Business Adventures
For Kids
Where Reading, Learning, and Fun Come Together
Description
Chance Sterling launches a pool cleaning business over the summer. Join Chance as he looks for new customers, discovers how much to charge them, takes on a business partner, recruits an employee, deals with difficult clients, and figures out how to make a profit. He has twelve weeks to reach his goal. Will he make it? Only if he takes some chances.
KidVenture stories are business adventures where kids figure out how to market their company, understand risk, and negotiate. Each chapter ends with a challenge, including business decisions, ethical dilemmas and interpersonal conflict for young readers to wrestle with. As the story progresses, the characters track revenue, costs, profit margin, and other key metrics which are explained in simple, fun ways that tie into the story.
Details
- Rating: ☆☆☆☆
- Title: KidVenture: Twelve Weeks To Midnight Blue
- Author: Steve Searfoss
- Genre: Middle Grade
- Length: 125 pages
- Publisher: Independently Published
- Release Date: January 26, 2020
My Thoughts
This book is a wonderful teaching tool to hand to a child who is excited about a larger purchase. Whose purchase? Well, does this sound familiar? “Will you buy this for me?”
That’s when I could visualize a parent or guardian handing Twelve Weeks To Midnight Blue to their child and discussing the story as it’s being read.
This book also would be a wonderful classroom aid since it felt like one large, interesting story problem. But one that kept growing and was full of wonderful examples of terms related to reaching a goal.
If you haven’t read the description, this is a story about Chance, a boy who wants a new bike. The problem is that he will only get it if he figures out a way to purchase it himself. As an example of how this story goes, Chance is earning money for cleaning the family pool. And like any growing “wage earner”, in time he decides it’s time to ask for a raise. He gives his dad the reasons why he’s going to charge more and the following conversation occurs:
My dad whistled his surprise. “So you’re doubling the price?” he challenged.
Again Chance gives the reasons and holds firm to the pay he wants.
His dad counters and offers to pay him $15, but Chance holds firm to the $20 he’s requesting. And then the next learning opportunity happens.
“I’ll do it for $10!” my sister suddenly interjected.
Suddenly Chance realizes that $15 is better than being out of a job. And surprisingly his dad agrees and they shake on it. But where does that leave the little sister who offered less to do the same job? She let’s her dad know she’s not too pleased with what just happened. Below is her dad’s response.
“Well, I already know he can do the job, and I’d rather stick with one vendor right now.”
And voila. The opportunity is opened up to talk about vendors.
I see this as a fun tool to be read together, since it opens up so many opportunities for discussions.
What Concerned Me
Thought it’s not a major concern,, it’s definitely something that bothered me. The formatting felt unusual and hard to read.
Final Thoughts
It was interesting, and had all the elements of a text book regarding starting and building a business, without the feel of presenting facts. Below are a few of the terms that are discussed:
- Vendors
- Generating Options
- Pros and Cons
- Partnership
- Teamwork
- Leverage
- Clients
- Adjustments
- Negotiation
- Competitors
This is definitely a wonderful teaching aid. One that I highly recommend for teachers and those interesting in helping their children become more knowledgeable, and even excited about becoming a young entrepreneur.
My thanks to the author for a copy of this book and the ability to post a review free of any stipulations.
Rating
A wonderful book. The only thing that kept it from being 5 stars was the formatting.
About the Author
I wrote my first KidVenture book after years of making up stories to teach my kids about business and economics. Whenever they’d ask how something works or why things were a certain way, I would say, “Let’s pretend you have a business that sells…” and off we’d go. What would start as a simple hypothetical to explain a concept would become an adventure spanning several days as my kids would come back with new questions which would spawn more plot twists. Rather than give them quick answers, I tried to create cliffhangers to get them to really think through an idea and make the experience as interactive as possible.
I try to bring that same spirit of fun, curiosity and challenge to each KidVenture book. That’s why every chapter ends with a dilemma and a set of questions. KidVenture books are fun for kids to read alone, and even more fun to read together and discuss. There are plenty of books where kids learn about being doctors and astronauts and firefighters. There are hardly any where they learn what it’s like to run small business. KidVenture is different. The companies the kids start are modest and simple, but the themes are serious and important.
I’m an entrepreneur who has started a half dozen or so businesses and have had my share of failures. My dad was an entrepreneur and as a kid I used to love asking him about his business and learning the ins and outs of what to do and not do. Mistakes make the best stories — and the best lessons. I wanted to write a business book that was realistic, where you get to see the characters stumble and wander and reset, the way entrepreneurs do in real life. Unlike most books and movies where business is portrayed as easy, where all you need is one good idea and the desire to be successful, the characters in KidVenture find that every day brings new problems to solve.
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