Love Like Chocolate

Yracy Banghart

Alina Chau

Little, Brown, 2024

40pp., hbk., RRP $A34.99

9780316408516 

As a family welcomes an adopted little girl to their home, her brother takes it upon himself to teach his new sister their traditions. For good days and bad, for birthdays, holidays, and everything in between, their family always celebrates with chocolate. They make super chewy chocolate chip cookies in the spring, very-berry chocolate-cherry mousse in the summer, chocolate banana pancakes in the fall, and warm chocolate sauce in the winter. But the boy soon realizes that his sister might have favourite treats of her own, and that if they work together, they can create new traditions and memories together.

The author’s note at the back says that this book was, in part, inspired by her family’s experiences in welcoming a child from Thailand into their family, and so this is a story that will allow adoptees to see themselves in a story, but I believe its broader appeal will be because of the subject matter because one of the truisms of this world is that chocolate makes everything better.

And just as the children share and make recipes, it provides an opportunity to be the centrepiece of a display that encourages children from throughout the school to share their special chocolate recipes (focusing on procedural texts), perhaps even sparking new friendships, as well as investigating all other things chocolate. Often the most unexpected storybooks can lead to all sorts of discoveries and this has the potential to do that.