One day I was twelve years old and broke. I set out to mow some lawns with Grandpa's old riding mower. One client was Arnold the stockbroker, who offered to teach me about: the beauty of capitalism. Supply and demand. Diversifying labor. Distributing the wealth. "It's groovy, man," Arnold said.
The grass grew, and so did business. Arnold invested my money in many things. One of them was a prizefighter. All of a sudden I was the sponsor of my very own fighter, Joey Pow. That's when my twelfth summer got really interesting.

Gary Paulsen's comic story about a summer job becomes a slapstick lesson in business as one boy turns a mountain of grass into a mountain of cash.

Tom Parks jumps into Paulsen's novella of a lad who inherits a rider lawn mower and builds a lucrative landscape business. Parks, as the unnamed narrator, describes how, through hard work and with sound advice from a customer, he raked in over $40,000 in one summer. Parks trims back his youthful voice to play believable secondary characters, including his beleaguered parents and, alas, stereotypically immigrant workers. An emotional cadence to every phrase adds to the far-fetched aspect of this tall tale, but the economic lessons about supply and demand, fair wages, and labor laws are well grounded in fact. The combination is an entertaining and educational listen. M.M.O. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

 

Gary Paulsen is the distinguished author of many critically acclaimed books for young people, including three Newbery Honor Books: The Winter Room, Hatchet, and Dogsong. His novel The Haymeadow received the Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award. Gary Paulsen has also published fiction and nonfiction for adults, as well as picture books illustrated by his wife, the painter Ruth Wright Paulsen. The Paulsens live in New Mexico, in Alaska, and on the Pacific Ocean.

Lawn Boy by Gary Paulsen
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