The Get Rich Quick Club

Dan Gutman

Language: English

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: Jan 1, 2004

Pages: 75
ABC: 19

Description:

We, the members of the Get Rich Quick Club, in order to form a more perfect summer, vow that we will figure out a way to make a *million dollars* by September. We agree that neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night will prevent us from achieving our stated goal, till death do us part. Gina Tumolo and her Get Rich Quick Club are determined to make their summer pay off. They're going to make a pact and hatch a scheme, and their small-town life will never be the same again. ** ### From Publishers Weekly Gutman's (*Honus & Me*; the Baseball Card Adventures) light, sprightly-paced story introduces a quintet of kids who start a club with the intention of making lots of money—fast. Eleven-year-old narrator Gina ("CEO") believes that money makes the world go around ("My goal is to make my first million by the time I'm a teenager"). She masterminds the club's plan along with Rob, who Gina explains "sees the world differently from other people" and is "probably a genius," Quincy, an Australian girl whose colloquialisms are translated (rather annoyingly) with footnotes at the bottom of the pages; and a pair of eight-year-old twins with a penchant for stretching the truth—very far. After the kids decide against several suggested money-making schemes—marketing microwavable ketchup-filled pillows; writing a rap song ("Rappers make millions of dollars," says one twin)—Rob proposes photographing a phony UFO and selling the picture to the media. The tale grows taller as the twins embellish their UFO story for TV crews and the "sighting" makes national headlines, bringing masses of "UFO nuts" to town. Readers will hardly be surprised when the hoax is revealed, yet Gutman adds an unexpected final twist to this kid-pleasingly over-the-top tale. Ages 8-12. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ### From Booklist Gr. 3-5. "Other kids want to be in the Olympics, or they want to become rock stars or presidents. Good for them. I want to be a millionaire." This confession comes from Gina, the wry 11-year-old narrator of Gutman's latest. With help from fellow stockholders, Gina, CEO of the Get Rich Quick Club, cooks up a cockamamy scheme to sell a story about visiting aliens to a tabloid. Gina's deadpan comment when she realizes their staged photo has touched off a nationwide frenzy ("Well, I guess I overestimated the intelligence of the human race") encapsulates the tart, funny thrust of this middle-grade satire, which combines elements of Andrew Clements' *Frindle (1996) *with the classic UFO scam, *War of the Worlds. *Some adults may find Gina's Bill Gates worship and the absence of significant consequences for the kids' dishonesty difficult to stomach. No matter; the intended audience will chortle over Gutman's characteristically broad humor, and will appreciate that the lessons about our money-grubbing, media-saturated culture are left implicit. *Jennifer Mattson* *Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved*