Bella's Chocolate Surprise (Bella Balistica) - Softcover

Guillain, Adam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1840595051 ISBN 13: 9781840595055

Publisher: Milet Publishing, 2008

Synopsis

Lessons about fair trade are at the center of this adventure that begins on Bella's birthday. Her mother has baked a chocolate cake and, delicious though it is, Bella begins to wonder where chocolate comes from. With the help of her friend the Quetzal bird, Bella harnesses the powers of her mystical pendant and flies to Ghana in West Africa, where she befriends a group of children working in the cacao fields. She soon learns that they are part of a collective that guarantees a fair income to workers and pays for the children to go to school. Delighting in her new cross-cultural friendships, Bella starts to plan how to get people from home involved in supporting fair-trade practices around the world.

About this title

About the Author:

Adam Guillain is the author of the Bella Balistica series and an educational consultant. He is a former writer-in-residence at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre. Elke Steiner is a comic book artist and the illustrator of Bella's Brazilian Football.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 2–4—Bella, introduced in Bella Balistica and the African Safari (Milet, 2007), is once again united with her animal twin, the Quetzal bird, through the magic in a pendant once owned by her Guatemalan birth mother. The bird takes her to Ghana, where she helps some children with the cacao harvest and learns how they prepare the seeds used to make chocolate. While the work is difficult, the children's family receives Fair Trade money that pays living and school expenses. When Bella returns to London to enjoy her birthday celebration, complete with chocolate cake, she resolves to send chocolate to the Ghanaian children, who have never experienced its taste. Boldly outlined, the pictures depict Ghanaians, most in Western clothing, hard at work cheerfully harvesting fancifully colored cacao pods. Thatched huts; two women, one carrying a basket on her head and the other a baby on her back; and lush vegetation give readers a sense of life in a remote West African village. Although this story, sprinkled with British expressions, is a rather heavy-handed endorsement for Fair Trade products, it does offer some facts about chocolate and cacao harvesting.—Marianne Saccardi, formerly at Norwalk Community College, CT
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Milet Publishing
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1840595051
• ISBN 13: 9781840595055
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Steiner Elke