Eating Enchiladas - Realistic Fiction

This book would be a wonderful way to introduce multicultural awareness in a classroom. It is a story of a young girl whose class is given an unusual school project - each student has to pick a country to teach the rest of the class about. She doesn't know what country to pick at first, but after a sleepover at a new friend's house she falls in love with the country Mexico. Her friend is from Mexico and teaches her(and the reader) all about Mexican culture and tradition, including a bit of conversational Spanish. My favorite part of the book is that at the end we get to hear about several students' projects. We learn about Nigeria, China, and Italy before finally seeing the main character and her newfound friend talk about Mexico for the class. This was a charming book that would be a good cultural primer for students in elementary school. It's also part of a series that students might find compelling enough to jumpstart their reading interests!  This would fit into my class as a starter chapter book, and if many students might be interested it would be great for a lit circle as well!