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| Image courtesy Amazon.com |
Pat Mora's Yum! MmMm! Qué Rico! includes fourteen haiku celebrating delicious foods native to the Americas. From corn and tomatoes to chocolate and pineapple, Mora includes a variety of treats for young readers. With each tasty poem, Mora includes a short factual description of the food, its history, and even its modern use.
The seventeen syllable poems abound with sound devices. Mora employs alliteration with corn leaves that "sprout silk-snug house" and a tomato that "squirts seedy-juicy splatter" as well as the assonance of a cranberry that "simmers then POPS! in hot pot." In "Pecan," Mora creates the sound of a person cracking and eating pecans with instances of onomatopoeia like "crack," "munching," and "crunchy." The use of sound imagery gives readers a food experience that makes use of more than just the expected sight and taste imagery.
Yum! MmMm! Qué Rico! creates a multi-sensory experience with one of my favorite types of figurative language -- synesthesia--or the use of sensory language that evokes the sensation of a different sense. For example, the first poem, "Blueberry" opens with the line "Fill your mouth with blue," suggesting the when eating a blueberry, one can use his or her tongue to taste and feel the color blue. This same device pops up again in the poem "Chile," when the narrator's dad says, "Mmmm! This heat tastes good."
This book of poems will have special appeal for Spanish speaking students. In addition to the Spanish phrase qué rico in the title, Mora also includes other Spanish words like luna in "Pumpkin" or dulces in "Prickly Pear," providing opportunities for Spanish speakers to be the experts in pronouncing those words or translating them for the other students.
Mora's engaging language is made even more beautiful with the captivating artwork by Rafael López. Whether its a chocolate castle floating on a cloud or a giant personified pineapple dancing with maracas, each full page spread is fancifully illustrated in bright colors that embrace the sense of the food. The people depicted in the illustrations represent the diverse population of the Americas, as well. The characters have a variety of skin tones, hair colors, and even hair types. While most of the characters are children (as one might expect in a children's book), some of the illustrations include multi-generational families with parents and grandparents. The artwork, like the food described in the poems, reflect the diversity of the Americas.
Example Poem
Peanut
Smear nutty butter,
then jelly. Gooey party
my sandwich and me.
Activity
To introduce this poem to students, ask for volunteers to share their favorite food. After students offer their favorite foods to the group, explain that you are going to share a poem about your favorite food. You might even give the students some information from the facts about peanuts before reading the poem. After you have read the poem aloud, ask the students to guess what your favorite food is.
As an extension, students could use art supplies to draw or glue pictures of their favorite foods onto paper plates. They may also want to try their hand at writing a haiku about their favorite food on their plate.
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