Yum! MmMm! Que Rico! - Pat Mora

Poetry
America's Sproutings
Illustrated by Rafael Lopez
Lee & Low Books, 2007
$16.95
32 pages
Love the Illustrations.
Love the Interesting paragraph for each haiku.
Not crazy about some of the haiku.
Endpapers: Pumpkin orange

Discover the foods NATIVE to North and South America. There might even be a few surprises! A really informative, interesting, well-researched paragraph about each individual food sits in the left edge of the left page (black font on a rich orange...yellow....green....), a haiku about the same food sits on the right page. Illustrations are gorgeous - bold, bright, no white (the originals are acrylic on wood). Love 'em.

Blueberry --- Chili --- Chocolate --- Corn --- Cranberry --- Papaya --- Peanut --- Pecan --- Pineapple --- Potato --- Prickly Pear --- Pumpkin (look at all the P's!) --- Tomato --- Vanilla

CHOCOLATE

Fudge, cake, pie, cookies.
Brown magic melts on your tongue.
Happy, your eyes dance.

I teach haiku each year. It's great for figuring out syllables, stresses, rhythm. I always encourage the kids to get rid of any non-essential words by putting in a snazzier one. Also encouraged is adding a word to make sure that it paints the picture it needs to paint. We really work on having them make total sense. Some of the haikus in this book leave out words to the point that they don't really paint the picture they need to paint. Others will disagree, I'm sure.
Don't get me wrong - it's a great book. I'm just not crazy about some of the haikus.