00000864

It is insanely cute, and has a really fun, inviting layout. It is posed as a project that a little girl does for school, where the teacher asks the students to write about a subject of their choosing that happened in the past. She asks them to explain what made them pick their topic, and what they learned that may have surprised them. The little girl decides to write all about chocolate, and the book is supposed to be what her report looked like. It goes through the history of chocolate including its worth to ancient Aztecs, how and where it is made, types of chocolate, and the history of the Hershey company. It has so much historical and scientific value, even though it is presented in a very fun and simple format. It has lots of great pictures and illustrations, and funny little quips, that keep the reader interested through the entire book.
I felt like the science concepts I would use this book for are the science of taste and measurement. In the book she talks about real chocolate being bitter, so we could talk about the five types of taste: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami. I think that you could use this book for any grade, depending on the depth in which you want to go about the tastes. In a younger classroom, we would have an item of each type of taste for the kids to experience. The concept of umami is probably too advanced for a young child, so you could just kind of grace over it. However in an older class, fifth grade for instance, you could also go into a grade-appropriate lesson on the areas of the tongue and how different areas interpret different tastes. I also think that the book could be a great accompaniment to a cooking activity, which involves all sorts of measurements. This cooking activity could be altered for younger or older grades to be more difficult or easy. Perhaps in a fifth or sixth grade classroom, you could make a recipe into a math lesson as well and have them add up problems to find out how much of each ingredient they’ll need to add. They’ll know if it’s right or not by how the cake comes out! Overall I absolutely love this book, it’s one that I own, and I think it would be great for use in a classroom due to its multiple uses and that kids would love it. ( )

A cute look at the history of chocolate. ( )

641.6