KidVenture: Twelve Weeks to Midnight Blue by Steve Searfoss | $25 Giveaway, Author Interview, Review
A book blog tour from iRead Book Tours.
Thank you to the author, publisher, & Lauren at iRead for providing me with the information for this tour. 
Book Details
KidVenture: Twelve Weeks to Midnight Blue by Steve Searfoss
Series: KidVenture #1
Published by Independently Published on 01/26/2020
Genres: Educational, Fiction, Children's
Format: eBook, Paperback
Pages: 126
Teach your kids about business and economics in a fun, meaningful way and inspire them to be entrepreneurs. Millions of Americans are small business owners or work at companies, yet there are not many books that explain to kids what business is about, the way there are books for kids about being a firefighter, farmer or astronaut. Beyond basic business concepts, KidVenture shows that character matters in business. The ability to persevere when there are setbacks and being someone who is trustworthy are key ingredients of success.
In Twelve Weeks To Midnight Blue, 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.
Source: iRead Book Tours, Kindle Unlimited, Received from the author or publisher for review.
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Purchase Links for Twelve Weeks To Midnight Blue
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My thoughts on Twelve Weeks To Midnight Blue
Twelve Weeks to Midnight Blue is an amazingly fun tale teaching kids about becoming an entrepreneur.
When young Chance wants a fancy new bike, his Dad encourages him to start a business and earn the money. In the process, he learns about leverage, negotiations, marketing, cooperation, and partnerships. And let’s not forget the math lessons. What business could be successful without math?
Each chapter builds upon the previous lesson and closes with a question to put everything into perspective. While at its heart, this book is meant to teach the basic concepts of entrepreneurship, it’s also highly entertaining. Readers young & old will enjoy the tale of Chance and his quest to purchase the midnight blue bicycle.
I received a copy of the book for the tour. This review is my honest, unbiased opinion.
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I love to read books through my Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscription.
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About Steve Searfoss
Meet Steve Searfoss:
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 a 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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Interview with the Author
What genre do you write and why?
KidVenture books are not easy to classify. On the one hand, they’re definitely fiction, with characters and a plot the reader should hopefully be drawn into. But they are also business books that teach real business lessons. In that way, they’re no different than some of the books you find in the business section of a bookstore which teaches one or two big ideas through stories and anecdotes. So I’d like to think they’re a new, hybrid genre. I call them business adventure stories.
Could your book actually be read as a business book?
I think so. While Twelve Weeks To Midnight Blue is geared towards a middle grade and young adult audience, I’ve been told by several parents that they learned something about business after reading it and that adults would also find the book interesting.
One of the biggest teaching tools in business school is the case study, and the best case studies are written in such a way that they put the reader in the shoes of the principal actors. In some ways, KidVenture is similar. In Twelve Weeks To Midnight Blue, Chance and Addie, a brother and sister, start a pool cleaning business in their neighborhood over the summer. As the plot unfolds, the characters, and by extension the reader, face specific business challenges: should they raise the price of their service? how can they market their company in such a way that they stand out from all the other companies offering the same service? what is the most cost-effective way to find new customers?
Are there any books that inspired you?
When I got the idea of writing a series of business books for kids, almost immediately I thought of The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. Years ago I was working as a management consultant, constantly flying around the country to go on-site with clients, and I would read as many business books as I could on flights. By far my favorite business book is The Goal.
The Goal is written as a novel, and it has a compelling main character, who runs a factory that’s in danger of going out of business. If I remember right, productivity at the factory is falling, in spite of making new investments in better machinery. What makes the book different is that the emotional stakes are high: his marriage is on the rocks and headed for divorce as the problems with the factory are stealing away all his attention. And he feels the burden of keeping the factory open for the sake of all the people he employs. Without spoiling the plot too much, the main character reaches the key insight that unlocks the problem when he’s out hiking with his son and a group of his friends and he notices the way the line of hikers expands and compresses depending on the order of the hikers.
A lot of business books are rather boring. There are usually five pages worth of interesting ideas spread out over two hundred pages of filler. But The Goal was a real page-turner, I couldn’t wait to read another chapter to find out what happened with the factory, the business, and the marriage. While not the main lesson, one thing you take away from reading The Goal is how business is not an academic exercise: the problems you face place real stress on real people, and the cost of getting it wrong are very personal and painful.
Believe it or not, I try to do something similar with Twelve Weeks To Midnight Blue. As the characters face new challenges in their business, it places stress on their relationship. After one particular failure, the main character, Chance, wrestles with whether to tell his partner Addie about the mistake he made, or whether he should lie about it.
What do people find most surprising about your book?
That it’s actually a fun book to read. When people hear that it’s a business book for kids, they usually are expecting it to read like a textbook and be very dry and boring. But I get lots of feedback from people who tell me they were surprised to find the book is funny, the characters are very likable and the plot takes some unanticipated turns. One of my goals is to make the reader laugh a few times when reading the book. I hope I succeeded — I know I laughed a few times while writing it.
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Purchase Twelve Weeks To Midnight Blue online from a local book store.
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Easy Amazon Links
KidVenture: Twelve Weeks To...Shop on Amazon Kindle 
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Giveaway!
Enter to win a $25 Amazon Gift Card courtesy of KIDVENTURE: TWELVE WEEKS TO MIDNIGHT BLUE (one winner) (ends Feb 7)
KIDVENTURE: TWELVE WEEKS TO MIDNIGHT BLUE Book Tour Giveaway
Please visit more stops on the tour for extra chances to win!
Full Tour Schedule:
Jan 11 –Cover Lover Book Review
Jan 12 –Character Madness and Musing
Jan 12 –Rockin’ Book Reviews
Jan 13 –Deborah-Zenha Adams
Jan 13 – Splashes of Joy
Jan 14 – Literary Flits
Jan 18 – Gina Rae Mitchell
Jan 18 – A Mama’s Corner of the World
Jan 19 – icefairy’s Treasure Chest
Jan 20 – Sandra’s Book Club
Jan 21 – @twilight_reader
Jan 24 – Books for Books
Jan 25 – Locks, Hooks and Books
Jan 26 – Jazzy Book Reviews
Jan 26 – Lisa’s Reading
Jan 27 – She Just Loves Books
Jan 28 – Sefina Hawke’s Books
Jan 31 – Kam’s Place
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Great interview, Steve, Twelve Weeks to Midnight Blue is an excellent book for kids that teaches them in a fun way! Thanks for sharing it with me! Thanks, Gina, for sharing your review! Have a spectacular weekend!
Thanks for stopping by Eva!
What a lovely new book, cheers!
Thanks for stopping by!
My kids will like this one! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for stopping by. It’s a cute book. I’m going to share it with my grandkids.
My grandson would enjoy this book.