The Lemonade War

These prompts can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before or after reading the novel.

Pre-Reading “Icebreaker”

Imagine that you have been training in a sport since you were a little child. You love this sport and work very hard to get better at it. You finally make your dream team—and then you find out that your younger sibling, who just started playing and hardly trains at all, has also made the team. Would you be happy for your sibling? Jealous? How would it make you feel about your own hard work? Would you still feel proud of what you have achieved? Do you think it would become a problem in your relationship with your sibling?

Teaching Suggestion: Use this prompt to guide students to think about how competition affects relationships and how we feel when others seem to achieve things more easily than we do. You might ask them to suggest some strategies that people can use to process difficult emotions and deal with unpleasant realities. As The Lemonade War shows, an important part of maturing is learning how to take others’ perspectives and understand and regulate our own emotions so that we can resolve emotional conflicts like this, especially when they interfere with our happiness and relationships.

Post-Reading Analysis

Even though Evan and Jessie love one another, they do not always get along well. Do you think this is mostly because of something about Jessie and Evan themselves, or is it because of their circumstances? How does their father’s absence affect them emotionally? How do Jessie’s social struggles, combined with her academic abilities, contribute to the trouble between these siblings? How do their misunderstandings about each other add to the tension between them? What good advice does their mother give Jessie about getting along with her brother, and when the siblings finally follow that advice, what do they discover?

Teaching Suggestion: Help students see that it is a combination of their circumstances and their own immaturity that causes Jessie and Evan to fight with each other. They are having a hard time because of their father’s absence and because of Jessie’s promotion to Evan’s grade—but they also need to learn skills for resolving emotional conflict. You can explain more about perspective taking and coach students in this important skill using the information in this article from the website Socially Skilled Kids. You might also extend your discussion to connect with current events: What have students seen in the news that makes them think that many adults still need to learn to take one another’s perspectives to resolve emotional conflicts?