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| Perma-Bound Edition ©2004 | -- |
| Paperback ©2004 | -- |
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.
Horn Book (Fri Apr 01 00:00:00 CST 2005)Determined to make a million dollars, fifth-grader Gina forms the "Get Rich Quick Club" with her friends. The group decides to photograph a UFO and then sell the pictures to a supermarket tabloid. What could be easier? The fast-moving, humorous novel is populated with kid-pleasing characters, including an Australian girl who speaks in Down-Under slang (translated in footnotes).
Kirkus ReviewsEleven-year-old Gina Tumolo loves money and wants nothing more than to make a million dollars this summer. To that end she, her best friend Rob, Australian transplant Quincy, and the eight-year-old Bogle twins form their own company. Their plan: fake a UFO photo and sell it to the tabloids. When The National Truth won't bite, they sell it for $15 to the Farmington Journal . TV reporters follow. Gina is tongue-tied in front of the camera, but the Bogle twins' facility for outlandish fibbing sparks a national phenomenon. Just when it seems $10 million might be the result, someone has an attack of conscience. The characters are regular kids and the story is believable, silly fun to a point. Quincy's constant Australian slang, translated in footnotes, might annoy some while teaching useful, new epithets to others. Fans of Gregory Maguire's Hamlet Chronicles will enjoy this fluffy, summer read with a fun twist ending. (Fiction 8-12)
School Library JournalGr 3-6-Gina, 11, dreams of making her first million this summer and becoming the next Bill Gates, and she recruits two of her classmates, as well as the annoying neighborhood twins, to help her. They call themselves the Get Rich Quick Club. With Gina as the CEO, they devise their company charter and bylaws and decide to fake a UFO sighting and sell their bogus photos to the tabloids for profit. The antics that follow are sure to tickle readers' funny bones. When it seems that the kids will succeed with their plan, the rug is pulled out from under them and their dreams are quickly dashed. However, a fun twist at the end pokes fun at tabloid papers and alleged alien encounters. Gutman's fans will not be disappointed by this fast-paced, comedic tale, and it's ideal for reluctant readers.-Linda Zeilstra Sawyer, Skokie Public Library, IL Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
ALA Booklist (Sun Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2004)
Horn Book (Fri Apr 01 00:00:00 CST 2005)
Kirkus Reviews
School Library Journal
Chapter One
Nothing to Be Ashamed Of
I, Gina Tumolo, love money. So I guess it makes sense for me to dream about it.
I, Gina Tumolo, want to be a millionaire.
There, I said it. I know it's not cool to say it, but it's the truth, so I might as well admit it. Ever since I was a little girl, I have loved money. In fact, the first memory I have is of money. I was sitting on the couch watching TV one day, and I found a dollar bill stuck inside the cushions. I must have been four years old.
I remember looking at those mysterious markings on the bill. The pyramid with that creepy-looking eye floating through it. What did it mean, I wondered? It all seemed very mystical and magical and wonderful.
I realize that money is just pieces of paper and disks of metal. But from a very young age, I was aware that those papers and disks were powerful. They could be exchanged for other things. You could turn them into just about anything.
This was amazing to me. You could actually walk into a store, hand somebody some green pieces of paper, and then take something from the store to bring home with you. To keep!
Incredible! And the more of that green paper you had, I quickly learned, the more stuff you could bring home.
Wow! What a fantastic idea! I wanted to get as much of that green paper as possible.
I never had many toys when I was little. My parents didn't have much money back then. Whenever I asked for something, they would give me the old line "It costs too much," or "Money doesn't grow on trees." Maybe that's why all I ever wanted was to accumulate as much money as I could.
We learned in school that King Tut became the ruler of all Egypt when he was about my age, eleven. He owned all the treasures of the kingdom. Bill Gates, I know, started Microsoft when he was barely twenty, and it wasn't long before he became the richest person in the world.
Why not me? I asked myself. Why can't I, Gina Tumolo, accumulate a vast fortune at a very young age? What's stopping me?
Nothing. 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. My goal is to make my first million before I'm a teenager.This is the story of the most amazing summer I ever had. It was the summer I started the Get Rich Quick Club.
The Get Rich Quick Club. Copyright © by Dan Gutman. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Excerpted from The Get Rich Quick Club by Dan Gutman
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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.