Too Many Tamales is a very cute book about a Hispanic family by Gary Soto. Maria is helping her mother make tamales for Christmas dinner. The two share a very special moment as they prepare the masa. Maria feels like a grown up and tries on her mother's ring when she leaves the kitchen for a few minutes. Later after her uncles, aunts, and cousins arrive, Maria realizes the ring is missing. She panics, and gets her cousins to help find the ring. They eat all the tamales and find nothing! Maria finally decides to confess to her mother who, it turns out, has been wearing the ring all along. The family comes together and cooks up another batch of tamales.
This multicultural book shares how families have different joyful activities during the holidays, to Maria's family this is making tamales. I think this book is a great way to connect what kind of different ways the students celebrate holidays. They can list food that are served at holidays in different families, and maybe even taste tamales or other ethnic holiday foods. It also shows the importance of telling the truth. It would be a great idea to ask the children how they think Maria should've handled the situation and why telling the truth is important.
This book is a really good multicultural book to introduce to the classroom. Like you said, it introduces different traditions that families have in the holidays. I remember when I was younger I would make tamales with my family, and that was also our tradition. We would go to Mexico and spend the holidays with my grandma, and we would all work together to make all the tamales for the whole family. My job was also to put the masa on the hoja de tamal. Great memories :) An idea would be to have the students maybe write a little short essay on how they celebrate the holidays. They can write about what they do, what they eat, who comes over, if they travel, etc. They can also compare their own experience to that of Maria’s.
ReplyDeleteI believe that this book is wonderful for N.M. students because most of the students can relate to the customes that they children in the book are envolved with. This could lead to teaching or compairing ones own culture to another culture that is different. This will also teach the children to enjoy their own cultural activities. Plus making tamales in NM is very important even to those of us who are not of Hispanic decent.
ReplyDeleteI love how you said you would use this book in a lesson and ask students why telling the truth is important. It would be good for the beginning of the school year when the students are just getting to know their teacher. It may help them be less afraid to approach the teacher with a problem or tell the truth.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a really cute book, and one that would be perfect to use in the classroom around the holidays. It would really get students thinking about holiday foods and how different cultures celebrate holidays.
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