Allen Young

Enjoyable book about ecology, tying everything (multiple types of insects, reptiles, monkeys, plants, fungi) together to chocolate. My daughter also enjoyed the punning asides of the two "bookworms" at the bottom of the page.

One point: I noticed that the ants were drawn with four body segments -- specifically, two thoraxes. I pointed this out to my partner (a developmental biologist) who then explained to our 6yo that these were not normal ants; that they have a homeotic mutation. Yet show more another useful lesson from this book (albeit an unintentional one). show less

No monkeys No chocolate is a delightful informational book about all the things that go into making chocolate and how without the rain forest we wouldn’t have any chocolate. I thought this was a very cute book and I enjoyed it! The reason I enjoyed it so much was because of the added detail in the book. The little added detail I liked most was the “bookworms”. At the bottom right corner of each page there were two bookworms who discussed what was happening in the book. They provided show more funny insight into what was happening and added humor because they kept making jokes. For example when talking about cocoa pods the one said to the other one “Is a cocoa pod like an iPod?” I feel like these little characters helped add to the story. I also feel that they are something that would interest a child. They also really helped the reader to understand the information in the book better. For example the one bookworm said, “So that’s how cocoa flowers get the pollen they need to make seeds.” This offered extra information that wasn’t on the page and helped the reader, mostly likely a child, to understand the text better. This helped to achieve it’s overall purpose which was to inform. I also liked how the author at the back added extra information on cocoa beans and rainforests. This insert in the back helped the reader to understand the main message better which was that we need to preserve rainforests. Another thing that I liked that helped drive the message as well was the author included a “what you can do to help” at the back of the book. I liked this because it helped to get the reader involved and make a change. The final thing I enjoyed as the illustrations. The illustrations were so big and expanded across the whole page; they were also very detailed almost as if they were an photograph. Overall I enjoyed this book very much not only for the message it had but also for the added details and information the author provided. I feel this made this book that much more special. show less

Enjoyable book about ecology, tying everything (multiple types of insects, reptiles, monkeys, plants, fungi) together to chocolate. My daughter also enjoyed the punning asides of the two "bookworms" at the bottom of the page.

One point: I noticed that the ants were drawn with four body segments -- specifically, two thoraxes. I pointed this out to my partner (a developmental biologist) who then explained to our 6yo that these were not normal ants; that they have a homeotic mutation. Yet show more another useful lesson from this book (albeit an unintentional one). show less

This is a great book that illustrates the way things in nature are connected and depend on each other. The book starts out with yummy chocolate. But you can't have chocolate without....cocoa beans, without... cocoa pods, without...midges, and it goes on like this until it gets to monkeys. Monkeys eat the goo inside the cocoa pods and help spread the seeds around for more trees to grow. Pods do not fall on their own, so the trees need animals to help spread their seeds around. At the end of show more the book, the author tells us that cocoa growers generally grow cocoa trees in tree farms with our other trees to cover up some of the harsh sun. These trees only produce pods from about 5% of the cocoa flowers. But when the cocoa trees grow in thinned out rain forests with shade, midges, lizards and coffin-fly maggots they grow more pods.
The book also gets into how flowers pollinate, leaves use the sun to create food, roots soak up water and nutrients from the soil.
I think this book is important because we humans often times do not understand how nature depends on nature to survive. If we understood this better, we might recognize the things we are doingt that destroy a single component in an ecosystem harm the entire planet and in turn, us. show less