Realistic Fiction, The Lemonade Club

Title: Let's Go, See Papa!
Author: Lawrence Schimel
Publisher: Groundwood Books
Publish Date: October 25, 2011
ISBN: 1554981069

Bethany's Rating: 5/5 


Summary: 

This is a story of two little girls who are best friends, Marilyn and Traci. One day as they were walking some girls were bullying Marilyn about her weight. A few weeks later Traci noticed Marilyn was losing a lot of weight and she confronted Marilyn about it. She told Marilyn that not eating was an unhealthy diet and Marilyn said she was not dieting but was losing weight. Marilyn then started to feel faint and pass out. Traci got help and Marilyn was taken to the hospital. Marilyn was diagnosed with leukemia. This story is about the Traci and her teacher helping Marilyn through chemotherapy. Their class is very supportive of Marilyn and even shave their heads to match Marilyn. Marilyn's chemotherapy works and the cancer starts to go away. All of the kids hair starts to grow back but the teacher is still bald. The students realize she has breast cancer. She has to get surgery to get it removed. She gets cleared of cancer and the gets married with all the children at her wedding 5 years later.

 Evaluation: I thought this book was very interesting. The topic was very heavy and I think this book is perfect for children who have or know someone who has cancer. As a child I had two family members who had cancer and I never it was a sickness but I never knew much about their treatments how it affected them. In the story the teacher tells the classroom about Marilyn and how she is going through treatments and she might be very weak some days and need to sit down. This hit me because I remember my mom telling me that my Uncle would be tired and might look a little different and gave me a similar talk. I feel like if I had this book as a kid I would be able to relate to it and understand the situation better.