Big Momma Makes the World

3 to 6 years old. Phyllis Root gives us a fantastic feminist version of how the universe came about in Big Momma Makes the World (also the 2002 Boston Globe Horn Book Picture Book Award Winner). In it, the universe's creator is not just a woman and mother. Instead it is the "Big Momma" and when she creates the world, "she didn't mess around." Root's down home, southern accented textual style draws the portrait of a powerful and straight talking matriarch. It also reflects the way kids feel about 'mother' in general. She is powerful as in she creates their world- both their personal world and the world outside their home through stories. Helen Oxenbury's illustrations brilliantly complement the text with realistic, yet softly colored show more illustrations. But this isn't your usual Oxenbury board book. Instead it's an Oxenbury epic for preschoolers. She does use her typical soft lines that suggest tenderness, but otherwise she draws with more realism and dynamism. She fills her usual white background space with color and uses dominance to make Big Momma bigger and baby smaller. This gives Big Momma that large than life feel and the naked baby comes across as wee, contented, and happily exploring her creation by her side. Big Momma and her baby are clearly spiritual beings and Oxenbury accomplishes this by making them the color of their surroundings-blue like water, white like light, and dark like night. Unfortunately the one illustration that detracts from this cohesiveness is the cover one. In it Big Momma and her baby are pink like the clouds at sunrise, and it distinctly makes them look less like archetypal beings and more like Caucasian folk. Yet the text supports Big Momma to be also African American and all ethnicities. Still this is one quibble and this book is highly recommended to public library collections. It would make an excellent read aloud to a large preschool group as well. Big Momma Makes the World is a must for public libraries. show less

Root’s creation story combines scientific elements such as evolution, and big bang theory with the concept of a superior entity. In her down south, African American tone, Root describes how Big Momma (perhaps Mother Earth), baby on her hip swims out of the water, creates light, dark, sky, creatures and “folks to keep me company.” She lines the folks up and tells them “this is a real nice world we got here, and you all better take some good care of it” and goes off to rest, looking down every now and again “Big Momma looks down and says, Better straighten up down there.” The large, soft blue type is inviting and Oxenbury covers the right page fully with light infused, touchable drawings (the big bang of creatures covers show more both and its orange-tinged, yellow center explodes with energy nearly spitting flesh-colored creatures off the page. Beautiful show less

Big Momma makes the world starts out with Big Momma floating around in water with a “baby sitting on her hip.” She creates the sky, sun, moon, stars, earth, plants, animals and people in six days and rests on the seventh. When looking at her work at the end of each day she says “That’s good. That’s real good.” She created people so she could sit on the front porch and “swap stories.” At the end of the sixth day she tells them to take care of the world. She sometimes looks down to tell the people to “straighten up” and sometimes saying “That’s good. That’s real good.”
I would use this book when studying the creation of the universe. On day five (Friday?) she decides to create the land animals in “One Big show more Bang.” Most students will be presented with two creation stories in their lives. I think Big Momma makes the world combines the Big Bang Theory with the idea of a creator without using any certain religion. This may help student with processing the two different theories. show less

A folksy creation story, excellent for retelling, easygoing voice of the making of the world by Big Momma, a solidly built woman who makes the world in seven days while her baby looks on. "That's good, that's real good," Big Momma says, satisfied with her accomplishment.

I LOVED this book! It had great pictures to illustrate the story also! It is basically the Creation story told with a "Big Momma" who makes the world. It seemed to make more sense to my children that a woman would have made the world and they loved that this book lends itself to you taking an intonation with it. The wording is just perfect to take kind of a southern twang to it. If you're looking for a book to illustrate to kids that there are many different versions of Creation, this is a great book to start with.

One of my favorite picture books of all time, and I am PICKY about picture books! This is a creation myth beautifully told with gorgeous illustrations. I loved this book even before I had my daughter, and after reading it to her I realized that she tended to lose interest in the earlier illustrations that are very monochromatic. But after that, she was enthralled!

This is a story of how Big Momma created the world and what she did each day. I feel that this book may be controversial to have in your classroom because it basically says that Big Momma created the world and God did not. I feel this might stir up some emotions so if you're going to read this book in your class, be prepared for the reactions.