Too Many Tamales

Title: Too Many Tamales
Genre: Multicultural
Author: Gary Soto
Major Awards: None
Age Group: 2nd-4th grade

This is a story of a Hispanic family gathering together on Christmas Eve to celebrate. They have a tradition of making tamales, and Maria decides to help her parents make them this year. This year more than ever, Maria feels grown up: her mother lets her wear lipstick, perfume, and she even gets to help make tamales. As she helps her mother, she thinks to herself that she wishes she could wear her mother's wedding ring. Her mother places the ring on the counter as she prepares the food, and as her mother leaves the kitchen, Maria picks it up and puts it on her thumb to admire it. As her mother comes back into the kitchen, Maria notices that the ring is gone. She assumes it went into the tamale dough, but she cannot not tell her mother yet. As her cousins start to arrive at her house, she takes them upstairs, explaining the situation she has herself in. Maria and her cousins set out to eat every last tamale until the ring is found. Well, they eat all the tamales, but the ring is never found. Maria goes crying to her mother, saying she lost the ring. To her surprise, the ring is shining bright on her mother's finger: she hadn't lost it after all! In the end, the whole family laughs with Maria about what happened, and they make a new batch of tamales and enjoy the night.

I really enjoyed this story, and it would be a great one to have in the classroom! It shows the importance of obeying, and how things can go awry if you disobey. It also shows the importance of telling the truth, which is a very important concept for students to know. I think that students would enjoy this story of a lost and found treasure, and would get many laughs out of Maria and her cousin's antics!

I think that second through fourth graders would enjoy this story the most. It is a little bit of a longer story, but there are also many pictures that really help the reader visualize the words on each page. The girl, Maria, in the story seems to be around age eight or nine, so I think that students these ages would relate to her the most. I also think that they would find humor in parts of this story, especially as Maria and her cousins eat a platter of twenty-four tamales!

In my classroom, I think it would be fun to bring in tamales as we read this story and let the students eat them! I could also give the students a worksheet on cause and effect, and they would write the cause and effect of Maria's action. We could also talk about plot structure, and I could give them a worksheet that has them write the rising action, climax, falling action, etc. of this book. We could also talk about traditions, and each student could tell the class about a tradition they have in their family, and why it is important to them!