The Hershey's Milk Chocolate Fractions Book

The Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Fractions Book

Written by Jerry Pallotta and illustrated by Rob Bolster

Appropriate for grades 3+

            If you’re the type of person who enjoys mathematics, especially in real life situations this book will certainly appeal to you!  Find out through a variety of ways how fractions work and when they are present in day-to-day life.

            Jerry Pallotta uses his book The Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Fractions Book to introduce a variety of mathematical concepts to students and readers in a fun and engaging way.  Jerry begins the book with an illustration of a wrapped Hershey’s candy bar and explains that this is one or 1/1 chocolate bar, as the book progresses he demonstrates that the candy bar can be broken up into 12 equal pieces, 12/12 or twelve-twelfths.  Jerry shows students that no matter how you arrange the pieces you still have the same amount of chocolate and then moves on to the concept of what happens when you take some pieces away.  Jerry shows that if you take 1/12 away from 12/12 you’re left with 11/12 both through illustrations and a subtraction number sentence.  Next the book discusses the idea of equivalent fractions showing that one half of the candy bar is also made up of 6/12, among other examples.  Throughout the book Jerry takes “breaks” where he introduces the ideas that the book discusses through examples other than chocolate bars.  During these breaks we also learn about the history of Hershey’s chocolate!  The book tells us that the Hershey’s factory is located in farmland areas because of the high need for milk.  We also learn that the three main ingredients in Hershey’s chocolate are cocoa, milk and sugar.  The last mathematical concept that the book introduces is the idea of how to put a fraction into its lowest terms, which Jerry illustrates with pictures, numbers and division number sentences.

            The illustrator of this book, Rob Bolster, uses whimsical characters that are drawn and colored in conjunction with actual photos of a Hershey’s chocolate bar.  The characters in this book are all construction-type worker who work together to break the chocolate up with saws and tools while also trying to keep the page clean.  Several workers are seen throughout the pages painting boarders on the edges and filling in the number sentences and fractions.  A few times they accidentally spill paint and track footprints throughout the pages!  The illustrations help to add some comedy to the book, while also helping the kids visualize how the candy bar is broken up into each fraction.

            This book can be categorized under the nonfiction genre, specifically an informational text.  The book is informational because it gives specific factual information about a topic throughout the book.  It is organized in a way that allows readers to progress through the information in away that lets them build on prior knowledge, both established before reading and during the beginning of the book.   Jerry Pallotta talks about fractions, beginning with easy to understand information; such as 12 pieces out of 12 is one whole candy bar and progresses throughout the book working with equivalent fractions and how to reduce fractions.  In order to keep the book from getting to stale the author does a good job of breaking up the book, which is almost entirely based on mathematics, by adding some information about the Hershey factory and company itself that allows readers to become even more engaged in the book.  Students learn about the different ingredients found in candy bars and where they can be found. Lastly, the illustrations allow students to visualize the information that is presented in the text.  Not only are the students given a real life visual that they are most likely familiar with that is supported with words and numbers.

            I would use this book in my classroom to introduce the concept of fractions and demonstrate to students how they work most likely at the beginning of a unit.  I would read the story aloud to the students and potentially give them their own candy bars or manipulatives to use while we read the story.  As an extension I would have the students look for other real life examples of fractions and present them to their classmates.  Also, I could connect this story to a reading book Chocolate Fever by Robert Kimmel Smith if I wanted to use a thematic unit.

            Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks used:

Grade 3 Math

Number and Operations—Fractions21            3.NF

Develop understanding of fractions as numbers.

1.            Understand a fraction 1/b as the quantity formed by 1 part when a whole is partitioned into b equal parts; understand a fraction a/b as the quantity formed by a parts of size 1/b.

3.            Explain equivalence of fractions in special cases, and compare fractions by reasoning about their size.

a.            Understand two fractions as equivalent (equal) if they are the same size, or the same point on a number line.

b.            Recognize and generate simple equivalent fractions, e.g., 1/2 = 2/4, 4/6 = 2/3. Explain why the fractions are equivalent, e.g., by using a visual fraction model.

c.            Express whole numbers as fractions, and recognize fractions that are equivalent to whole numbers. Examples: Express 3 in the form 3 = 3/1; recognize that 6/1 = 6; locate 4/4 and 1 at the same point of a number line diagram.

d.            Compare two fractions with the same numerator or the same denominator by reasoning about their size. Recognize that comparisons are valid only when the two fractions refer to the same whole. Record the results of comparisons with the symbols >, =, or <, and justify the conclusions, e.g., by using a visual fraction model.

Grade 3 English Language Arts

RL 4. Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language.