The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling

Title: The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling

Genre: fantasy

Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for young readers a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Croup, Inc.

Pages: 87

Awards: NA

Summary: John Midas loved chocolate more than anything. His parents are very worried about him because he spends all his money on chocolate and that seems to be all he thinks about. One day as John is going down the street, he finds a shiny coin that just happens to have his intials J.M. on it. John sees a new candy store and goes inside. When the store owner offers John chocoate for his special coin he accepts it.

When John eats the piece of chocolate from the box he discovers later that everything he touches becomes chocolate. At first John is thrilled at his new gift, but it isn't long before he realizes that this new gift isn't as great as he thought. When his mom turns into chocolate that John rushes back to the store for help. The store owner helps John to realize that his greed with chocolate is what is causing everything to turn to chocolate.


Personal Rating: *****Great! Very funny and entertaining!


Reading level: 3.o
Interest level: ages 9 - 12


Reading/writing ideas: I started the lesson with a predicting activity. The student predicted the genre, narrative story elements, etc. After completing the lesson we reviewed our predictions and made changes if necessary. I used a vocabular activity and quiz for every two chapters. This allowed me to measure comprehension as we read the story. The student completed various other activities as we explored the book.
Science: We learned about the history of chocolate. I used this website as part of this unit. http://www.mce.k12tn.net/chocolate/history/name.htm
this website has various activites concerning chocolate that will allow you to incorporate math(graphing your favorite choclate bar), making a choclate dessert, compare similar books, mini lesson on describing a Hershey Kiss, etc.

Problem/Difficulities: The book is a little difficult to comprehend for lower level readers