weekend read: The Year Money Grew on Trees

The Year Money Grew on Trees by Aaron Hawkins is a fun book that young wanna-be entrepreneurs will love to read. This one is about a kid whose neighbor offers him a deal: get the orchard that her husband used to maintain in working order and come up with $8,000 in one summer and the orchard is yours. And this kid? He’s fourteen.

So he enlists the help of his sisters and his cousins and works his behind off for about eight months. But he doesn’t share the terms of the agreement (or the officially-signed contract) with his parents or family so they don’t know that all the money he’s promising them might never show up. As a reader, it’s fun watching the kids figure out how to run an orchard, work together, succeed, and fail all while going to school during the day and keeping up with home responsibilities. The book also has illustrations from the author (who grew up on an orchard) for step-by-step instructions on some of the more intricate projects the kids have to do. There’s also a lot of math in this book so it would be a fun book to work into a math curriculum and have students learn real-world business math through literature.

The Year Money Grew on Trees by Aaron Hawkins will bore some kids, the ones that don’t have any interest in working with their hand and growing things, but other kids will absolutely love this book. And as adults, it’s our job to get this book in the right hands. Because it could really inspire.

 

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