The Lemonade War

I recently read the book The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies which is a realistic fiction book recommended for children ages 8-12. This book was given to me to read in order to prepare for an event at my current field placement school. To be honest, I figured I would read this book just because I had to complete it; however, to my surprise, I ended up really loving this book and enjoying the storyline. So much so, I have the desire to continue reading the series! 

To give a little background about this book, I will provide just a short overview of the book to help demonstrate some of my favorite aspects of this book. The main characters are Evan and Jessie Treski who are brother and sister. They are at the end of their summer break, and Evan is frustrated with Jessie because she is skipping third grade and moving into the fourth grade with him at the beginning of the new school year. Evan secretly feels embarrassed because he thinks that Jessie is so much smarter than him and that the other students will tease him that his younger sister is more intelligent. This frustration causes some unnecessary fights until there is a full-blown lemonade war between the siblings. They each have friends help them sell lemonade, and whoever makes the most money at the end of the summer wins the war! I won't include the ending, so I encourage you to read it for yourself to find out who wins the lemonade war and what happens with all of the money they make!

One of my favorite parts about this book is that Davies includes a vocabulary word and its' definition at the beginning of each chapter. This gives the reader a clue as to what might happen in the chapter. For a lesson idea, if a class were to read this together, each student could make a journal entry with a prediction of what might happen in each chapter based off of the vocabulary word listed at the beginning.

Another one of my favorite parts of this book is that it lists valuable information and tips about how to have a successful business. Jessie pulls these tips from her mother's book "Ten Bright Ideas to Light Up Your Sales". These are dispersed throughout the book when the particular information is needed most to increase sales during the lemonade war. This could be a fun project idea for students to demonstrate what they learned from the book. They could each come up with an easy item to sell, even if it is just erasers, pencils, or paper. They could be put into teams to see who uses their new-found tips to make their items most appealing to buyers.

Overall, I feel that this book teaches students that no matter what, they are each special and smart in their own individual way. It is okay for one student to be good at math but not as strong in reading as another student. This does not mean that one student is smarter than the other, but that their strengths are in different school subjects. They each can come together to help each other. For example, at the end of this book, Evan is telling Jessie why he is embarrassed about her being in class with him: "I never have the right answer in math. And I read slower than everyone else when I read out loud. And I make mistakes. All the time. And now with you in the class, it's going to be worse. They'll all say, 'Wow, he's even dumber than his little sister'" (166-7).  Is it not sad how students compare themselves to each other so much these days because the education system has become such a competition? This book teaches students that they are each a unique person and should not compare themselves to someone else. No matter what their strengths, they are intelligent and an important individual.

Until next week,

Ashton Schimmelpfennig