Materials Book

Summary: The members of the Elm Street Club and their parrot, need money to fix up their clubhouse. One of the members had an idea of selling lemonade to raise money, so they pulled out a table and sat curbside with cups filled with lemonade waiting for people to walk by. While selling, one of the members kept track of the sales on a graph and they sold 30 cups on the first day. Each day they sold lemonade, there sales increased. The day they drastically declined, they found their competition. The members of the Elm Street Club quickly figure out they need to work together if they want to save their club house.

Setting: The setting in this book is a backdrop one because the setting is not important to the story and selling lemonade could occur anywhere. We know from the text that the members sold their lemonade in their neighborhood as it is referenced several times that most of the neighborhood stopped by every time it was sold. The illustrations depict a middle-class neighborhood. However, selling lemonade could occur in front of their local grocery store or at their local park and they could have raised just enough money for their clubhouse. The setting contributes to the story in the way that it allows the reader to relate to the story that affects the overall mood. For example, since the selling of lemonade takes place in their neighborhood, it made me remember when I bought lemonade from kids in my neighborhood. My mood was influenced by this because in most middle-class neighborhoods, the atmosphere is very friendly as the kids play with one another and parents could be friends, so it isn't very unlikely that the neighborhood is going to help raise money. For example, I felt a sense of empathy when they were no longer selling any more cups of lemonade since the juggler was attracting all the attention. But once Sheri got Jed to juggle by their lemonade stand, my mood quickly changed to excited since I knew this would help them raise enough money. I think the author did this as a way for kids to relate to. Maybe they did something similar or they saw someone selling lemonade, or maybe it will inspire them to try it when they need a buck or to, they can also easily compare to see who raised more, which would be fun to do.

Theme: The theme in this book is a business can succeed, big or small to make enough money to meet a goal. I think that the author is showing kids this because it is an important concept for them to understand if they want to work for a goal. In the story, the kids never quit and continuing to work hard towards their goal. For example, when their neighbors stopped buying lemonade and they hardly sold any cups, that didn't stop them from selling lemonade, but instead it motivated them to work together with Jed to provide entertainment as well as allowing them to increase sales. This teaches kids that they can mow lawns, help their parents with yardwork, or even sell lemonade for a small amount of pay and at the same time save for what they want. The elements contribute to the story in the way that the character's experiences shape the theme. For example, if they didn't sell any lemonade all week, the story would have taken a different path and the theme would not be that small business can succeed with enough effort and contribution.

Front Matter: The front matter of this book can give us a short clue as to what the rest of the book will be about. For example, the first page the reader opens to is a double page spread of what appears to be a tablecloth, a chart and sixteen lemons dancing around on the page. This hints that the book will not only be about a lemonade stand but the fact that there are sixteen lemon on a two-page spread could also foreshadow that the Elm Street Club use a lot of lemons and that they will sell enough cups to save their clubhouse. Included in the front matter is the copyright information and the title page which is Petey their parrot sipping a glass of lemonade. Petey is sitting down on the tablecloth sipping on a glass of ice cold lemonade with a long straw hinting that he is sitting sort of far away from it. In this illustration, I can insinuate that the kids and Petey worked hard which is why he is sitting far away from the glass, too tired to move closer after all the hard work they did in fixing up their clubhouse. The elements contribute to the story because they help set the scene and can help establish a mood for the type of story that we will be reading. For example, when I saw the lemons dancing I thought that this book was going to be about something fun and happy because the lemons were having fun.

Point of View (Visual Element): There are different points of view in this book, most of the time we are level with the illustration simply as a viewer, but in a couple scenes we are looking down on the illustration. The different angles that we view, allows us to get a different viewpoint of what is occurring in the story. For example, in the scene where the kids are not selling any lemonade the illustration shows a portion of their neighborhood with some houses and the kids table with lemons piled sky high, but no one in sight. This contributes to the story in that we really can see that there was no one around in that portion of their neighborhood to buy any lemonade and we are able to get a better understanding of the amount of monetary loss in sales that happened that day and even the moods that they were feeling.

Contemporary Realistic Fiction Genre Relation: This book fits into the contemporary realistic genre because even though this story isn't real, the story is believable and can be set in our modern world today. These character and events could very well be real people. In fact, there are still kids today that sell lemonade in their neighborhood to save money for a toy or something else that they may want. There are no superpowers or magic that helps them sell that amount lemonade cups that they do. Last, this could happen in real life. It is possible that neighborhood kids start a small business such as lemonade selling and they could have competition just down the road that better attracts the neighborhood, maybe their competition is selling ice cream or offering to mow lawns.

Opinion: I liked this book overall, I enjoyed the wacky neighborhood characters that were included in the illustrations. For example, the first neighbors that bought lemonade were walking dogs, the next day there was a day who appeared to be going to Paris as she had a Paris luggage, her cat, cats bowl and a mountain full of various items that she was carrying on her head. These illustrations are humorous and made me laugh as an adult! They are good conversation starters for kids in talking about the different types of people we encounter. I think this book is a fun way to get kids thinking about way to save money while using math. I initially thought this book was going to be about the typical neighborhood kids trying to sell lemonade and was surprised that it used graphs and math in it but overall thought this was a good way to show kids that math is important in the real world..