For the most part, the past few months have been filled with some light and fluffy books. But, when life hands you lemons, it might be best to make a Lemonade War. The book, by Jacqueline Davies just happens to be one of my favorites of the summer. We even used it as a Summer Reading Club prize this year to go along with our 'Food' theme.
In the novel, two siblings (a boy and a girl) who spend a lot of time together making lemonade stands start to feel the pressure of competition when it is recommended that the younger of the two should skip a grade and they should start the fall in the same class. As someone who felt the need to 'compete' with her siblings always, I felt a sort of kinship with the brother in this story. The frustration of feeling like no matter what you do, it might not ever be good enough is so real that it brought back a flood of memories from my own childhood.
As the middle child, I feel as if I am predisposed to feeling like I am not as good as my siblings and that my parents never really noticed me as a result. I am quite sure that my parents paid just as much attention to me as my siblings, but the actuality of the situation means nothing to a child. It is all perception and feeling. I spent my formative years being told that I was incredibly pretty - only to grow up thinking I wasn't smart. My brother and sister were always told they were smart.... and because no one ever told me that I was smart too, I thought that I was pretty and dumb.
No matter what actually happens, the competition that siblings feel for each other trumps reality. I was talking with a friend a few weeks back and he remarked how his sister is so smart that she has always made him feel dumb. This particular person is so incredibly gifted in art and music, I thought to myself - I would imagine that growing up in his enormous shadow, she felt she HAD to be smart in order to compete with his greatness, and that she feels inadequate when compared to him as well.
As children, what makes us focus on our weaknesses to the point of ignoring our greatness? It is something I have spent quite a few years of my adult life thinking about. It took until I was 25 for my sister to tell me that she was always jealous of me. That she and my brother never had to work for a grade, it just came naturally... but that I worked so hard to get what I wanted, it made her jealous. I just couldn't believe it. My brother said the same thing. He had to take a semester off from college because he didn't know how to study, but I already knew when I got to college because I had been doing it for so long. I can't help but think how weird it is to be jealous of the study habits of someone else.
That is what makes this book so wonderful. It discusses these sibling relationships and the secrets we keep about them without being preachy. It allows a child to understand that just as much as they envy their sibling, they are being envied as well. Perhaps if I had read this book as a child, I would have spent less time feeling little and ignored and more time trying to figure out what my awesome qualities were. I might have found them sooner.
