There’s a lot of great information smuggled into Randy Siegel’s tale of a single penny’s adventure, from its birth in the Philadelphia mint to a sojourn in a sewer grate to a long time-out in a penny jar, then back into someone’s pocket again. “As my man Lincoln once said: ‘Whatever you are, be a good one,’ Which is the law I live by, so I try to be the best penny I can,” the penny notes. Along the way, the penny’s story blends fiction and nonfiction elements to describe the coin’s metal content, the pictures engraved on him, and how many of him there are in the world. A brief history at the back of the book describes American coins from beginning to end. -- Caroline Luzzatto