IF YOU MADE A MILLION

In a welcome companion to How Much Is a Million? (1985), an exploration of the meaning of ""a million dollars,"" including a notion of how much work it represents; how many actual pieces of US money in different forms it would take to make it (e.g., a 95-mile stack of pennies); how to keep it, including rudimentary but clear and accurate outlines of banking and interest: and what it might buy--even introducing the concept of loans. There is a substantial range of difficulty here, from the idea of earning a penny for feeding fish to accumulating $10 by performing other child-sized tasks (with coins and bills depicted in various combinations) to the explanation of compound interest in the author's admirable, lengthy concluding notes (""if you haven't learned about [decimals and percentages], skip to Checks and Checking Accounts""). But Schwartz's examples (buying a castle called Gloomsby Hall or tickets to the moon; babysitting an ogre) and Kellogg's detailed illustrations--featuring a cheerful wizard, comic beasts, a cuddly unicorn, and his usual deliciously exaggerated action--are so imaginative and witty that they should appeal to a children with a wide range of ages and abilities.