Laughing Tomatoes and Other Spring Poems

School Library Journal

K-Gr 5Coming out in the same season as Alma Flor Ada's Gathering the Sun (Lothrop, 1997), Tomatoes faces some stiff competition. Nonetheless, this collection of verses in English and Spanish, illustrated with bold, primitive paintings, carves a lighthearted niche all its own. Most of the poems are short, but even the longer ones are composed of telegraphic one- and two-syllable lines. The effect is that of quick snapshots of moments in life. The subjectsfood, weather, plants, dreamsare all familiar ones. The selections scan equally well in English and in Spanish. This is an excellent teaching tool for units on poetry composition and on colorful use of language. Of special utility in bilingual classrooms, this book provides an amusing way to explore the same ideas in two languages. For more depth in both poem content and artwork, Gathering the Sun is clearly superior, but the books complement each other well. Both are good introductions to the serious and involved poetry of Lori Carlson's Cool Salsa (Holt, 1994), which is more issue oriented and challenging.Ann Welton, Terminal Park Elementary School, Auburn, WA

Kirkus Reviews

An energetic cast of characters in 20 short, freely styled poems in both English and Spanish help readers "see everything for the first time."

"My Grandma's Songs" "would follow/the beat of/the washing machine" and "could turn/my grandma/into a young girl." The laughing tomatoes turn their "wire- framed/bushes/into/Christmas trees/in spring," shown in a spread in which wedged into the smiling mouths of children and pets are, somewhat astonishingly, slices of heavily seeded tomato. With vibrantly stylized illustrations, this lively gathering carries an invitation from Alarcón to "make these poems yours" by reading them, words followed by the final short poem—"there are no endings/just new beginnings." An accessible, open-hearted collection.