I really enjoyed this book for a few reasons. For one, I really enjoyed the author's voice. Bradby wrote with a lot of character and her writing was very enjoyable because her voice was very strong. For instance, the author wrote, "I'm from beans- green, lima, and pea-picked, strung, snapped and shelled into pans." In addition, the author also used African American vernacular dialect which also made the story more relatable. For instance, the author talked a lot about African American heritage and traditions and it was appropriate for her to use "informal dialect" in order to show how their family interacted and the importance of their heritage. Adding to that, the author also uses sentence fragments throughout the book. The author wrote, "Where families grew into a neighborhood as close as a knit sweater..." The sentence fragments worked well in this book and the writing was very effective. and intentional. The purpose of this book was to share African American heritage and family traditions and this book was very successful and I really enjoyed reading it. ( )

Momma, Where are you from?, is one of many great African american culture children's books written by Marie Bradby. The story revolves around a young girls question to her mother about the origins of their family, "where are you from". The mother responds by describing all the subtleties of where they were from and through these descriptions exposes the culture that formed her life. The central message behind this story is to embrace your culture and remember where you come from. ( )

Good for culture, really amazing illustration. ( )

This would be a good book to read to first or second graders. In the book, the mom recounts her life when she was younger to explain to her daughter where she came form. After reading this book, you can have your students do the same thing using the book as a model. Students can write about their lives and see how it has brought them to where they are now. You can also use this book to teach about the order of events. Students can list out the order of events in how the mom in the story grew up. They can then do this for their own life. They can list five major events in their life but make sure they are in order. This is also good to make students identify the speaker because the speaker changes a few times. They will have to figure out who is talking. You can also use this book to talk about the structure of the book and how it starts off very similar to how it ends and how it uses what was talked about during the book to build up the conclusion. First grade standard: 6. Second grade standard: 5. (This is one of your books)

This book shows how you may be different from other people especially different races. It is a good way to see what culture is like and how others may do things. ( )