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Too Many Tamales

Genre: Realistic Fiction/Multicultural 
Title: Too Many Tamales
Author: Gary Soto
Illustrator: Ed Martinez
Awards: N/A
Age Range: 3-8 Years Old

Summary: Maria is helping her mother make tamales. She feels very grown-up wearing her mom's apron, but she wishes that she could wear her ring. Her mother steps out of the kitchen and leaves her ring on the table. Maria puts on the ring and continues kneading the masa. She forgot that she had it on and continue to help make the tamales. She greeted her aunts, uncles, and cousins when they arrived at her house. As she was hanging out with her cousins she remembers the ring and is worried that it is in one of the tamales. The cousins eat all the tamales but do not find the ring. Maria goes to tell her mother what has happened, but as she is speaking notices the ring on her mom's finger. She is relieved to see her mom wearing it. After explaining what happened, Maria's family all enter the kitchen to make a second batch of tamales. 

Evaluation: I enjoyed this book, I thought it was very cute and funny. I love how Maria looks up to her mother and wants to be just like her. I would want to use this book in my class and I would read it around Christmas time. I think this book would be used best in kindergarten through third grade. I would use the book to teach students that we should not take things that are not ours without permission. Also, I would want to somehow incorporate this book with a math lesson. For younger students, I may have a worksheet and students need to color in a specific number of tamales. For older students, I may have a scavenger hunt with the hints being math word problems or math equations that must be solved. Each clue would be written on a tamale and whoever finds the most would be the winner. 
 

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