Homeschool Friday - The Candymakers

Homeschool Friday is a feature here at Somewhere Only We Know that showcases books my family reads during homeschool and provides a mini-review/review for each.

The Candymakers (The Candymakers, # 1)

By: Wendy Mass

Publication: October 5, 2010 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

453 pages

Genre: Children's, Middle Grade, Mystery, Fantasy, Realistic Fiction

Source: Borrowed from the e-library

( Goodreads | Amazon )

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Goodreads description--Four children have been chosen to compete in a national competition to find the tastiest confection in the country. Who will invent a candy more delicious than the Oozing Crunchorama or the Neon Lightning Chew?

Logan, the Candymaker's son, who can detect the color of chocolate by touch alone?

Miles, the boy who is allergic to merry-go-rounds and the color pink?

Daisy, the cheerful girl who can lift a fifty-pound lump of taffy like it's a feather?

Or Philip, the suit-and-tie wearing boy who's always scribbling in a secret notebook?

This sweet, charming, and cleverly crafted story, told from each contestant's perspective, is filled with mystery, friendship, and juicy revelations.

The Candymakers starts off pretty similarly to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Four kids have been selected to participate in this candy-making competition. The competition will have many more than 4 contestants, but these four are going to visit the Life Is Sweet candy factory to meet the candymaker and work with the staff to create a new candy creation/recipe. Other contestants from all over the country will work with other candy factories, and then they will all come together for a national candy-making competition. Before I move on, I wanted to note that how the contestants were chosen wasn't specified. And I bring this up because it bugged me not to know. Three out of the four contestants that this story is about had zero prior experience working with candy. Their knowledge was basically starting from scratch.

Each contestant had various reasons why they wanted to participate in the contest and why they wanted to win. But it drove me a little crazy wondering how they were each chosen. When you look at competitions today, especially like the ones on Food Network, the contestants already have prior experience. They aren't totally inexperienced. 

As the description says, we have four contestants, and each contestant has a part of the book where we follow them from day one of the competition up until a central point in a "who done it" kind of method. Then we move into the perspective most needed to advance the storyline. It's hard to discuss because the book is written in a bit of a mystery so I don't want to spoil anything. All of the characters are connected in some way or other which is part of the mystery as well.

The contestants being chosen are kind of like the kids with the golden ticket with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Once they arrive at the factory for the first day of the competition, the characters are given a tour of the factory where they see different rooms needed for the candy-making process. This is also similar to the Wonka Factory. Things aren't quite so magical as Wonka, but still. The candy all has weird names as well.

I read this aloud to my two older kids and they both really enjoyed it. My daughter always looked forward to me reading it. My son wouldn't always look forward to it, but he does a great job of seeing foreshadowing, so he would often spot clues that pointed to answering various mysteries in the book. 

I really underestimated the amount of time it would take me to read this to my kids. At this point, I was only reading to them every other day at bedtime, but during times when the kids had extracurricular activities we often had to skip reading in favor of hurrying off to bed since we'd gotten home late. I started reading this in July 2024 and didn't finish it until December. I will try not to pick books this long to read aloud until I can read them every day or read bigger chunks at one time.

The Candymakers was an enjoyable family read-aloud. It was reminiscent of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which we've also read aloud together so the kids enjoyed seeing the similarities and differences. The mysteries were fun for the kids to try to figure out. I highly recommend this for young kids. (Mine were 7 and 9 when we finished reading this if that gives you an idea of a target audience.) The Candymakers gets 4 Stars. Have you read The Candymakers? What did you think? Let me know!