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Find curriculum activities for The Rainbow Tulip. If you have an activity or activities to share, please email these along with your name and school or library name.  Here are Pat's sister, Stella, and her mother, the real "rainbow tulip," at eighty-four.
“Our opinion about Estelita is that she is a thinker. We would want to be Estelita's friend so that we could show her that everyone's different and it is okay to be who you are.”
Character sketch by the Third Graders of Hoffer Elementary School, Banning, CA, March 2010. |
 The Rainbow Tulip El tulipán arco iris Stella knows her Mexican heritage makes her different from the other kids at school. No one else speaks Spanish at home or has an accent. Stella loves her family, but she doesn’t always like being different. Now her class is going to dance around the Maypole at the school’s may parade, and Stella wants her tulip costume to be special. Even if she won’t look like the other girls, sometimes being different can be exciting. This touching story that celebrates diversity is based on Pat’s mother’s childhood and is brought to life by Elizabeth Sayle’s evocative paintings. A note from Pat: Highlighted Reviews “Set in El Paso, Texas, this moving family memoir focuses on Mora’s mother as a child who participated in her own way in the May parade...With warmth and directness, Mora celebrates diversity.”—Kirkus Reviews Read more reviews
In April, 2010, at the first Día celebration at the Rosenberg Library in Galveston, TX, Pat had the pleasure of watching these girls from Oppe Elementary School in Galveston do a dance to Mexican music. The girls were dressed as tulips, and the girl in the center was the rainbow tulip. Rather than doing a Maypole dance as in the book, the girls did a Mexican dance that combined going around in a circle and a " London Bridge" element. The tune was one Pat's aunt, Ignacia Delgado, used to sing to Pat and her siblings. 
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Pat Mora
Writer, Poet, Reader
