Some things just go together. Peanut butter and chocolate. Summer and reading. Johnny Depp and eyeliner.

And of course, when you encounter one of these pairings, you think, Well, duh! That’s a no-brainer. It seems so obvious that Fred Astaire should be matched with Ginger Rogers, that Katherine Hepburn belongs with Spencer Tracy, that Oreos were made for vanilla ice cream.

But somebody had to come up with that first brave combination before it solidified into something so obvious and right.

And while I wish I could lay claim to the brilliant idea to pair my book THE LEMONADE WAR with the mission of Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation—nope, I can’t. I wasn’t the smart one who made that connection. It was Tracy Weniger, the School Programs Manager at ALSF, who contacted me and suggested a partnership.

Well, at least I was smart enough to say, “Absolutely! Let’s do it.”

A little background. THE LEMONADE WAR tells the story of a brother and sister who make a bet about who can sell the most lemonade in the five days before summer vacation ends. In the end, the sister donates her money to a charity. So it’s a book with strong elements of competition and charitable giving.

The book was published in 2007, and pretty soon after that I began hearing about Alex’s Lemonade Stand—a non-profit organization dedicated to ending childhood cancer. Kids would write to me and say, “I read your book, and it inspired me to have my own lemonade stand. I donated the profits to Alex’s Lemonade Stand.” Cool, I thought.

What I didn’t know is that Alex’s Lemonade Stand has been raising money for over ten years. The founder and creator of the organization was Alex Scott, who was diagnosed with cancer just before her first birthday. When she was four, she decided to hold a lemonade stand to raise money to help find a cure for all children with cancer. Her first lemonade stand raised over $2,000 in just one day.

The idea grew, and soon children all over the world were holding lemonade stands to raise money for childhood cancer research.

When Alex passed away at the age of eight, she had helped to raise more than $1 million toward finding a cure for cancer. Alex’s parents, Liz and Jay Scott, continue her inspirational work through the Foundation. Since Alex’s first lemonade stand in 2000, the Foundation has raised over $50 million. Double cool.

When Tracy emailed me in the spring and suggested we start an initiative to promote reading and charitable giving among kids, I was pretty excited. The idea they presented mirrored the plot of THE LEMONADE WAR: Schools all over the country would participate in a contest to see who could raise the most money. Then the money would be donated to Alex’s Lemonade Stand. Every school that signed up would receive a free copy of THE LEMONADE WAR, along with lesson plans and a study guide; a program guide and lemonade stand materials to get started selling lemonade; a personal fundraising webpage; and a certificate of appreciation from the Foundation.

The idea was to link reading and charitable giving—two important lessons, both with lifelong benefits. Everyone in the school would read THE LEMONADE WAR to get revved up, and then the school would have one month to raise money. The grand prize? A visit from me and Alex’s dad, Jay Scott, to the winning school, along with a hundred autographed copies of each of the next two books in The Lemonade War series: THE LEMONADE CRIME and THE BELL BANDIT.

I love it when whole schools come together to read a single book. It creates an energy and excitement around reading that can’t be matched. And I really wanted this initiative to be a success. What else could we offer? “How about I do Skype visits with the three runner-up schools?” I suggested. “And let’s give audio books of THE LEMONADE WAR and THE LEMONADE CRIME to three honorable mention schools, as well.”

And so The Great Lemonade War was launched.

You don’t need me to tell you how amazing kids are. Or what they can accomplish when they put their minds to a task.

In just one month, kids across the country raised over $40,000. The winning school—Poinciana Elementary School in Naples, Florida—raised more than $10,000 on its own. The kids at Poinciana—a public school with 60% of its student population receiving reduced-fee lunches—set up lemonade stands at a local supermarket; they brought in their birthday money and tooth fairy money; they asked friends and relatives to make on-line donations through the specially dedicated web page.

Alison Bringardner and Leslie Marshall, the two teachers who spearheaded the effort, were flat-out floored by the effort and determination of the kids. Their school had been raising money for Alex’s Lemonade Stand for the past five years, but they’d never seen an all-out, take-no-prisoners fundraising drive like this. “It just sort of snowballed. All the kids were trying to outdo each other,” said Alison. Leslie added, “One girl insisted on bringing in all her birthday money and giving it to kids with cancer.”

It just goes to show what a little healthy competition can do.

Can I tell you how much fun my visit to Poinciana was? There was homemade lemonade, yellow t-shirts, a garden dedication that included the planting of a lemon tree, a chorus of first-graders singing “Born to Be Somebody” (complete with choreographed moves!), inspirational quotes read by the kids as they released yellow balloons into the blue sky, a carnival and book fair, local news crews covering the event, and two raucous assemblies in which the kids and I celebrated their contribution to making the world a healthier place.

Does it get any better than that?

Congratulations to Poinciana and to the three runner-up schools: Earl Slaughter Elementary School in McKinney, Texas; Fox Elementary in Kersey, Pennsylvania; and Plymouth Elementary in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. Congratulations also to the three honorable mention schools: St. Michael the Archangel in Overland Park, Kansas; Harmony School in Middletown, New Jersey; and Westminster Christian School in Miami, Florida.

And if you’re thinking that you’d like to engage the kids at your school in a win-win-win school-wide effort that promotes reading, builds community, and joins in the effort to wipe out cancer in kids, then it’s not too early to sign up to receive information about next year’s contest. I’d love to come to your school and applaud your students as they discover what it means to be a good citizen of the world.

After all, some things just go together. Like learning and giving. Like open hearts and open minds. Like lemonade and curing childhood cancer.

Yep. That’s a no-brainer.

Jacqueline Davies is the talented author of both novels and picture books. She lives in Needham, Massachusetts, with her three children. THE BELL BANDIT was released by Houghton Mifflin earlier this month.



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