Richie's Picks: Great Books for Children and Young Adults

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"And the green grass grew all around, all around,
And the green grass grew all around."
--William Jerome & Harry Von Tilzer

"When it all began, it was simple.
"Our neighbor's house had a larger yard than ours, with what looked like good grass. No difficult corners, just a big square with a large elm tree in the center.
"I mowed it and he gave me money.
"Twenty dollars."

Adam Smith will be rolling over in his grave when he gets a load of this one. Rolling over, laughing his ghostly, free enterprise butt off, that is.

Direct from the wacky imagination of Gary Paulsen's well-fertilized gray matter comes a series of lessons in modern economics that underlie the hilarious story of a 12 year-old boy who, just as his summer vacation arrives, inherits a rider mower from the grandfather he'd never met. There just happens to be an abundance of unmowed lawns in his part of the world since it turns out that "the man who owned the lawn service that had done all the yards in the neighborhood had run off with the wife of one of his customers and all the husbands were worried about hiring a new company after what had happened."

One of our young hero's new customers is a uniquely attired stockbroker working from home named Arnold Howell who, being short on cash, strikes a deal to purchase $40 in stock in trust for the kid in exchange for getting his lawn done. It is the stockbroker who also sets the economics lessons in motion:

" 'Supply and demand.' Arnold nodded. It's groovy, man. The very nature of the concept of economic structure. You just need more mowers, more people, to meet the growing demand. The previous lawn service -- before, of course, the unfortunate instance of the romantic...mishap -- had a small crew of workers to handle the burden of all the lawns you're now working. You need to start distributing the wealth, dispersing the work. Far-out. It's beautiful.' "

So you take a 12 year-old kid with a rider mower and a summer vacation, add a stockbroker decked out in bizarre Seventies getup; a guy named Pasqual with dozens of "cousins" who are ready and willing to work; a prizefighter with a fist of granite and a heart of gold named Joseph Powdermilk Jr.; and a local organized crime figure named Rock with his truckload of henchmen, and you have the makings of a hilarious 88-page crash course in Gonzo economics. The course syllabus from Professor Paulsen includes such essential lessons as, "The Law of Increasing Product Demand Versus Flat Production Capacity," "Force of Arms and Its Application to Business," "Team Management in Times of Uncertainty," and "Serendipitous Activity and Its Effects on Capital Quantity."

That Gary! What will he think of next?

Richie Partington
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