51 pages • 1 hour read
Lunch Money
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Symbols & Motifs
Chunky Comics
At first, Chunky Comics is Greg’s self-started publishing business that produces little 16-page comic booklets written, drawn, printed, and sold by Greg. They are his most ambitious effort to make money selling things to his fellow students. They are also a major project in which he throws all of his enthusiasm for business, writing, and drawing. Greg plans three series of comics, each centered on a hero from a different era: Cleon, a caveman; Eeon, from the future, and Leon, a “technodude” who travels through time to bring all three heroes together.
When he is cornered by Maura’s competing comic about a unicorn, he realizes that the best way to beat her is to join her, and they become partners in Chunky Comics. This collaboration leads quickly to new and better ways that they can sell the little booklets, and they have a lot more fun and satisfaction creating good artworks. They develop several story lines and find ways to sell them at schools. The lesson is that working together is more productive—and more fun—than doing it all by oneself, and that this is much more gratifying than undercutting each other with relentless competition.
Minicomic
Greg and Maura’s booklets are minicomics: They are very small, “about the size of a credit card” (25). During the summer before sixth grade, Greg figures out how to create these short, tiny works. In Chapter 4, he learns to draw 16 little illustrations, each a single page of the comic. He then pastes eight on a sheet of standard letter-sized page of paper and eight on a second sheet, copies the originals onto both sides of a page, folds it in a particular way three times, staples it at the right spot, and trims the edges to make a complete, if tiny, comic book that he sells for a quarter.
Greg and Maura work together to produce her minicomic about a unicorn. He helps her improve her sketches so they tell her story more effectively. Then he finalizes her sketches with an inking pen while she does the lettering. He then shows her how to prepare the master sheets for copying. This elaborate process is described in a fair amount of detail to show how much cooperation is needed to produce the comics both kids want to sell. In doing so, Greg and Maura learn the give-and-take of teamwork, and how to get along despite their feisty personalities.
Quarter
Quarter-dollar coins get the whole comic-book project started. Greg forgets his lunch one day, asks in class for the loan of a couple of quarters toward a cafeteria lunch, and discovers that most of his fellow students have extra quarters in their pockets. To obtain more of those coins, Greg buys toys and candy and sells them for a quarter each. He loves the jingle of change and enjoys just looking at quarters: “Stack up four, and you’ve got a dollar. Stack up twenty quarters, and that’s five dollars” (16).
Quarters become the main symbol of Greg’s yearning for more and more cash; they inspire his minicomic project, compel him to deal with Maura, and lead them both toward a successful little student business. Only when Greg learns to share those quarters with others—with partner Maura and as donations to the school library—does he fully appreciate how good quarters really can be.
Unicorn
Maura’s comic is titled The Lost Unicorn. It tells of a unicorn, scared and alone in the woods, who finds a princess trapped in an ogre’s tower and frees her. The princess rides the unicorn back to her castle, and her family’s knights lead the unicorn back to its home. The unicorn’s story brings to mind the fears of childhood, the uniqueness of each child, their courage when they want to do what’s right, and the love and happiness of new friendships. This might reflect Maura’s own fears about growing up, her desire to reach across to Greg—and perhaps to rescue him from the ogreish tower of his money obsession—and her hope that they can find their way to the “home” of their new friendship.
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