Lemonade for Sale

1. Lemonade for Sale by Stuart Murphy tells the story of a group of kids known as the Elm Street Kid's Club. The children in the group are Danny, Sheri, Petey, Matthew, and Meg. The group of children are having some difficulty with their treehouse. In order to repair the treehouse, Danny proposed they start a lemonade stand. They ultimately did start this stand, and in order to track their sales and profit, Sheri created a bar graph. The bar graph had the number of cups sold on the y-axis, with the day of the week on the x-axis. The bar graph showed great sales on both Monday and Tuesday, but extremely decreased sales on Wednesday. Fearful that they would not be able to afford the treehouse repairs, they investigated this phenomenon. They noticed that down the street another person was juggling for money, and stealing away a lot of their business while the person was at it. In order to raise the necessary treehouse repair funds, the Elm Street Kid's Club invited the juggler to perform next to the lemonade stand. As a result of this, people got both lemonade and entertainment. This resulted in profit for both parties, and the treehouse repairs occurring. 
2. The book presented the mathematical concepts of input/output and graphing. It showed graphing because a bar graph was used to track the number of sales each day of the week. This allowed the profit made from the stand to be tracked. It also presented the idea of inputs/outputs. On the graph each input (day of the week) had exactly one output (number of cups sold). It presented the concept of a function through this. All in all it showed, graphing, input/output, which led into the beginning stages of functions. 
3. I think that children's books are an effective way of teaching children mathematical concepts for a couple reasons. The first reason is that it is a visually stimulating way to learn what can be difficult math concepts. It simplifies everything through the pictures, and makes it much easier for children to grasp and understand what they are seeing and hearing. The second reason is that children's books are very interactive. They children are very involved in reading these books, and as a result of their increased involvement, they are more likely to learn the concepts.