Mercedes and The Chocolate Pilot

Week 2 Historical Fiction Bonus Book:
Mercedes and The Chocolate Pilot
Written By: Margot Theis Raven
Illustrated by: Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen
Published: 2002

Everybody on the entire planet should read this book and I have felt this way since I first read it 13 years ago. As a kid you could not get me to touch anything that could have possibly happened in real life. Well, unless it was a Bluebonnet Book. Each year, I was bound and determined to read every single one of the books on the list before anybody else in the school. At the age of 8, I really did not care for picture books. I thought they were beneath me and my "superior reading ability" as I used to say. That was, until this book stopped me dead in my tracks. I was cranking through the picture books on the 2002-2003 Bluebonnet book list in the school library one day while my mom was in a PTA meeting. I was determined to finish all of them that day and Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot was the last one in my stack. As cheesy as this sounds, it was pretty much love at first sight. Mrs. Cole the librarian called me over to help her re-shelf the returned books and I walked over to her wide-eyed with the bright blue book clutched tightly to my chest. She put the brakes on the rolling book cart and held her hand out for the book as she dropped back into her rolling computer chair to check it out for me. That was the only time that book left my hot little hands until I was forced to turn it in two weeks later so somebody else could check it out. 

I honestly cannot tell you what caused me to love this book so deeply. I have been pondering it for years and cannot seem to put my finger on it. This book tells the story of a young girl named Mercedes who is living in West Berlin during the humanitarian rescue mission referred to as The Berlin Airlift. Times were hard for Germany in 1947. All of the railroads, roads, and canal routes had been blockaded, leaving the citizens of West Berlin trapped with minimal resources. This particular book focuses on one American pilot, Lt. Gail S. Halvorsen, who was better known as The Chocolate Pilot. In order to bring joy to the children of West Berlin, he would drop little white parachutes from his airplane stocked with candy and sweets. Little Mercedes and her mother were struggling to make ends meet because Father had not returned from fighting in the war and their chickens were too afraid of the airplanes to lay eggs to be sold. So naturally, Mercedes's mother was quite upset and nervous about their well being. 

Sweet Mercedes just knew that if she could get her hands on one of the candy bars that The Chocolate Pilot dropped from the sky, it would help her mother feel better. So she begged endlessly for her mother to bring her to the airfield where the candy drops happened. Unfortunately, little Mercedes had happiness ripped from her grasp by a boy much larger than she was. That did not stop her. She took it upon herself to write to Lt. Halvorsen and ask for him to drop some candy at their house (the bombed out one on the corner with the white chickens). 

The end of this book is so special and sweet, that it needs to be experience rather than explained. This book will be used in my classroom no matter what. Just like Finding Winnie, this is one of those books that you create a lesson around. I give Mercedes and The Chocolate Pilot all of the stars in the galaxy, and then some.