36 pages • 1 hour read
Wendy MassThe Candymakers
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Logan
Logan is a complex character who experiences personal growth throughout the course of the candy contest. When Logan was five years old, he fell into a vat of boiling chocolate to retrieve a friend’s truck that had fallen in. He suffered severe burns on much of his body, but he never let the experience negatively affect him. Instead, he kept a positive attitude and didn’t want people to pity him, but he also never noticed that people were pitying him. By the end of the novel, he realizes that his parents canceled the factory tours and purposely kept him isolated to protect him from people that might stare at him. The judges want to select him as the winner of the candy contest because they feel sorry for him, not because his candy is the best. These epiphanies help him to see his past trauma in a different light; although he doesn’t feel affected by what happened, he realizes that other people are affected when they look at him. This realization gives him a space to talk about what happened, something he never did before.
Logan is best characterized as big-hearted and welcoming. As he meets the other contestants and discovers their individual quirks, he doesn’t judge them. Instead, he shows them kindness and genuinely desires to be their friend. While Philip doesn’t accept his friendship at first, Logan still attempts to show kindness, even as Philip resists it. Logan is always excited to share the joys of the factory with the other contestants. Even after everyone’s secrets are revealed, Logan’s loyalty to the other contestants remains. He continually sees the best in others, even when their actions don’t represent the best in themselves.
Before the candy competition, Logan lacks confidence. He has many desires in life, such as working in the Tropical Room or perhaps even becoming a candy maker, but he constantly feels inadequate to accomplish his goals. He can’t remember the conversions that are necessary to make candy, and his hands can’t grip well enough to climb the trees. These physical limitations make him doubt himself. However, by the end of the candy competition, he and the other contestants have developed into close friends. These friendships give him the confidence to believe he can accomplish anything he sets his mind to.
Miles
Miles is a character who experiences significant personal growth throughout the course of the candy competition. Before the contest, he was defined by overwhelming fear. He believed that he had witnessed a girl drowning, and ever since then, he imagined death in everyday scenarios. To escape these fears, he created an imagined safe space that he referred to as the afterlife. He believed that the drowned girl resided in the afterlife, and thinking about the place gave him comfort. However, after he realizes that Daisy is the girl whom he believed drowned, he feels instantly changed. He realizes the irrationality of his previous fears and feels confident with life moving forward.
Daisy
Daisy, like the other contestants, experiences significant personal change throughout the course of the candy contest. Daisy was raised as a spy. Throughout her many missions, she’s had to hide her identity to accomplish her assignments. However, during the candy contest, she lets pieces of her true self shine through. She appreciates that Logan and Miles seem to like her true self, and this makes her feel guilty that she can’t share the whole truth with them. Becoming friends with Logan and Miles makes her feel conflicted about her mission. For the first time, she questions whether her mission is morally just. She ultimately decides that the morality of her mission is important to her, and this prompts her to sabotage the mission in the hopes of saving Life Is Sweet. This also leads to the greater epiphany that she wants to be a normal kid who doesn’t need to continually hide herself. She wants to form real connections with people her own age.
Philip
Philip experiences significant personal growth throughout the course of the candy competition. Before he enters the competition, he believes that he must follow in his father’s footsteps to earn his approval. He views life as one big game to be won, and he enters the candy competition with the sole purpose of enacting vengeance on Logan. However, these ruthless and self-centered feelings are a merely a façade that he wears to make his father and older brother happy. Deep down, he is drawn to music and the violin. He is afraid of this secret desire because it makes him feel out of control. It’s only after he learns the truth about his father and mother that he realizes he has a choice in life. The friendships he makes with the other contestants gives him the courage to embrace his love of music and the violin, and it also helps him overcome the selfishness that had been instilled in him by his father and older brother.
The Candymaker
The Candymaker is Logan’s father and the owner of Life Is Sweet. He is friendly and trusting of everyone he meets, and he has instilled these values in Logan. Logan wants to grow up to make his father proud, which is why he feels immense pressure to make an award-winning candy during the contest. However, by the end of the competition, the Candymaker makes it clear that candy making isn’t a solitary act. He reveals that the secret ingredient to any successful candy is the heart and soul that a candymaker pours into his craft.
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By Wendy Mass
