I received a copy of this book as part of the Librarything Early Reviewer program.

“The Not-So-Sweet History of Caribbean Sugar” is a middle-grade reader describing the relationship between sugar production and slavery in the Caribbean.

It gives a good description of the production methods and the personal costs to slaves of the process. It doesn’t quite convey the significance of sugar to the purchasing economies.

I road-tested this book on a pair of well-read 10-year-olds. They found it informative but not greatly engaging.

This is an excellent book for older children (8-12 range). It is neither "dumbed down" nor too graphic and is very educational. I have recently read a history of this time period for adults, and I still learned something. ( )

I loved the title of this ebook. I was surprised by its brevity, and the relatively little information it contained. For kids who know nothing at all about the West Indies, it has some value and history to impart. But I did not find the writing as engaging as I expected to. The descriptive language just did not paint pictures for me. Perhaps illustrations would help? There are children's fiction books (such as the Dear America series) that make history come alive, and although I realize that this was not supposed to be a narrative, I would have enjoyed it more had it employed a little more of a backdrop. Why was the Caribbean so attractive to the Europeans in the first place? There is only the briefest mention of how the weather is there. A reminder that this was well before the days of air-conditioning might not go amiss! Today's kids may not understand exactly what hard labor in that climate would have been like. All in all-- not a bad book, but it needs some tweaking to be as effective a learning tool as it has the potential to be. ( )

This short ebook offers an excellent balance on the history and process of sugar cane cultivation and production and the politics of the slave trade. The author weaves these two themes very well and I think students would come away with a good bit of information and perspective about both ideas.

I was a little puzzled by the glossary of "New Words" at the end, and the definitions of several. If students need definitions of some of these words, I am concerned that the level of the writing may be too sophisticated for the reader. But I am not an educator, so perhaps my concern reflects my own ignorance about effective teaching methods.

Thanks to the Library Thing Early Reviewers program for an opportunity to read and review this book. ( )

This book was an easy swift read on the Caribbean. It would have benefited from pictures but offered a good view of sugar farming in the Caribbean.

I'm not entirely clear which age group this was aimed at (note we don't all understand US grade references) so found it a bit simplistic although that might have been age-appropriate. ( )