It was not intentional, but this summer I read a couple of books that would be great reads for children who have an entrepreneurial spirit.
I remember when I was a young junior high student, a few of my friends and I got together with every intention of becoming our own local version of The Babysitters Club. I think we only met once, in the room of the one friend who had a phone in her room. No one called during that time to hire us because our efforts to spread the word amounted to maybe one flyer posted in the neighborhood. However, it was a memory that I still look back fondly on more than 30 years later. So, when I started reading Bad Babysitters by Caroline Cala, I knew it was a nod to that era.
Our main character, Malia, finds an old copy of The Babysitters Club and is inspired to convince her friends that this is the best way to make money for their joint 13th birthday party. Now while they definitely do a better job of advertising than my friends and I did, Malia and her friends, Dot and Bree, run into a couple of other obstacles that derail their plans, including some babysitting competition. The friends even had one situation where they had too many kids that they were responsible for watching.
Their story does have a positive ending, and Bad Babysitters is actually the first book in the Best Babysitters Ever series. While it was nostalgic for me, if you have a reader who might be looking for a way to earn extra money with their friends, this would be a nice series to get them motivated. And if you were a fan of the BSC, it might bring up some good memories for you, too.
Another book I read promoting young entrepreneurship was The Startup Squad by Brian Weisfeld and Nicole C. Kear. In this book, the inspiration for money-making came from school, where small groups in Teresa's class are assigned to sell lemonade in the neighborhood in an effort to raise money for their class trip to an amusement park. The group that makes the most money gets fast passes to the park.
While the girls in Bad Babysitters are already friends, the four girls in The Startup Squad know each other, but only two of them are actually friends with each other. So not only do we get to see the hijinks of the girls trying to navigate their relationships with each other, we also get to see them trying to figure out how to make the most money. The main character, Teresa, has a strong personality and is extremely motivated to sell the most lemonade in order to win the tickets. However, throughout the book she has to learn how to work well with others in order to try to get what she wants, and I think the authors do a good job of showing Teresa's growth during the competition process. This book also does a good job of showing different roadblocks when starting a business, including cost, location and product, but in a way that makes sense for its young readers. Again, like Bad Babysitters, this book is also the first in the series, all written around the different businesses this group of girls come up with.
So, if you have a young reader who might be interested in making their own money, or already is running their own business, Bad Babysitters or The Startup Squad may be books they would enjoy. You can find both of them at your local library or wherever you buy books.
Deana Metzke is the literacy/social studies/library coordinator for District 186 and a mom of two. For more children's book recommendations, follow her blog at http://raisingreaders.site.
