Lawn Boy

“It all makes sense if you wait long enough.”

Caring for Grandma demands patience from her family because of her disjointed logic: For instance, one minute she’s talking about a lawn mower and the next she muses how Thursday night bridge club conflicts with CSI showtimes. If one waits patiently for the connection, however, Grandma’s entire thought process makes sense. The same concept applies to the boy’s story. Even though he didn’t understand business or economy initially, he eventually learns more about how the world works than he knew before.

“Thanks, Grandpa. I never really knew my grandfather but the mower seemed tough and friendly. Maybe it was like him. He had worked on it and used it and it was nice to think of him as part of it.”

The lawn mower links directly to the boy’s family because his grandfather, whom the boy never really knew, cared for it. Tools that are truly cherished can develop their own character; the boy imagines the mower’s history and decides it appears “tough and friendly.” The boy values the mower’s presence, unassuming as it may be, and thus they create a bond that proves valuable to the boy’s future endeavors.

“But [Arnold] seemed okay and I thought he had an honest face—which turned out to be right, except that I’m not sure what a dishonest face would look like. Maybe a sneaky turtle? Or a shifty rabbit?”

The boy and Arnold’s relationship proves to be benign, but the boy recognizes that he makes presumptions about Arnold’s integrity when they first meet. The boy trusts his intuition, admitting he couldn’t have perfectly assessed Arnold’s sincerity in hindsight. The boy backtracks to his previous rabbit-and-turtle metaphor to decide whether a simple image could have interpreted Arnold’s intentions. As much as the boy craves a simpler world—one in which rabbits mean “fast” and turtles mean “slow”—he can’t imagine what symbol could represent honesty or dishonesty. Life is complicated, and nuance can’t always be neatly categorized.

“I mean it’s true that my parents are very smart people. Maybe not about money, but in other ways. My dad is full of ideas and how to tackle them. He even understands Einstein. My mother can do amazingly complicated math in her head.”

The primary difference between the boy’s parents and other characters, such as Arnold and Pasqual, is how they apply their knowledge and skills. Arnold is part of an established economic system, while Pasqual works night shifts to accommodate his family’s schedule. Conversely, Mom and Dad use their passions for creativity, innovation, and to help people. The boy recognizes value in each of these, and he especially admires his parents’ brilliance.

“And with my average brain and average grades I lead a pretty average life. When I was small I played with toys, made models. I sometimes still make models. I went through a massive video game phase and still like to play now and then. I like girls but can’t talk to them. Not a word. I try to be nice to everyone, and polite to old folks, people over twenty or thirty.”

This passage highlights the boy’s innocence and youth. The boy is a typically “average” protagonist, dealing with the same girl and school challenges as most other 12-year-old boys, and assuming that people turn “old” after around twenty or thirty years, which seems as mature as any other adult in the boy’s eyes. This helps middle grade readers experience the story as though it is happening to them.

“Supply and demand. […] It’s groovy, man. The very nature of the concept of economic structure. You just need more mowers, more people, to meet the growing demand.”

Hard work doesn’t always directly correlate to wealth. Instead, Arnold offers the boy insight about what makes a business successful: supply and demand. The more needs potential clients have, the more they will buy goods or utilize services. Because the previous lawn mowing service lost its business, the boy can grow his own client base, and he can hire more employees to accept more customers. The quote also reflects Arnold’s fascination of capitalism well-utilized.

“‘[Pasqual] wears a headlamp. Ingenious, really. I admire his creativity in the face of opposition. Entrepreneurship at its finest—there are no impossibilities, just hurdles to be overcome.’ ‘Is it, you know, safe?’ Kenny Halverson’s uncle said he didn’t like half the things he saw in the daylight and that there was a very good reason for being afraid of the dark. If we were supposed to be out in the dark, Kenny Halverson’s uncle said, we’d be born with night-vision goggles on our heads.

The boy’s understanding of the world derives from maxims and personal anecdotes. The boy ponders Kenny Halverson’s uncle’s advice when Arnold asks the boy to meet Pasqual after dark. While Kenny Halverson’s uncle leans heavily on superstition, being vigilant after dark is sound advice. Nevertheless, urged by Arnold’s assurances and his own curiosity, the boy meets Pasqual, and Arnold’s judgment proves trustworthy. The incident also touches on the theme of bearing responsibility for one’s tools; whereas Kenny Halverson’s uncle believes humans would naturally have night-vision goggles if they were created for the dark, Pasqual wears a headlamp to overcome the extra obstacle.

“You can always trust a redhead. They sometimes have mean tempers, to be sure, but they’ve usually got good hearts.”

