In this story, a young girl named Maria tries on her mother’s wedding ring while helping make tamales for a Christmas dinner. While she is kneading the masa, dough, the ring slips off. Later, Maria is nervous when she realizes that the ring is missing and has to confront her mother. This book is great to use during Hispanic heritage month or during the Christmas holidays. It teaches students about the Hispanic culture and their holiday traditions.

Too Many Tamales is a humorous book about a Hispanic family making tamales. Maria saw her mother’s diamond ring placed on the kitchen counter and tried it on without permission. Maria began kneading the masa, dough made out of dried corn, and accidently lost the ring. Maria gets distracted and forgets to find the ring in the masa. When Maria finally remembers the ring, the tamales are all done and ready to eat. Maria insist her cousins help her eat the tamales in hopes of finding the ring. The children eat all twenty four tamales with no luck. Maria is so sad and angry at herself and realizes she has to tell her mom what has happened. Maria is relieved to see the ring on her mother’s finger, she had found it in the masa and been wearing it the whole time. The family finds it quite funny and make fun of Maria and her cousins for the rest of the night.

As a future teacher, my classroom is likely to be diverse. This is a great book for Hispanic children to relate to. Other children who are not Hispanic could learn a little about Hispanic food and tradition by reading Too Many Tamales.

Children in a classroom environment could learn how to make tamales as a class after reading this book. They could then have a party and invite their families to eat a Hispanic dinner. The children could make other Hispanic foods as well. This would be a great book to introduce international foods, Children in the class could discuss the foods their family eat at family gatherings. The teacher could then research the food and discussthe history of the foods with the class.

This book is about the relationship between a mother and daughter. It is Christmas time and they are making tamales for the party they are going to have at their home. The daughter wants to be like her mother so much. As the mother goes away from kithchen the daughter puts on her mothers ring that was sitting on the faucet. She puts the ring on her finger and loses it in the masa. She later forgets about the ring until she is playing with her cousins. They go down to the kitchen and they begin to eat the tamales to look for the ring. They eat them all but there is no ring. Later on the mother has the ring and the whole family begin making tamales.

I liked this book because they are making tamales and they are good! NO, really it involves the daughter trying to fix a problem and afraid to tell the mother, like most children are. But later she feels okay because she tells the mother and the mother already has the ring. It lets children now to tell the truth instead of lying.

You can let the children mix masa and spread it on cornshucks.
You can also make a math folder game with pictures of tamales and matching them.

This is also a really cute multicultrual book. It is about a Mexican family. I really like books by Gary Soto, he is a very talented writer.

This book is about a little girl named Maria who wanted to help her mom make tamales for Christmas Eve gathering with the family. Maria's mother had a beautiful diamond ring that Maria loved and while making the tamales she took it off. Maira could not control herself and tried the ring on and continued to make the tamales. She realizes the ring is gone and thinks its in the tamales they made and gets her cousins and herself to eat them all to find it. She realizes her mom has the ring and everyone helps to make more tamales.

I liked this book because it is very festive and shows the true spirit of the holidays with this family. It shows how to deal with a bad situation and it all still works out for the best.

This book could also be used in many ways in the classroom. It is based on Christmas so it could be in the holiday unit. You could use it for a mulitcultural unit and with that unit you could have a parent come in and help the kids make tamales just like the kids in the book.