Lawn Boy by Gary Paulsen

For his 12th birthday, the unnamed protagonist with an "average brain and average grades" in Gary Paulsen’s enjoyable Lawn Boy (J FIC PAULSEN) gets his grandfather's old riding lawn mower for his 12th birthday. Up until then, the kid's biggest concern is getting a new inner tube for his bike tire.

But when a neighbor with a lawn in need of mowing spots the kid's mechanical birthday gift, a business is born.

What follows is a hilarious capitalistic romp in which Paulsen skillfully slips in economic principles with the same degree of skill that parents hide vegetables in their children's meals. This is apparent in the chapter titles, which go by such names as "The Law of Increasing Product Demand Versus Flat Production Capacity" and "Dramatic Economic Expansion: Its Causes and Effects."

Faced with no competition, Lawn Boy's burgeoning landscape empire quickly grows to a degree he never dreamed of reaching. What starts out as a $20, one-lawn job, metastasizes into a round-the-clock operation involving a host of employees and a stockbroker. The kid even finds himself with muscle, a boxer by the name of Joseph Powdermilk.

"I don't know what we're doing," I said. "Not a clue. Except that we're cutting a lot of grass and I'm not getting much sleep. And this morning my mother said she was forgetting what I look like."

These scenarios require Lawn Boy to deal with practical, real-life questions: How do these people get paid? How much should they get paid? How can he run his business more efficiently? Not to mention the increased complications success brings, like how to expand at a manageable pace and how to handle conflicts with others who try to strong-arm their way into the action.

Paulsen, perhaps best known for the teen survivalist story Hatchet, here writes a fun, quick-read that younger children will like — what kid doesn't dream of what they'd do with tons of money (see also: I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Class President)? But older readers will also appreciate Lawn Boy for its economics lessons disguised in a preteen's crazy summer tale.

Here's a video trailer for the book: