The Lemonade Club by Patricia Polacco

This book is very different from what you normally think a picture book is which is why I chose it even though I am still not sure how I feel about it. When I first saw the cover and the title I was shocked about what was actually inside. This book is for upper elementary and it shows how picture books can still be age appropiate for 5th graders. It also deals with a very hard topic, cancer. As far as I know there aren't too many books like this one so I am glad I found it as a resource for other people. In this book one of the girls get leukemia and has to undergo chemo. I liked this book because it shows how different people deal with the difficult issue. It shows how hard it is for Marilyn (the girl who gets cancer) her best friend, her class, and her teacher. This provides a good tool for kids who might be going through the same thing because they can see how people are affected differently. This book also demonstrates the idea of strength and friendship, both of which are important when going through any hard time.

I am not sure if this is a book that I would use in the classroom unless is was necessary and I was teaching older children. But like I said I think it is a good resource to have. Also I like the pictures a lot in this book and colors of it because they seem to go very well with the tone and mood of the book and topic at hand. It is one that I could read more than once which is important to me. It doesn't paint the "romantic" idea we have of children because death is not part of that. It shows little girls and all that they do.

I came back to this post to see if I could figure this book out and how I felt about it more but I am not sure. I touched on the idea of role models in another post and in this book, the girls look up to their teacher more than anything. This reminds me that I will be that person that chidlren look up to soon and I will most likely have to deal with hard issues. This might be in my classroom or what happens outside of it.