Cocoa Ice

On the island of Santo Domingo, the sun bakes the earth until it is hot and steamy like a roasted plantain. In Maine, cold can have so hard a grip that rivers freeze thick and clear, and ice is a crop that families depend upon for their livelihoods. Back in distant days of high-rigged schooners, what could children from two such very different places ever have in common? The deliciously satisfying answer, presented here with cut-paper pictures of a tropical island of always-summer and a New England village of very long winters, is given in the voices of two girls – linked together by a sailor, a gift for imagining life in faraway places, and a taste for iced chocolate.