60 pages • 2 hours read
Jacqueline DaviesThe Lemonade War
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Slump”
Each chapter in The Lemonade War is named after a business term and begins with that term’s definition. Chapter 1 begins with the definition of a slump: “a drop in the activity of a business or the economy” (1). Evan Treski is experiencing such an event; it’s almost the end of the summer, the air conditioning is out at his house, and he is very bored. Evan is entertaining himself in the basement by throwing a baseball up and down as he tries to avoid his sister, Jessie.
When Jessie finds Evan, she implores him to play with her. Evan resists angrily. He keeps throwing the baseball up and down, but when Jessie mentions a letter, Evan drops the baseball on his nose. Jessie offers to bring him some ice, but Evan yells at her that he hates her: “You ruined my summer and now you’re going to ruin school. I hate you” (10).
Chapter 2 Summary: “Breakup”
Chapter 2, “Breakup,” explores the dissolution of Evan and Jessie’s relationship through Jessie’s perspective. Jessie knows that Evan is upset about the letter but doesn’t understand why. She’s good at solving puzzles, but she has trouble understanding emotional issues, calling such topics her “weakest subject” (11). Jessie thinks back to the day the letter came to the Treski house. The letter had revealed that Jessie, an academically successful student, would skip a grade and join Evan in Mrs. Overton’s fourth-grade class.
Jessie thought it would be fun to be together in school, but Evan had stomped off angrily, abandoning their lemonade stand game. Now, Jessie tries to make herself feel better by reading Charlotte’s Web, but she feels unhappy. Evan usually tells her how he is feeling, unlike the girls at school.
When Jessie leaves her room to try to apologize to Evan, she finds him in the garage with Scott Spencer setting up for a lemonade stand. The boys have misspellings on their signage. Jessie offers to help, but both boys refuse, and Scott makes fun of Jessie, calling her “freaky” (23) for skipping a grade. Scott’s comments upset her, and Jessie runs from the garage, assuring Evan that she can make a lemonade stand on her own.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
The contrast between the two Treski children’s perspectives is highlighted in the opening chapters of the novel. Evan is a self-aware child who can ascertain what he is feeling and is in tune with the emotions of others. Jessie is almost completely the opposite, feeling that she is unable to understand the emotional landscape. When the two begin to argue, Evan demonstrates his ability to think about emotions by noting that he doesn’t want to be “[t]oo hurtful” (5) toward his sister. Meanwhile, Jessie walks away from their fight feeling that she doesn’t understand Evan’s emotional responses. The difference between the way the children process emotions is an important part of the plot of The Lemonade War and will continue to shape the growing conflict.
The opening chapters of The Lemonade War hint at two underlying issues in the Treski household. The first, which prompts the argument between the two siblings, is the letter that the family received about Jessie’s promotion to fourth grade. A second significant conflict, the difficulties of a single-parent household, is alluded to in a few places. At the start of the book, Evan is frustrated by how hot it is in their house, noting that his mother hasn’t moved the old air conditioner for a week since it’s “a two-person job” (2). This implies that Mrs. Treski is the only adult present in the house, which is implied again when Jessie remembers the letter, addressed only to her mother. Later in the novel, this underlying issue will be explored in more detail.
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By Jacqueline Davies
