Module 2: Multicultural Poetry - Yum! ¡MmMm! Qué rico! Americas’ Sproutings

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

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’ sproutings blueberry, chile, chocolate and eleven more foods will have your tummy rumbling for more. Disfrutelo! (Enjoy It!)

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 includes words in Spanish.

Blueberries, cranberries, pricky pear fiesta,
Tomatoes, chile, corn; spicy, spicy sals.
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.


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.