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  • Yum! MmMm! Que Rico! Americas' Sproutings Haiku

Yum! MmMm! Que Rico! Americas' Sproutings Haiku

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Yum! MmMm! Que Rico!  Americas' Sproutings  Haiku

Book Information

Category
Poetry
Reader Personality Type
Author
Illustrator
Publisher
Lee & Low, October 2001

This amazing book of haiku is a celebration of the indigenous foods of the Americas. At once scholarly and kid-friendly, it presents common foods that have exotic origins. Each two-page spread presents a food—blueberries, chiles, chocolate, corn, cranberries, papayas, peanuts, pecans, pineapples, potatoes, prickly pears, pumpkins, tomatoes, vanilla—and dedicates both a haiku and a text information box to it. The text and haiku are surrounded by the visual delights of illustrator Rafael López which echo the poetry in a style that pays homage to the works of muralists such as Diego Rivera and surrealists like Frida Kahlo. Children fly through the air to sprinkle mounds of mashed potatoes with salt and pepper or to eat succulent bits of papaya; a boy rides a brilliant bluebird to sprinkle blueberries from a basket to the winds; and an indigenous family gathers around a simple meal of frijoles and tortillas as the sun sets over the pueblo and a large purple cricket watches. Author Pat Mora includes scholarly sources, including the help of her husband, a professor of Anthropology who teaches a course on the Origins of Agriculture, and ethno-botanist Gary Paul Nabhan, for help and inspiration. Also on the verso of the title page is a short list of the Spanish works she has sprinkled into the text in translation. In an afterword to the reader, she also explains the rhyme scheme of haiku and how she was inspired to write this book. Perhaps you, too, will be inspired to write haiku about one of your favorite things. ¿Qué rico? !Qué fantástico! Recommended by Shari Shaw, Librarian, Michigan, USA

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