Lawn Boy by: Gary Paulsen

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Publisher: Random House

Copyright Date: 2007

Number of Pages: 96

Reading Level: 9-12

Summary:

This is a book about a boy who is trying to raise money to buy a new inner tube for his bike tire. His parents are poor so he doesn't know where he is going to get it. Well, his grandma (kinda crazy lady) gives him a riding lawn mower for his birthday and then things begin to change. He starts by mowing his parents' tiny yard. Then, his neighbor pays him to do his... then that guys neighbor... and so on. Pretty soon he is mowing four lawns a day at about 40 dollars per yard. He is getting more and more money. More money than he knows what to do with. Well, one day he meets Arnold. Arnold makes investments in the stock market and he says that instead of paying the lawn boy he will invest that forty dollars for him... Lawn boy (his name is never mentioned) already has too many lawns to do and so he doesn't want to do one if he isn't going to get money for it. Well, Arnold knows people. Pretty soon Lawn boy has a crew of workers working for him. He gets half of what they earn and so now he can cover even more lawns. Money starts to rake it. As Arnold as his accountant all the money goes to him and he keeps the records and keeps investing things.

Eventually, between some luck with the stock market and all the work that they've been doing, lawn boy has 16,000 dollars! He didn't know what to do! But Arnold gave him even more news... He invested in another stock and... yup... the gain from that put the amount of money that lawn boy has at 50,000 dollars, with that news lawn boy passes out. On top of everything else, he is now a sponsor of a heavy weight champion Joseph Powdermilk. If he wins, then lawn boy gets a percentage of the winnings. The day that he meets "Joe Pow" they get news from one of their workers that there is a man at his house that is demanding all there money from them. Well all of them, including Joe, who is huge, pack into a little pickup to go figure out the problem. Without a word Joe Pow goes over to the man, picks him up with one arm and chucks him back into the car... They were sure that would be the last time that they saw "Rock".

Time goes on and money keeps pouring in. Lawn boy still has yet to tell his parents because he doesn't want to them to think he is bragging. Plus, he doesn't know how to even bring it up. One day as he is mowing lawns he gets a call from Arnold. He tells him to go home immediately and then hangs up. Curious, he heads over to Arnold's to find Rock and some of his buddies holding Arnold hostage. Lawn boy runs home and tells his parents everything. They are surprised, obviously, and they get a hold of Joe and they all meet at Arnold's. Joe walks right in and takes all of them out, well, more like tosses them all out the door. They never bother anyone again.

In the end, Apparently one of the numbers was calculated wrong and he didn't only have 50,000 dollars but 450,000 dollars. When he told his parents, his dad fainted, which made him think that there is a weak male gene in the family.

Who would benefit from reading this book/who would I recommend this book to?

I would recommend this book to any boy who is thinking about mowing lawns. Also, kids who like numbers would like this book a lot.

What problems/conflicts could this book potentially cause?

Well, it can be a bit confusing at times when it starts going into detail about the stock market and stocks and bonds and interest and things... So that might turn some kids off. It also deals with people who are trying to steal the money from the business and that is a little off color. I definitely wouldn't recommend this to anyone below 11 or 12.

My reaction:

I thought this was an extremely clever book. It was really funny as well which made it easy to read. Arnold kept saying things like, groovy and far out. The grandma was kind of crazy and said really random things which make this a funny book as well. I enjoyed the exponential growth of the kids company and how he reacted to having all that money! It was a cute idea that I thought the author portrayed very well.