Boom Town
After her family moves to California, where her father goes to work in the gold fields, Amanda decides to make her own fortune by baking pies. As the demand for more goods and services increases in the town, Amanda encourages others to start businesses of their own.
Interested in using this resource in your classroom? Check out the posters that go along with this book: Supply & Demand, Productive Resources, Economic Wants, Goods & Services, Trade & Money, Interdependence, Specialization, Producers, Consumers, Saving, Entrepreneur.
Author: Sonia Levitin
Accelerated Reader Level/Points: .5
Publisher: Orchard Books
Comprehension Questions
Identify the productive resources Amanda used to make her first pie.
Human resources – Amanda; natural resources – gooseberries, water; capital resources – small iron skillet, pail, bowl, flour sifter, rolling pin; ingredients also included – flour, butter, salt.
Explain why Amanda began to make more pies.
The miners in the gold fields loved them and kept buying them.
List specific examples that caused the demand for Amanda’s pies to continue to increase.
Word spread to people traveling through to stop for a pie; a trading post was opened that sold Amanda’s pies; and more people moved to the town to live.
Describe how the increased demand for pies affected the money jar.
A bigger jar was needed for all the money coming in.
Explain how Amanda improved the productivity of making pies.
She taught her family how to help her make the pies. Each person had a job. She also purchased more and better pans, supplies, etc.
Compare the number of goods and services offered in the town in the beginning of the story to the number at the end.
In the beginning, the town had a stage stop, a pump house, and a few log cabins. At the end of the story, the town had boomed and had many businesses such as a trading post, a cooper, a tanner, a miller, a blacksmith, a laundry, a tailor, a cobbler, a barber, an apothecary, a stable, a hotel, a café, a bank, a bakery, a school, and a church.