makes hers feel fresh and real. Then, lead students to write haikus on their favorite food. Scholastic has a Haiku Helper that can assist students in writing their own. Make sure students do research on the origin of their foods and write an informative paragraph to go along with it. Encourage them to create illustrations in Rafael Lopez's style to go with their haiku. Consider taking these creations and making a class book.
• On Pat Mora's webpage on this book, there are multiple videos of Pat Mora talking about this book and how it came to be, as well as her reading an excerpt from it. In one video, she talks about following wacky ideas, like her writing haikus for this book. Ask students to share wacky ideas they have had or heard of others having that they have followed with good results. Discuss the importance of having the freedom to go outside of what is expected for creativity to flourish.