The Toothpaste Millionaire
by Jean Merrill
Toothpaste costs too much. He makes his own. Then sells it.
For you if
your child has ever looked at a price tag and felt like something was wrong and needs someone to show them they were right
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Rufus Mayflower is twelve years old and genuinely offended that toothpaste costs so much when the ingredients cost almost nothing. So he makes his own — better, cheaper, in his kitchen — and accidentally builds a small business empire. Merrill published this in 1972 and it remains the best children's book ever written about economics as a system rather than a subject: profit margins, production costs, distribution, the gap between what something costs to make and what you're charged for it. Rufus doesn't set out to be an entrepreneur — he sets out to solve an injustice. The most P&P economics book for this age group because it teaches kids to ask the question Rufus asks: why does this cost so much, and who decided that?
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