The Limit

This is the final cover
art.  Advance Review
Copies differ.

Landon, Kristen. 2010. The Limit. New York: Aladdin.
(Advance Reader Copy)

from The Limit

...I heard a sharp gasp from Mom’s checkout worker.  My eyes shot up.  Checkout Lady had her hand over her mouth.  Mom seemed unflustered.  Checkout Lady must have made a mistake.  I kept reading. ... The usual noise and confusion of the megastore around me dimmed.  It was like it faded to almost nothing, leaving only the voices of my mom and Checkout Lady  Even Abbie put a lid on her usual nonstop chatter and stuck her thumb in her mouth.  I thought she’d stopped sucking her thumb a long time ago. 

   “I’m sure it’s a mistake,” Mom said.  “A computer glitch somewhere.”

    Checkout Lady punched a few buttons on her computer while her front teeth gnawed her lower lip like a beaver working a tree.  “I’m sorry.   It’s not a mistake. You’re over your limit.”

   An electric current zapped through me.  No. Wait. Stuff like this didn’t happen to our family.

But 13-year-old Matt was mistaken.  It did happen to his family, and now he was the one chosen by the Federal Debt Rehabilitation Agency (FDRA) to repay his family’s debt under Federal Debt Ordinance 169, Option D which decrees compulsory service in an FDRA workhouse.  Whisked away from his family by a burly guard and smooth-talking, Miss Smoot, Matt is taken to a workhouse without so much as a change of clothes.  Likely based on his above average intelligence, Matt is designated a “Top Floor,” and receives a challenging job, a rigorous school curriculum, and plush accommodations.  Unable to contact the outside world, he learns to live with his fellow “top floors,” Coop, Jeffrey, Isaac, Paige, Neela, Kia, Madeline, and the unseen and mysterious Reginald.  At first glance, all appears in order at the workhouse, but Matt and his friends begin to discover something more threatening than unpaid debts at the Midwest Federal  Debt Rehabilitation Agency workhouse.

Matt narrates this thriller about a high-tech society in which the government assigns every family a spending limit based on its income - not just any limit - the limit, the limit that cannot be exceeded without the direst of consequences. Eye scans and Big Brother-style monitoring are commonplace in this society that readers will find much like our own, where advertising and consumerism reign supreme. Although The Limit’s premise is the consequence of negligent overspending, the heart of the story is the high-tech, cat-and-mouse game between the brilliant “top floors” and the outwardly beautiful but sinister Miss Smoot, as Matt and his fellow inmates make increasingly shocking revelations as they attempt to discover the story of the other workhouse floor assignments and the headaches plaguing some inhabitants. Cautionary, but not didactic, The Limit is sure to hit a nerve with readers old enough to understand even the most basic aspects of family finances. The financially illiterate have even greater reason to read The Limit. Highly recommended.

Ms. Landon’s site offers Lesson Plans and other resources for educators.

On shelves in September.

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One Hen, etc.

Milway, Katie Smith. 2008. One hen: How one small loan made a big difference. Ill. by Eugenie Fernandes. Tonawanda, NY: Kids Can Press.

Vacation is over and it's back to business...I have a canvas bag full of new books to look over. I'll start with One Hen.

One Hen is the true story of how a small micro-loan to a young African boy, Kojo, enables him to sell eggs, buy chickens, pay for school, go to college, and eventually become a successful businessman in his own community, helping others on his way to success.

Micro finance seems an unlikely subject for a picture book, however, One Hen does a fine job of introducing a complicated subject in an uplifting manner that children of many ages will understand. On the simplest level, the book may be read as a picture book to small children, employing only the large print text and colorful, busy, acrylic paintings. The large print text is only one line per double spread, and tells the story in a cumulative style, "This is the hen that Kojo buys with the loan he got. These are the eggs that Kojo sells from the hen he bought..."
Smaller print, enclosed in text boxes tells the story in more detail, " Slowly, slowly, Kojo's egg money grows. After two months he save enough to pay his mother back. In four months he has enough to buy another hen. Now Kojo can sell five eggs a week, and he and his mother have more to eat." Fernandes' artwork is busy, bright and cheerful, depicting life (even a poor life) in Ghana as colorful and purposeful.

The story is followed by a photo and biography of the real Kojo, a page listing suggestions of how children can help others in Kojo's situation, a listing of other people who have been helped by micro loans, and finally a glossary of unfamiliar African (calabash) and financial (profit) terms.

This is a book that may have a limited audience but it's worth checking out.