Mice and Beans - Pam Munoz Ryan

In doing research for my final paper on Esperanza Rising (which, in case you couldn't tell, was my favorite book I read this month), I started looking into other books that Pam Muñoz Ryan had written and realized she'd written many children's books. Those books range from Mice and Beans to When Marian Sang. Although I also read When Marian Sang, I chose to blog about Mice and Beans because it was much different than many of the picturebooks I had read throughout these 5 weeks of classes.

Mice and Beans tells the story of a grandmother named Rosa María who is preparing her tiny house and tiny yard for the seventh birthday of her youngest grandchild named Catalina. She is paranoid of mice and in order to keep them away, constantly sets mouse traps and cleans fervently. Because she is so busy in the days leading up to Catalina's birthday, she forgets if she has set mouse traps or not and ends up re-setting them every day. Suspicious things also begin to happen - like missing napkins, candywrappers on the floor, vanishing mousetraps, and vanishing spoons. She continues to re-set the traps, and finally, after Catalina's birthday, she realizes that her motto of "When there's room in the heart, there's room in the house...except for a mouse" has been memorized incorrectly. It's actually "When there's room in the heart, there's room in the house...even for a mouse." She realizes that there's nothing to worry over if a few mice are in her house, especially if they are helpful ones.

I didn't like Pam Muñoz Ryan's writing style in this book nearly as much as I did in Esperanza Rising, and I think it's because I thought that this book had substantially less substance to it. I liked the book, but didn't love it. I liked the integration of Mexican culture, the glossary of Spanish words at the back, and the silly illustrations, but I didn't feel as if I necessarily gained much out of reading the book. However, I could see how children might find the story silly and how it could even be helpful in teaching them how to predict future events or infer information from page to page. I almost felt a little as if because my inference skills and prediction skills are at an adult level that I couldn't appreciate this book as much as a child because I found it relatively pointless. I knew, the entire book, that there were mice in the house. I knew that they were the ones stealing the spoon and eating the candy and stealing the traps. Honestly, it frustrated me that it took her Rosa María so long to determine this on her own! I think that Pam Muñoz Ryan's style of writing is much more effective in a historical fiction setting, because it doesn't limit her to a specific amount of pages in which she has to cram all of her information.
Despite not being a big fan of this book, I don't think it would be a bad thing to have in a classroom library. The illustrations are sweet, the writing is solid, and there is cultural authenticity, particularly enhanced by the glossary at the end of the book. I just have to come realize that not all books are my cup of tea and that simply because I don't like a book doesn't mean I should keep it from my children in the classroom.

I enjoyed seeing these lesson application of the book which made me more open to integrating it into an actual lesson (see those here).