By Karen Chinn
Sam has four dollars of New Year lucky money burning a hole in his pocket, and Chinatown turns out to be full of things that cost more than four dollars.
It's Chinese New Year, and Sam's grandparents have given him leisee, lucky money, in red envelopes. Four whole dollars, and it's his, to spend on absolutely anything he wants. He goes into Chinatown with his mother with big plans. Then the plans start hitting the prices. The basketball he wants costs far more than four dollars. So does everything else worth having. Four dollars, which felt enormous in his pocket that morning, turns out to be almost nothing in a street full of shops, and Sam gets crosser and crosser about it. Somewhere in the crowd he treads on a man's foot by accident, and when he looks down he sees the man has no shoes at all. Sam is embarrassed and can't stop thinking about it. By the end of the day he still hasn't found anything he wants that he can afford, and he does something with the four dollars that nobody told him to do.
Every child has had Sam's exact day. You get money, the money feels huge, and then you go to a shop and discover the world has already decided what things cost and your money does not care how excited you are. That collision is the first real economics a child ever meets, and this book puts it right in the middle of the story instead of hiding it. What makes it more than a lesson is that Chinn refuses to have an adult solve it. Sam's mother notices the man, says a true thing, and leaves it. Sam sits with it for the rest of the afternoon and then makes his own choice with his own money, and because nobody made him do it, it lands. The Chinatown itself is drawn with real affection, the bakery, the lion dance, the crowd, so the New Year isn't wallpaper behind a message.