Too Many Tamales

Too Many Tamales

Written by: Gary Soto
Illustrated by: Ed Martinez
Genre: Multicultural 
Grades: K-5
Awards: None

This book follows a girl named Maria. It is Christmas time and they are preparing tamales for the party they are having. Maria was helping her mother and kneading the masa to make the tamales taste good. Maria felt grown-up and loved wearing her mother's apron, and even wearing her mother's lipstick and perfume, but she especially wanted to wear her mother's ring. Once her mother stepped out for a bit, Maria grabbed for mother's ring from the counter and put it on. Maria quickly went back to kneading the masa once her mother walked right back in. Maria, her mother, and father went on to finish making the twenty-four tamales in time for the party. The whole family arrived, excited to see each other, and Maria and her cousins went off to play and talk about what presents they hope they'll get underneath the Christmas tree. Maria then realizes that she accidentally left her mother's ring in one of the twenty-four tamales and asked her cousins to help her look for it. The four of them ate all of the twenty-four tamales and they were not able to find it and it left them with tummy aches. Maria finally had the courage to tell her mother what had happened, but she noticed that her mother had her ring on her finger this whole time. Maria, her mother, and the whole rest of the family went into the kitchen to cook up more tamales and to spend time together.

I enjoyed reading this book and would love to have this in my classroom. I believe this book is good for Kindergartners all the way to fifth graders. This book will be good to read during the winter time and discuss with your students on how to deal with a situation like this and if anything like this has happened to them before.