Too Many Tamales is a multicultural contemporary fiction book written by Gary Soto and illustrated by Ed Martinez. The book is about a girl named Maria who was making tamales with her mother for the first time for Christmas Eve dinner. Maria was so excited because her mom let her wear perfume and lipstick as well. Maria felt like a grown-up and wanted to complete her outlook by wearing her mother’s sparking diamond ring. When her mother left the kitchen Maria quickly placed the ring on her finger with the intention of only wearing it for a few minutes. However, she forgot about taking it off and began to knead and mix the dough for the tamales with her hands. Later, after the tamales were cooked, Maria’s cousins came over and she realized that the ring was missing from her finger. The only place it could be was in the tamales so together, Maria and her cousins each took turns eating tamales only to discover that the ring was not inside any of them and Maria’s mother had the ring the entire time.
The genre of the book was classified as contemporary realistic fiction because it contains characters, settings, and events that could occur in the real world.
A motivational activity I would do with my students is have them describe some of the foods from within their cultures that they eat at home. Then I would have them bring in the recipe to their favorite food and combine them all into a class recipe book. I would then make copies for each student to take home so they could practice making different cultural dishes with their parents.
This book was a very good read and it teaches young readers about culture and a valuable lesson in telling the truth.
The author Gary Soto is a Mexican-American author and poet and has published other titles such as Buried Onions (1997) and Baseball in April and Other Stories (1990).
Soto, G. (1993). Too many tamales. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
