[LISTENED TO: March 11, 2013] The Get Rich Quick Club
I grabbed this audio book because I knew we were taking a longish trip and I wanted something for the kids to listen to. It’s hard to find a book that both a 7-year-old boy and 5-year-old girl will enjoy (although truth be told, T. and C. are up for just about any story as long as the language isn’t too hard–nevertheless, I try to find stuff that’s age appropriate. (Which means that the stories I’m excited for them to enjoy are about two years off yet) . The library has a great online resource (Listen NJ) but the search features are awful–it’s really hard to search by age and it’s also hard to find stories that are a good length (2 hours or so). There’s so many that are 8 hours or 8 minutes.
But anyhow, I knew that Dan Gutman was a fun author (C. loves the whole My Weird School series) but I didn’t know this story. And it turned out to be great.
The story is set in Maine. It’s about five kids. Gina Tumolois the leader. She says right out that she always wanted to be rich. Her hero is Bill Gates and she wants to be a millionaire before she is a teenager (she’s 11). She is unabashed about her love of money. And she is very bummed that she has none.
The summer starts and she is bored. Because she has no money. So she and her friend Robert , who hang out in the branches of the tree in the park behind their house start talking about what to do for the summer. Then their friend Quincy comes over. Quincy is my favorite character because she is from Australia and she speaks in Australian slang (which is very helpfully translated every time she speaks–you can learn a lot of great funny slang including some very finny words for “idiot” from this book). There’s also the Boggle twins, 8 year old boys who are a pain–and unstoppable liars.
When Gina tells them they that they could make a fortune, they each try to come up with ideas to make money. They’re all lame (lemonade stand, etc) until Robert comes up with the genius idea–fake a UFO photo. And they are on it! They get all kinds of things to fake the photo with and Quincy starts taking pictures (they are using Polaroid film rather than digital cameras, which limits the number of pictures they can take). Finally, they get a good one and they plan out how they can make some money off of it.
They try to sell it to a tabloid (for $1,000,000). But the tabloid says they get dozens of pictures every day. So they decide to stay local and sell it to the town paper. He offers them fifteen. Fifteen million? No, fifteen dollars. But they got their picture in print!
And then things spiral. The local TV news comes to talk to them, and that’s when the Boggle twins and their lying comes in handy. They say that they actually talked to an alien. And within a few days, UFO freaks comes to their town and merchandising offers start pouring in. Gina calculates that they could make $10 million.
But then someone’s conscious rises. And Gina is not happy. Especially when the truth means the end of their money. At this point Gina becomes exceptionally unlikable. Indeed, the whole premise of getting rich by scamming people is quite unpleasant–especially since she admires Bill Gates, someone who actually did something to earn his money. But that’s neither here nor there, it’s a silly book about aliens.
And the end of the book has an amazing payoff. The ending is absolutely hilarious.
The book was read by Angela Goethals and she did an incredible job. Her Australian accent was very good for those parts and she performed a very convincing range of characters–boys (the twins are great as is Robert), girls, men (her newspaper editor was hilarious) and women (a nice variety of secretaries). I was really impressed with her work.
I’ve read that some people don’t like this book because the kids aren’t punished for the scam. And, really, how can you havea business (with a CEO) if you just pulled a scam, but it’s not that kind of story. It’s a funny story about fake UFOs. As I said, by the end I didn’t like Gina so much, but she does come around. And, yes, that ending is great.
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