The boy remembers Grandma’s strange advice when he meets Pasqual, who has bright red hair. The boy decides to trust Pasqual because of her comment, showing that he trusts his family’s wisdom and the ways they discern right and wrong. The boy and Pasqual’s partnership ultimately strengthens the boy’s business.

“I had grass everywhere. In my socks, in my cereal bowl every morning, on my toothbrush. My shoes were stained green, I couldn’t smell anything but fresh-cut grass, and I dreamed about endless lawns and enormous piles of clippings. I found myself thinking about how to best lean into turns so that the mower wouldn’t leave rough patches that needed to be trimmed by hand. I spent a great deal of time wondering if I could rig an umbrella to the mower to keep the sun off my face, not because I minded the heat but because when I squinted, I made the rows uneven. I dug through old copies of Sports Illustrated to look for pictures of major-league ballparks’ outfields so that I could study the patterns the grounds crews left behind in the nap of the grass. But mostly the work cycle took over and I kind of missed the bigger picture.”

The first half of Lawn Boy shows the boy increasingly occupied mowing lawns. Simply watching him acquire one job after another could feel repetitive, so Paulsen uses humor to make passages about work’s monotony interesting. He describes all the strange places where the boy finds extraneous grass and his dreams about “enormous piles of clippings,” an amusing image. Paulsen also uses the story’s less exciting moments to illustrate the boy’s character; despite the boy’s self-professed average intelligence, he contemplates creative solutions to various problems he notices while mowing. The boy’s ingenuity notably reflects his dad’s inventiveness, further establishing his family’s influence on his character.

“Free-market industry and capitalism at their best. It’s like watching a really good documentary about business. Far-out.”

Arnold loves capitalism partially because its rags-to-riches trope can manifest in real life. He appreciates that ordinary people can create a functional business, and he cheers their success. Though the boy pays Arnold a service commission, Arnold genuinely enjoys watching the boy’s story unfold and pours effort into organizing the boy’s business operations.

“I don’t know what we’re doing. […] 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.”

The boy had not imagined work monopolizing his whole summer, and the absence of anything non-work related frustrates him. Before Arnold briefs him about his business’s status, the boy is just another cog in the machine, mowing as many lawns as daylight allows while his friends are playing sports and attending camp. When he sees less than the full picture, work is tiresome and impacts his health and family time.

“‘Fifteen people work for me?’ I wished he would quit talking about my ‘operation’ and its ‘phases.’ It was starting to sound like General Motors or something. ‘Yes. And that should lead you to consider your responsibility as a business head. You owe your employees that consideration.’ ‘Well, sure. If there’s fifteen people working for me I should consider them. But I don’t know what you mean specifically.’”

The boy has good intentions, but he doesn’t fully understand how to support his workers. The boy wants to avoid speaking about his work and employees like they’re items in a contract or like he is an aloof corporate head. The boy prefers the simply performing services for his flesh-and-bone neighbors rather than thinking of people and money as maneuverable pawns.

“‘Then there’s my fee. I’m taking five percent across the board, for this and the market work, just to simplify things, rather than work on a sliding scale. All right?’ Oh my, yes, I thought. Let’s keep it simple. I felt like I was drowning in aspects and phases. ‘Good? I mean, I guess it is… good. Sure, good.’”

The dialogue between Arnold and the boy often follows this pattern. Arnold inadvertently explains the situation beyond the boy’s comprehension level, and the boy—earnestly attempting to grasp these complicated concepts—tentatively concurs. The boy tries to keep the conversation as straightforward as possible, which also benefits the middle grade audience. Even if neither the boy nor the audience fully understands Arnold’s explanations, they learn something new and have fun in the process.

“What a strange word that was; it didn’t really mean anything in itself. Rich. Short for Richard? Why does rich mean having tons of money? How many Spalding balls could I buy, really, with eight thousand dollars? Say they’re twenty dollars each to make it simple. Five balls for a hundred dollars. Fifty for a thousand dollars. Four hundred. I could buy four hundred Spalding basketballs…” 

The boy has trouble processing abrupt financial change—and for good reason. The grandest purchases he could conceive before the story began included a bike inner tube and a professional-grade basketball. He has no sense of what $8,000 can buy, so he calculates how many Spalding balls he could theoretically purchase. “Rich” feels like an arbitrary word because he can’t yet conceptualize concrete applications to give the term meaning.

“Look, I understand that I don’t have as much as Bill Gates. Still, I’m very satisfied with what I have. I honestly don’t know what I would do with more money than that. […] It’s more money than I could even think of having. It wasn’t that long ago I was wondering where to get enough money to buy an inner tube for my ten-speed. Now I could buy a whole new bike. I could buy a bunch of them.”

