No monkeys, no chocolate

Most kids love chocolate, but few of them know that its main ingredient, the cocoa bean, comes from a tree that grows in tropical rain forests. Dual-layer text describes the life cycle of the tree, emphasizing its botanical structures and highlighting the interdependence of the plant and animals such as the pollen-sucking midge, brain-eating coffin fly, and aphid-munching anole lizard. Two wise-cracking bookworms offer meta-textual commentary and humor in this fascinating depiction of a microhabitat's survival.