Yum! Mmmm! Que Rico!: America's Sproutings by Pat Mora, Rafael Lopez (Illustrator)

From the Publisher

A collection of haiku focusing on fourteen foods native to the Americas, celebrating the fun of the foods as well as their origins.

Children's Literature

Boldly-colored illustrations, acrylic on wooden panels, accompany poems lauding the attributes of foods native to the Americas. Each poem conveys the essence of the subject foodstuff. “Chewing your perfume/we taste your leafy juice,/Yum! Juicy tropics.” That haiku describes papaya and the sidebar gives information regarding the fruit’s lands of origin and uses. Blueberry, chile, corn, cranberry, pecan, pineapple, potato, prickly pear, pumpkin, tomato, vanilla, and even chocolate are similarly described. Each two-page spread includes a detailed sidebar. Some readers might just enjoy the haiku and the wonderful drawings. The additional information is interesting. However, the print is quite small for a children’s picture book and might fail to capture the attention of the youngest readers. The author’s note suggests making a jump-rope rhyme using all the names of the foods. Pat Mora has written more than twenty-five books for children and this, her first book of haiku, is bright and original. Reviewer: Carolyn Mott Ford

Marilyn TaniguchiCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information. - School Library Journal

PreS-Gr 3
This concept book serves as a delicious introduction to 14 types of food, all of which have their origins in the Americas. Snippets of information and a haiku poem accompany each one, ranging from blueberry and chili pepper through papaya, prickly pear, and vanilla. Using English and a smattering of Spanish words, Mora crafts a playful introduction to each one, as in "Pumpkin": "Under round luna ,/scattered tumblings down the rows,/autumn's orange face." The sense of whimsy is further underscored in López's colorful acrylic on wood-panel illustrations. Artful compositions and brilliant complementary colors bear out the book's multicultural themes. The art conveys an infectious sense of fun, as smiling suns and moons beam down upon happy children and animals, along with a trumpet-wielding peanut-butter sandwich and a dancing pineapple. Teachers will find this a welcome addition to their social-studies units, but it should also win a broad general audience for its inventive, fun-filled approach to an ever-popular topic: food.

Kirkus Reviews

Haiku celebrating the diversity of edible plants native to the Americas-blueberries, chocolate, prickly pears, pecans and more. Each spread includes an informative paragraph explaining the probable origin, history and some trivia for the plant described in the poem. (The word pecan, for example, comes from a French word meaning, "nut to be cracked on a rock.") L-pez's vibrant, folklorish illustrations make the book a visual feast, but the haikus are uneven. Some (Chiles: "Dad bites green mouth-fire / laughs when tears fill his eyes, sighs / ‘Mmmm! This heat tastes good' ") evoke the essence of their subject; others (Potato: Underground magic. / Peel brown bundle, mash, pile high. / Salt and pepper clouds) are just confusing. More interesting as social science than as poetry, but visually gorgeous. (Nonfiction/poetry. 7-12)

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