Pat Mora is an award-winning poet and author of books for all ages. The list is vast, and you can check it out here if you like: http://www.patmora.com/pats-awards/. In her poetry book for children, Yum! Mm Mm! Que Rico: America’s Sproutings, she offers a series of haiku poems about food native to the Americas. Each poem is coupled with beautiful and whimsical illustrations by Rafael Lopez and short paragraphs that provide information about the fruit: where it’s from, what it’s used for, interesting details.
“Fudge, cake, pie, cookies
Brown magic melts on your tongue
Happy, your eyes dance” (Mora, 2007)
This glimpse of chocolate is fitting and the picture of a girl eating her chocolate chip cookie with a little chocolate on her lips and her eyes closed in bliss is fitting to the way many people view chocolate. In the informational section, Mora shares, “The word chocolate comes from the Nahuatl word xocolatl, which means bitter water” (2007).
Booklist gave the book a starred review and said, “This inventive stew of food haiku celebrates the indigenous foods of the Americas. Each of the 13 poems appears on a gloriously colorful double-page spread, accompanied by a sidebar that presents information about the origin of the food” (Booklist, 2007). There are 14 foods, from blueberry to prickly pear to vanilla that Mora has shared with readers. The paragraphs containing the information is short, a paragraph each, but when combined with the short haikus that are filled with sensual details including taste, small, appearance, and the emotional reaction of the readers makes the book a delightful, and tempting, exploration of foods from North and South America.
The pictures designed by Rafael Lopez (the same artist who did the illustrations for Bravo!: Poems about Amazing Hispanics – https://jhenrysetonhill.wordpress.com/2018/10/04/bravo-poems-about-amazing-hispanics-by-margarita-engle/), are vibrant and unique, offering a visual feast to accompany the food. Marilyn Taniguchi from School Library Journal said, ““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” (2007). One of my favorite pictures in the book is the simplest. A map of the Americas, from Canada to the tip of Brazil, in a sea of water with a whale and a compass with a happy sun face. In the corners, there are small snippets of the food to be seen in the haikus: pumpkin, chile, papaya, and pineapple. This picture sets the stage for the book’s exploration of food and culture.
Booklist. [Book Review – Yum! Mm Mm! Qur Rico!] Retrieved on October 4, 2018 from https://ipage.ingramcontent.com/ipage/servlet/ibg.common.titledetail.pd1000?queryString=H4sIAAAAAAAAAKtWKk5RskpLzClO1VEqzs9XsiopKgUyC0qUrJSc8vOzlYDs4iolK0MDAyArByjqGhHiogRSDGQHhDq5hIA4BUpW0dGGOkpAtmewkx-QsjS3MDS1MDE2MDI3NFSKja0FADQF87hrAAAA&R=8126653
Mora, Pat (2007). Yum! Mm Mm! Que Rico!. New York: Lee and Low Books.
Mora, Pat (2007) [Digital Image – Yum! Mm Mm! Que Rico! Retrieved on October 4, 2018 from https://ipage.ingramcontent.com/ipage/servlet/ibg.common.titledetail.pd1000?queryString=H4sIAAAAAAAAAKtWKk5RskpLzClO1VEqzs9XsiopKgUyC0qUrJSc8vOzlYDs4iolK0MDAyArByjqGhHiogRSDGQHhDq5hIA4BUpW0dGGOkpAtmewkx-QsjS3MDS1MDE2MDI3NFSKja0FADQF87hrAAAA&R=8126653
Taniguchi, Marilun (2007). [Book Review – Yum! Mm Mm! Que Rico!] School Library Journal. Retrieved on October 4, 2018 from https://ipage.ingramcontent.com/ipage/servlet/ibg.common.titledetail.pd1000?queryString=H4sIAAAAAAAAAKtWKk5RskpLzClO1VEqzs9XsiopKgUyC0qUrJSc8vOzlYDs4iolK0MDAyArByjqGhHiogRSDGQHhDq5hIA4BUpW0dGGOkpAtmewkx-QsjS3MDS1MDE2MDI3NFSKja0FADQF87hrAAAA&R=8126653
Ramblings of Jhenry 