THE BIG BUCK ADVENTURE

This sprightly rhyming excursion into buying power puts lie to the notion that economics is by nature a dreary topic. When the first-person narrator is given a raise in allowance, visions of new purchases fill her head. As she shops the store’s candy, toy, deli, and pet departments, she is overwhelmed by the multiplicity of deals offered by eager merchants—ample opportunity to figure out the best deal mathematically. “A penny for your thoughts,” says one merchant as the girl opts for something really unusual—to spend not a cent, and to tuck her money into a bank at home, but only after a nicely turned pitch of her own: “Why you can have one hundred/of my thoughts for a dollar!/Ten thoughts for a dime,/five for a nickel/twenty-five thoughts/for a sour dill pickle.” If the value of money is in its possibilities, rather than its purchases, readers, too, will be relieved when the girl leaves the store. Lin’s illustrations make the mayhem memorable in an easy book to pair with Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith’s Math Curse (1995). (Picture book. 5-9)