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

A.Bibliographic Data:
Soto, Gary. Illus. Ed Martinez. 1993. Too Many Tamales. The Putman & Grosset Group: New York, New York. ISBN 0-698-11412-4 (English), ISBN 0-698-11413-2 (Spanish).

B. Plot Summary:
Too Many Tamales is a story about a young girl named Maria that is celebrating the Christmas holiday with her family. Maria's and her mother are sharing a special moment and where they are preparing the masa for the tamales. Maria feels like a grown up and decides to try on her mother's wedding ring then continues to prepare the “masa”. Soon Maria's family arrives and she goes off to play with her cousins Dolores, Teresa, and Danny. When Maria realizes that the ring is missing she asks her cousins to help her find the ring by eating through the tamales until they bite into something hard. They eat all of the tamales and the ring never shows up. Maria is devastated thinking that the ring is in one of her cousin's throat or belly, but she goes to her mother to tell her the bad news. Maria walks into the living room with all of the adults and is about to confess when she notices that her mother is wearing the diamond ring. Maria confesses everything to her family who is understanding and with Aunt Rosa's wink of an eye the whole family marches to the kitchen to a second batch of tamales which Aunt Rosa claims always tastes better than the first, even though her cousins didn't quite agree with that comment with their belly's full of tamales.

C. Critical Analysis:
Both the story and the pictures are warm and compliment each other. Ed Martinez does a wonderful job of creating the innocent expressions of awe, curiosity and distress in the children which helps bring the story to life. My family is from Mexico and I can relate to this story through a personal experience where I once decided to eat only the filling of my tamales and leave the pile of masa on my plate. Once my mother realized what I was doing she made me eat all of the masa, and it was a big pile! I could relate to the illustration of little Danny in Too Many Tamales holding up his shirt and rubbing his full stomach with the bloated look on his face, because that is how I felt as I was eating all of the masa from my tamales. There are many cultural markers evident in this story. The text and illustrations depict a mixed culture, the illustration where Maria and her mother are kneading the masa in the kitchen shows the decorative ceramic plates from Mexico in the background, and the some of the ingredients that they are using are labeled in English and others in Spanish. The part of the story where Maria's father helps out in the kitchen also suggests a mix in cultures. In Mexico it is not usual for men to be in the kitchen, but Gary Soto includes him in the process of making the tamales. This would be a great book to share with children during the holidays because most children can relate to the family gatherings during holiday festivities, and at the same time children will be exposed to the similarities and differences of other cultures.

D. Review Excerpt:
From Horn Book Magazine:
“Illustrated with rich, glowing oil paintings that reinforce the warmth of a loving family, this book offers a nonreligious glimpse into the celebration of Christmas in one affluent Hispanic household.” by Ellen Fader.

E. Connections
Students can research the recipe for making masa, create the recipe and make some tamales in the classroom.

Students can write an essay along with an illustration of their favorite holiday food, and share it with the class.

Group students and have them figure out how many tamales each of the four children ate. Calculate how many tamales each family member would have received had they been distributed evenly, and have the students improvise and come up with new math problems, like the fractions equation when the four cousins distributed the last tamal.