Gold! by David Shannon

Hey, Story Seekers!

Some kids want toys. Some want a puppy. Some want unlimited cookies and have prepared a surprisingly detailed business proposal.

Maximilian Midas wants gold.

That's the whole plan.

We're exploring Gold!, written and illustrated by David Shannon.

Readit has begun inspecting our equipment for precious metals.

"Is this gold?"

That's a paper clip.

"Gold paper clip?"

Silver.

"How much is it worth?"

We're going to have trouble with this book.

Book Breakdown

The cover is the entire book, and it's very well judged.

Max is standing on top of the Earth. Not near it. On it. And the whole planet has gone gold.

He's wearing a crown and heart-shaped sunglasses, because of course he loves it.

And on his feet: pink bunny slippers.

That gap, between a boy who owns the world and a boy still dressed for Saturday morning, is where all the comedy in this book lives.

Shannon opens in verse, and here's the actual text so you can judge the rhyme yourself:

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!"

From there Max gets worse in an impressively organized way.

He cheats at school to collect gold stars. He turns a lemonade stand into a fortune, sabotaging a rival by dropping a dead mouse in their pitcher. By seven he has millions.

He charges his own parents rent.

Eventually he builds a golden castle on a mountain of the stuff and moves in alone, which is the part the pictures handle better than the words. Shannon keeps widening the gap between Max's enormous piles of gold and the ordinary, warm, populated lives happening somewhere below him.

Then Max decides to sprinkle gold dust on his cereal.

I have reviewed a number of breakfast strategies. This is a new one.

He turns into a golden statue. Can't run the empire, can't enjoy the castle, can't move. He can only look out at the people he spent the whole book pushing away.

One tear breaks the spell, and Max works out that the gold was never worth what it cost him.

So yes, this is King Midas. But instead of an ancient king we get a seven-year-old tycoon in bunny slippers, which is a genuine improvement in footwear.

For teachers and librarians: Viking Books for Young Readers, September 6, 2022. Forty pages, ages 3 to 7, preschool to grade 2. Fountas & Pinnell N. Roughly 822 words, per a secondary source.

The publisher lists the Lexile as NP, which stands for non-prose. That isn't a missing number, it's a label: the book is in verse, so a standard Lexile doesn't apply. Worth knowing if you're matching a reader to a level.

One caution for anyone researching this book. Search for its reading data and you'll find 740L, ATOS 4 and an AR quiz number attached to it. Those belong to Demi's King Midas: The Golden Touch, a completely different book. Don't put them on this one.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

A reviewer named Jeremy wrote one line about this book that I think is the truest thing anybody has said about David Shannon:

"David Shannon's writing is always at its best when his characters are at their worst."

That's exactly right, and it explains both why this book works and where it falls short.

Think about No, David!, which we've already explored here. That book is a kid doing everything wrong, page after page, and it's one of the great picture books of the last thirty years.

And here's the thing about it: it never explains itself. There's no paragraph telling you what David should have learned. You get "No, David!" over and over, then a hug. The book trusts you completely.

Max is Shannon doing the same trick with money, and for about two thirds of the book it's tremendous. He's not a nice kid who gets carried away wanting a shiny bike. He's a miniature tyrant. He sabotages a competitor. He invoices his parents.

At seven. I couldn't get my socks to match at seven.

Shannon draws him with total commitment, which is what sells it. The robes, the crown, the castle, and always those bunny slippers, because a kid playing emperor is still a kid.

Where it slips is the landing.

Somewhere near the end the book stops trusting you. There's a line in there that says gold can never make you feel as good as being nice, which is true, and is also the book handing you the answer rather than letting the golden statue staring out the window do its job.

The picture already said it. It said it better.

And the turn itself is quick. Statue, look outside, tear, changed boy. I don't need Max to spend forty years contemplating his choices. It's a picture book, we have places to be. But one more beat would have made the change feel earned rather than scheduled.

That's not me being hard on it. That's the difference between this and No, David!, and the difference is the explaining.

What I'd actually use it for is the conversation, because the exaggeration is the useful part. Greed is an abstract word to a six-year-old. A boy charging his parents rent from the top of a gold mountain is not abstract at all.