Unlike protagonists in Horatio Alger’s rags-to-riches stories, the boy doesn’t intentionally pursue wealth. Though the boy works hard and enjoys the extra cash he earns mowing lawns, he is initially reluctant to even accept the profit from his investments. This quality makes the boy a sympathetic character in a story that paints a rosy, idealistic picture of capitalism: A boy taking care of his community while growing a business.

“I thought of a really important question. ‘I…’ I was still woozy. ‘I’m still not sure I heard you right. Did you say I now have over fifty thousand dollars?’”

Dry humor helps even dramatic scenes. The boy’s “really important question” isn’t seeking elaboration; he’s just confirming reality. The important question also implies that he’s not yet prepared to process the implications of having fifty thousand dollars.

“Five, six weeks ago I was sitting in my yard wondering about an inner tube. Now I’m a thousandaire. Or something.”

Fabricated words like “thousandaire” contrast with stuffy economic terminology. The boy’s language conveys his juvenile perspective. “Millionaire” and “billionaire” are titles given to extraordinarily rich people; but for a preteen boy, anyone with thousands of dollars is also extraordinarily wealthy.

“‘You think I’m going to complain?’ ‘Some would.’ He sighed. ‘Some have. What if we’d lost?’ ‘Then we would have lost forty dollars. That’s what we started with, right? We lose the whole Walleye thing and all we’ve really lost is that, the original forty dollars.’ ‘Well, that’s a healthy way to look at it.’”

The boy understands physical facts and figures, so even through an introduction to virtual money and company “ownership,” he never loses the fact the original investment was only forty dollars. As his worth increases, the boy becomes more enthralled by the climbing numbers and recognizes how he would be disappointed if his share values dipped.

“‘How about if we call you Earthquake?’ ‘Earthquake?’ ‘Right. We’ll call you Earthquake Powdermilk the next time you box. How does that sound?’ ‘It sounds like it’s not my name.’ ‘Oh. Well, okay. Sure.’”

This exchange between the boy and Joey features central qualities about their characters. Joey’s response—”It sounds like it’s not my name”—reflects Joey’s straightforward nature, but its potentially sarcastic undertones add comedic effect, almost like an inside joke for the reader. The boy’s congenial reply reflects his easygoing disposition, even though Joey rejected the boy’s nickname idea.

“And just like that, I was the sponsor of a boxer, I had security for the business, and my fighter had a cool nickname. I love it when things work out like that.”

We never see the boy spend any money—only once does he mention a new purchase, his bike’s new inner tube. The narrative emphasizes the adventure of growth rather than the thrill of buying expensive new toys or even making his family more comfortable. The boy builds a quality life and business; the money is a bonus, but the real value lies in the boy making the business his own—again, all elements that add to the sense of the novel as an idealist fantasy of capitalism.

“[Mom] frowned, thinking. ‘Well, I would hope that you have a happy and fulfilled life.’ ‘I mean stuff. Is there any kind of stuff you want?’ I looked at Dad. ‘Same for you—anything.’ ‘I’d agree with your mother and hope that you had a good life.’”

The boy’s parents don’t have spare spending money, but they know they don’t need material things to be happy. Purposeful work can enrich life, but loving relationships are central to this family’s happiness. Mom and Dad did not prompt the boy to work all summer—the boy independently decided to mow his neighbors’ lawns. The boy is free to pursue his interests and passions, and his parents will support him every step of the way.

“Joey had gone into the porch slowly, closing the screen door quietly behind him. By that time we were close to the house. If the front door was locked it didn’t slow him down. He hit it with his shoulder, took it off its hinges, and was out of sight.”

The contrast between Joey gently closing the porch door and demolishing the locked front door reflects the two opposite ends of his personality. Joey’s softer side comes with genuine loyalty, as seen through his respect for the boy. Joey’s brute strength conveys his sense of fair play: He fights for a just outcome.

“It was a great dream, in color, with Joey wearing the red trunks for luck and with a lot of action, and because it had been such a late night at the fight I slept hard. When the phone by my bed woke me up the next morning I was still in the dream. ‘It’s me,’ Arnold said. ‘We have a new development.’ ‘Don’t worry […]. As long as he keeps wearing red trunks we’re bound to win.’”

Luck plays a prominent role in the boy’s success, and he recognizes that hard work alone did not give him a wide-open client base, $50,000, or a surprisingly loyal prizefighter. The boy latches onto Joey’s striking red shorts as a good luck charm. The boy understands that chance bestows fortune and it can take it away, and in the following early-morning conversation, he prepares for the worst. Fortunately, the boy once again has no need for concern.