DK Readers: The Story of Chocolate (DK Readers Level 3)

This has the complete and very interesting story/history of chocolate in an easy to understand format. Perfect for grade schoolers on up who want to know more about chocolate's origins and history.

I bought the book for my 11 year old granddaughter who is interested in Chocolate to decorate and eat. The book was easy for her to read. She loved it.

The first thing C.J. Polin informs us in telling "The Story of Chocolate" is that the average person eats 11 pounds of chocolate a year. That would be the equivalent of 100 chocolate bars a year, or one every 3.65 days (impressive how I worked the math for that out in my head, huh?). I think I am behind at this point in the year, so I decided to make a yellow cake with chocolate frosting last night for the Super Bowl, but that meant I had to share with others and I did not make up as much ground as I was hoping. I just hope white chocolate counts towards the total. The amazing thing is that chocolate is made from seeds called cocoa beans that are inside pods that grow on cacao trees in the rain forest. Not even Jack from the fairy tale had magic beans like these. No wonder the Swedish scientist Linnaeus gave the cocao tree the scientific name "Theobroma cacao," which means "food of the god." Obviously the man liked his chocolate. "The Story of Chocolate" begins with the history of the cocoa bean, which goes back to the ancient Olmec people of Mesoamerica and the Mayans and Aztecs that followed them. When these "almonds" were discovered by Christopher Columbus' son Ferdinand no one knew this was the start of a beautiful friendship and while Hernando Cortes was getting ready to conquer the Aztec nation his men also added sugar to the bitter tasting chocolate drink they were served to sweeten it up (not that this balances the cosmic scales of justice). It is not surprising that for a century the Spanish kept the secret of the cocoa bean to themselves, but eventually drinking chocolate at fashionable cafes became the rage in Europe. Once the first American chocolate factory opened in Massachusetts in 1765, Polin turns to how chocolate became a treat for the masses. Sure, James Watt made a steam engine that could power a locomotive, but it was powering Coenraad van Houten's chocolate press that really made the world a better place to live. Solid chocolate was not invented until 1840 in England and then in 1875 the Swiss came up with milk chocolate. Polin details each of the improvements that have resulted in the aspects of chocolate that we take for granted today. The book ends by looking at what it means to make chocolate today and all the kinds of chocolate that exist today, and if you did not know that you should not be reading this book without chocolate on hand, it will be painfully clear to you at this point (I planned ahead and you should too). The book is filled with contemporary and historical illustrations of chocolate and the back has a Glossary of key terms. Young readers will certainly learn the basics of the history of chocolate and if they are doing this for class then eating chocolate would constitute homework, right? This is a level 3 Reading alone DK Reader (the level between beginning to read alone and being a proficient reader), which means more complex sentence structure, information boxes and alphabetical glos

A lot of great background in the history of chocolate. It was a gift and the only disappointment was that the pages were not lickable.