Granum Kids is honoured to announce its inaugural title, Pedro’s Delivery, written by Mark A. Staples and illustrated by Dennis Packard, scheduled for release in Summer 2026.

Readers travel with Pedro from the shores of his homeland in the Philippines to West Africa, where bags of harvested cocoa beans are loaded onto his cargo ship. They read about the challenges of his voyage to the east coast of the United States, where chocolatiers will process Pedro’s delivery into candy children enjoy. Through Pedro’s eyes, early readers will explore:

• The global food ecosystem: The vast, interconnected efforts required to bring a simple chocolate bar to a shelf.
• The seafaring life: An authentic look at the grit and wonder of maritime travel.
• Radical empathy: A humanizing perspective on the international cooperation that sustains our modern world.

Pedro’s Delivery tells a seafarer’s story based on the author’s ten-year experience visiting cargo ship crews in the Port of Philadelphia, along with an earlier photojournalistic trip to the Philippines.

“Mark A. Staples’s story is exactly the kind of seed we wish to plant,” Wagner-Stafford adds. “It teaches early readers a lesson about belonging and how we define community, showing children that our world is not made of categories, but of people. It also illuminates the global nature of both food production and trade.”

Learn more about Granum Kids here