Too Many Tamales

Too Many Tamales Written by Gary Soto, Illustrated by Ed Martinez

Picture Book for children ages 5-10

4 out of 5 stars

When Maria is honored with the privilege of helping her parents makes tamales for Christmas dinner, she wants to take her new grown-up privilege a step further by trying on her mother’s ring. Hours later, while playing with her cousins, Maria realizes that her mother’s ring is no longer on her thumb and thinks that it must be in the tamales, causing Maria and her three cousins to eat all the tamales in hopes of finding the ring.

Too Many Tamales represents a multicultural book for a many different reasons. Multicultural is defined by the breakdown of the word. Multi means many and culture represents the behaviors and belief characteristics of any kind of group. In this story many different behaviors and belief characteristics can be found; for example, the Spanish heritage of making tamales is described, as well as family traditions, celebrating Christmas, which leads to religion, and age groups. Upon discovering the different cultures found in this one story, I started to realize how much I can see myself and my life within the story. Although I am not of Spanish heritage, I still have certain traditions, belong to an age group, celebrate Christmas, and am a religious person. Before Thanksgiving, my cousin, grandmother, mother, and I make lefse for us to eat on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Lefse is a Norwegian and Swedish treat and it is something special that we only get to have on these two holidays. I see myself in the character of Maria because she is so excited that her parents are allowing her to help them make tamales for the first time this year. I was just like Maria when my grandma finally asked me to help her make lefse and learn the tricks of the trade. I also find myself enjoying new privileges that come with age and I also enjoy looking into the future wanting to receive the new privileges that come with that next age group as well. From this book, I have learned how although someone might be from a different heritage and have a different ethnicity than myself it doesn’t mean that we are entirely different people. In fact the opposite is true, people can find more similarities amongst other people of what they think to be different cultures than they think.

Based on what I learned about myself, other cultures, and the true meaning of multicultural I want to use this book in my classroom to teach the same lessons to my students that I have learned. First, I would teach a lesson on the definition of multicultural and have the students come up with many different types of cultures. Next, I would have the students do a brainstorming activity where they would describe themselves in terms of the culture groups that they belong too. I would then read this book to the class and have a class discussion on the similarities and differences they found between the culture groups of the characters in the books and their own. Finally, I would have each student read a different multicultural book and complete a writing activity about what they have learned about themselves and other cultures based on the class activities and what they read in their books.