Readit's Review

He put a mouse in the lemonade?

A dead one.

"That's cheating."

Very much so.

"Also gross."

Correct.

"Did he still make millions?"

Yes.

"That seems unfair."

Now you're paying attention.

"Why did he eat gold?"

Excellent question.

"Does gold taste good?"

I don't believe that's the issue.

"Wouldn't cereal already be crunchy enough?"

Readit.

"I'm engaging with the story."

What did you think of Max?

"I didn't like him."

At all?

"I liked the bunny slippers."

There we go.

"And turning into a statue was cool."

You understand that's the bad part.

"For Max."

Fair.

What Others Think

This is the widest gap yet between audience and readers, and unusually the readers aren't split so much as lukewarm.

KidTime StoryTime's read-aloud has 6.3 million views and 9,100 likes.

Goodreads has it at 3.71 out of 5 from 452 ratings and 96 reviews. But look at the shape: only 20 percent gave it five stars, and a full third landed on exactly three. That's the most three-star-heavy book we've reviewed. Almost nobody hates it. Not many love it.

The praise is consistently for the pictures. Pam notes that the detailed illustrations emphasize the contrast between Max's gold and other people's lives, which is precisely what they're doing. Mary found the bold illustrations and the rhyme working well together.

Jeremy, whose line about Shannon I borrowed above, was going to give it three stars and bumped it to four purely on the strength of Maximilian in golden regalia and bunny slippers.

I understand the impulse. Those slippers are carrying more than their share.

The criticism runs in two directions, and both are fair.

Several readers find the rhyme uneven, which matters more in a book that commits to verse from the first line. And several find Max so unpleasant for so long that they never quite care what happens to him, which is the risk Shannon runs every time he does this.

Kirkus went further and found the moral muddled, pointing out that making millions is still part of Max's life after he reforms. The book objects to his obsession rather than his empire.

Booklist starred it and praised the clever rhyme and Shannon's vibrant oil paintings.

So: teachers and librarians reaching for a Midas story for young kids like it. Readers looking for one of Shannon's best are the ones filing three stars.

Both groups are right about what they're measuring.

Belly Laugh Scale

3 out of 5: Solid Chuckles

Three, and the comparison that sets the number is Shannon's own back catalog.

There are real laughs here, and they all come from commitment. A seven-year-old charging his parents rent. A boy who cheats to win gold stars. Gold dust on breakfast cereal. And Shannon painting each absurdity as though it were a coronation portrait.

But this isn't a book that takes a room apart, and it isn't trying to be. The last third wants reflection more than laughter, and the moral gets stated out loud rather than left in the picture.

No, David! is a five because it never once explains itself.

This is a three because it does.

Readit would like the bunny slippers entered separately for consideration.

Final Explorer Verdict

Ages 4 to 7, for kids who like Shannon's wild-eyed characters, outrageous behavior, fairy-tale logic, and watching somebody make a spectacularly bad decision and have to live in it.

It's genuinely the best on-ramp I know to the Midas idea for small children. You don't have to explain ancient Greece. You show them a boy who turned the whole planet gold and then couldn't eat breakfast.

I wouldn't call it one of Shannon's funniest or most satisfying books, and I'd rather tell you that than oversell it. The turn comes fast and the rhyme isn't equally smooth the whole way.

But the pictures reward a slow look, and there's a real conversation waiting on the last page that doesn't need a worksheet.

How much is enough? What would you buy with all that money? What wouldn't you trade for it?

And most pressingly: why did he put gold on his cereal?

If your kid takes to Max, the obvious next stop is No, David!, which is Shannon doing the same trick with a smaller budget and, I'd argue, better results.

I'm not forcing a bridge to my own shelf on this one. Nothing in my catalog is close enough to a Midas retelling to earn it, and a recommendation you can feel being wedged in isn't worth having.

Readit?

"Yeah?"

If you had a million dollars, what would you buy?

"A million dollars."

That isn't how it works.

"Then I'd have two million."

You have taken precisely the wrong lesson from this book.

"I'd buy bunny slippers."

Better.

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit