Momma, Where Are You From?

Bradby, Marie

Soentpiet, Chris

Orchard Books, 2000

Picture Book, Multi-cultural

All Ages

This book is about a little girl who asks her mother where she is from. The mother responds in poetry and talks about her past and how things were when she grew up. The mother is from the country side where the chickens were, she is from fresh fish ice cream. She is from swings and startch. She is also from a very tight knit family who did everything together. You can tell by the pictures of the book that they had a very large family.

I really enjoyed reading this story, and one of the reasons is because we just did one of these poems in the classroom. I made a lot of connection with the story like being from the country side and having a very close family. I was able to understand the story a lot more as well because we have been practicing this. After reading Aleutian Sparrow I have become more comfortable reading poetry. The illustrations were water colors and were beautifully done. Each picture is shaded so perfectly that the people look like they are coming off of the page. Also the angle that the pictures were painted make them look so realistic.

This book could be used in the classroom when talking about poetry. You could read this book first and then do what we did in class and have the students create their own "Where Are You From" poem.