Why I read it? Education is key for success, and financial education often falls by the wayside for both children and adults. Sometimes parents just aren’t sure where to start, so any available tools, especially ones that kids can engage with directly, are helpful. The title and clever name of the series caught my eye, I wanted to know the direction that the author would take.
What is it all about? No Money Monday is a short story intended to show children why currency is accepted by society in place of bartering for goods and services. The main characters, siblings Fin and Nance, need to get baking ingredients but the day they go to the market is a “no money” holiday. To make their purchases, they must trade items instead of buying with cash. They quickly realize that people don’t place equal value on the same items – for example, one woman was very interested in trading for a journal, while someone else wanted bricks but not the journal, and so on. The time and effort that the children expend trading for some milk, flour, and baking powder leave the reader exhausted on their behalf, and it drives home the lesson about using money in place of bartering.
How could you use this book with children? If your child is an independent reader, ask them to read the book and then discuss it with them using the prompts in the back of the book to help them understand the lesson. Otherwise, sit down with your child and read the book together and talk about it as you go. In either case, consider bartering with them in place of their allowance for a week or two to help them understand the dilemmas of negotiating.
Add this to your child’s reading list if… This book is intended for children ages 6 to 10. It is written for the purpose of education, not style, so parts of the story feel a bit stilted. However, this is probably not a concern for children, and the author does provide very useful discussion questions in the last section of the book. The author’s website notes that there will be a series of Fin and Nance books on various topics, so I am interested to see which topics will be addressed in future publications.