A girl in Santo Domingo tells how cocoa is harvested during the late 1800s while at the same time her counterpart in Maine tells about the harvesting of 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.
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