The Story of Chocolate

Hard to judge a reading series by one book alone, but this title has all the right ingredients and even a recipe. Simple text is complemented by quirky cartoon-like artwork, while speech bubbles inject humour and help the story along. Usborne describes the books as ‘stories’ for newly independent readers, but this one belongs more comfortably on the non-fiction shelf, tracing the origin of chocolate from the South American rainforest to the sweetshop. Mayan kings and priests liked their cocoa cold and frothy, but the Spanish, who learned of cocoa from the Aztecs, preferred theirs hot and sweet. Later the Englishman Francis Fry turned cocoa butter into solid chocolate. Thereafter the story is punctuated with names like Nestlé, Lindt, Hershey, Cadbury and Mars. And from the list of registered trademarks on the final page one begins to suspect that this book owed its origins to a PR exercise by a chocolate manufacturer. Certainly the book sits oddly amongst such titles as Pirates, Wizards, Gnomes and Goblins, but for the sweet-toothed perhaps it could be neatly paired as follow-up reading to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.