Smart about Chocolate: Smart about History

Written in a nonlinear, post-modern style, the book, CHOCOLATE; A SWEET HISTORY, is both interesting and fun. The author's choice to impart a wealth of information in the style of a young boy's school report makes the book entertaining. The amount of information contained within the pages is impressive. It includes a chronological history of chocolate, present-day manufacturing of a Hershey's bar, the benefits of eating chocolate and recipes for chocolate treats. Although the book is written in a simplistic style, the information in the book is comprehensive and advanced (including the name of the chemical, phenylethylamine, which causes the happy feeling people experience when eating chocolate). The pictures are interesting, colorful and fun with most being drawn in a cartoon style with balloons to provide the text. Other pictures seem as though they were taken during a family trip to Hershey, Pennsylvania. Children from elementary school through high school will find this book informative and entertaining, however it is truly geared toward elementary students.

SMART ABOUT CHOCOLATE: A SWEET HISTORY is one of the SMART ABOUT series of children's books. These books are written and designed to inform students about a wide variety of topics that they probably have some interest in, but don't know much about. The books are written in the form of an essay that a "student" writes for a school report. CHOCOLATE: A SWEET HISTORY is filled with all kinds of photographs and illustrations that complement the information it contains. The book gives a history of chocolate and how it was first used, how it has changed moving from one continent to the next, and how it is produced. The book is only 30 pages long but is very informative. For instance, I learned from reading this book that the scientific name fro the cacao tree is theobroma cacao which literally means "food of the goods". I also learned that most of the worlds cacao beans are imported from Africa and that the Aztecs found cacao beans so valuable that they eventually started using them as money. The book is very colorful and has plenty of illustrations to catch even the most disengaged of young readers attention. Towards the end of the book a recipe for making chocolate yum-yums appears. The final page of the book is a sort of bibliography that lists a few other titles that student might be interesting in reading if they like chocolate. Overal, a tasty bit of reading.