This beautifully illustrated story connects past and present as a girl bakes a chocolate cake with her father and learns about her grandfather harvesting cacao beans in West Africa. Chocolate is the perfect treat, everywhere! As a little girl and her father bake her birthday cake together, Daddy tells the story of her Grandpa Cacao, a farmer from the Ivory Coast in West Africa. In a land where elephants roam and the air is hot and damp, Grandpa Cacao worked in his village to harvest cacao, the most important ingredient in chocolate. "Chocolate is a gift to you from Grandpa Cacao," Daddy says. "We can only enjoy chocolate treats thanks to farmers like him." Once the cake is baked, it's ready to eat, but this isn't her only birthday present. There's a special surprise waiting at the front door . . .

Originally, Grandpa's Book was written as an attempt to leave a legacy for his children and grandchildren. The stories were just to good to keep inside the family unit and the book(s) were soon passed around to friends. Shortly, strangers were calling for copies, many demanding that the book be published, so that they too might own a copy. Comments from some delighted readers "I couldn't put the book down. My wife couldn't understand why I wouldn't come to bed. She read the book and said that she absolutely understands why. She remarked that she laughed at the punch lines and eagerly anticipated the next scrape that Grandpa Ray might get into." "Grandpa Ray is a master storyteller!" "Pacing and cadence are effectively employed to make readers laugh at the punch lines." "Well-written, fun and easy-to-read, Grandp's memoir brims with love, humor and warmth. He masterfully employs the techniques of anecdotes to create an invaluable legacy for his children." "Grandpa Ray fill his personal memoir with amusing, instructive, and loving anecdotes as a legacy for his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren."

This book was written for my Grandchildren, but may be of general interest. It describes the experiences of a child refugee and his education and subsequent integration in society as a husband and father with a career.

This book is written for five beloved grandchildren in the hope they will gain insight into and inspiration from a life well-lived. The collected stories, testimonies of a faith in God that has offered love and depth to both the writer and the people he writes about, and the love affair that has existed between the author and his bride of over a half-century, make for a compelling story for anyone’s young adult children or grandchildren. The author shares this work with the hope some might find it entertaining, while others might discover insight into Faith and Grace. The stories shared are of ordinary people who have done extraordinary things in their lives. Perhaps there may be a lesson and a blessing within these pages for readers of all ages.

A brilliant debut from a rising talent praised by Salman Rushdie, among others. A grandson tries to buy the corpse of Lenin on eBay for his Communist grandfather. A failed wunderkind steals a golden cross from an orthodox church. A boy meets his cousin (the love of his life) once every five years in the waters of the river that divides their village into East and West. These are some of the strange, unexpectedly moving events in talented newcomer Miroslav Penkov's vision of his home country, Bulgaria, and they are the stories that make up his extraordinary debut collection. In East of the West Penkov writes with great empathy about 800 years of tumult in troubled Eastern Europe; his characters mourn the way things were and long for things that will never be. But even as the characters wrestle with the weight of history, the debt to family, and the pangs of exile, the stories themselves are light and deft, animated by Penkov's unmatched eye for the absurd. In 2008, Salman Rushdie chose Penkov's story "Buying Lenin" (which appears in this collection) for that year's Best American Short Stories, citing its heart and humour. East of the West reveals the full realization of the brilliant potential that Rushdie recognized.