Magic Lemonade

by Joyce Dunbar, Jan McCafferty (Illustrator)

With her tablecloth gown and clothes-peg crown, Zoe looks like a queen, but she needs magic lemonade to convince her friends.

Genres: Childrens

48 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Joyce Dunbar is an English author of over seventy children’s books, best known for Tell Me Something Happy Before I Go To Sleep, This Is The Star, and the Mouse and Mole series. Born in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, she studied English at Goldsmiths College before teaching drama until hearing loss led her to write full time in 1989. Her first children’s book appeared when she was 35, followed by works such as Mundo and the Weather-Child, which explored the experiences of a deaf child and earned critical recognition. Her stories have been adapted for stage, television, and interactive media, with Mouse and Mole becoming a 26-part animated series. She has also been an advocate for deaf awareness, cycling across Cuba for charity. Dunbar lives in Norwich.

Reviews

[Diana]

While I appreciate the creativity and imagination of the main character, she is a bossy little thing who never learned her lesson about that not being an okay way to treat others. If you're okay with Junie B., you'll probably be fine with this one, but I can't recommend it.

[Canoe]

A book about a bossy girl who gets her way and turns her friends into frogs.

Not the message I want to send to my kid, but to each their own, I guess.

[Courtney]

Through reading this story with my children, I was able to take a trip back in my own memory where the grass seemed greener and the skies were bluer. I could imagine myself in the place of these children, with myself as the "queen," and shuttered through the way I can see that being my daughter one day.

Children are truly gullible and they tend to have the biggest imaginations around. Playing tricks and making jokes are always a way of life, just like sticks being campfires and a hidden bush being entrance into a new world. This short-story emboldens all of the good and bad that comes with being a child, with all of the memories that follow.

[Jamie]

Read with lemonade themed storytime.

[Suvi]

Taikalimonadi

Sini haluaa leikkiä kuningatarta, mutta hänen ystävänsä eivät halua totella häntä. Niinpä hän keksii taikalimonadin, jonka maistavat vain ne, ketkä uskovat hänen olevan kuningatar. Ystävät suostuvat, mutta Sinillä onkin huima yllätys takataskussaan!

Ykkösten vinkkaukseen.

[Mona]

The book started off so well, with Zoe's creativity and determination. The end was a bit sudden and random. My 5 yo is convinced that Zoe actually turned her friends into frogs with the magic lemonade/potion.