Gold!
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- £5.49
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
A riotous retelling of the Midas myth by the Caldecott Honor-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of No, David!
Maximilian Midas was a peculiar little boy.
He didn’t much like chocolate and he didn’t play with toys.
The first word that he uttered when he was one year old
Wasn’t Mama, wasn’t Papa; what Maxie said was, “Gold!”
Max Midas isn’t like the other kids. Instead of trying to make friends, he decides to make millions and spends it all on what he loves best: GOLD. Gold statues. Gold fountains. Piles and piles of gold, and atop them all, a golden castle. But one day, things get lonely inside his shiny castle and Max finally learns that gold isn’t worth anything without friends and family by your side.
David Shannon, the Caldecott Honor—winning and New York Times bestselling author of No, David!, is back with a riotous romp that’s sure to be a beloved classic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Maximilian Midas is a gold-obsessed, repp-tie-wearing redhead who presents as white; with a "touch/ For raking in the dough," he pooh-poohs parental love and sells sips of lemonade at market price on the hottest days. When "plucky neighbor girl" Sadie, portrayed as Black, opens a lemonade stand "to help some needy kids," Max sabotages her product, building a lemonade empire to acquire the literal mountain of gold he's coveted from an early age. Unrepentantly isolated, mogul Max eats a heap of gold dust with his breakfast cereal and immediately turns into a solid gold statue. In nightmarish images (including a Twilight Zone–worthy extreme close-up), golden Max proves capable of a lone redemptive tear, and finishes the story as not only a loving offspring but apparently a conscious capitalist as well, enlisting Sadie to "help me/ use my millions/ To make a better world." Shannon (Mr. Nogginbody Gets a Hammer) gets mixed results in casting the Midas myth as a critique of cold-blooded capitalism: if his exaggerated, even grotesque, art style fits the theme of excess, Sadie's role in Max's salvation feels misguided at best, and a closing line about making "millions more" does little to dismantle the capitalist myth. Ages 3–7.
