Yana van der Meulen Rodgers's Reading List

"My own specialty is women globally and I do a lot of work on women in poor countries. This book focuses on a woman who is very poor. She is in a South Asian country and she picks tea leaves for a living. Her daughter is either too young to go to school or they cannot afford to send her to school, so the daughter often comes along to the plantation. But one day the mother gets very sick and she can no longer pick tea. The daughter is worried that there is no money to pay for the doctor, she really despairs, and ultimately ends up dragging this enormous tea basket to the plantation to try and do the work herself. The overseer is really an angry, mean boss, and he just laughs at her. “You can get a picture book by a high-profile person, teaching traditional financial topics for a young child to understand” And then the fantasy kicks in. The young girl goes and cries in the woods next to the tea plantation and some monkeys end up filling the tea basket, with the best tea in the world, Cloud Tea. The emperor of this country loves the tea and after that, every year, the mother and her daughter get a bag of coins from the emperor for this magical tea. It’s a lovely story. It shows some of the very real poverty that we see in developing countries, but there’s a touch of magic in it, that it’s all going to be OK. So this book really touched my heart. I’ve read it to a number of classes and by the end the children are clapping – they love the story. They are beautiful illustrations. That’s the nice thing with these picture books. I’m often looking at the text, the economics in the narrative, but the pictures really help to make or break a book. Yes. There are several lessons, and income inequality is definitely one of them. But also, here in the US, often kids don’t like school. A lesson is to teach our kids how fortunate they are to be in school, because in some countries children are so poor they cannot go to school – the family cannot afford the fees, or the children actually have to work to support the family."

"In this book the main concept is want versus need, and in the American school system, in many state standards, that’s one of the first economic concepts that young children, five-year-olds, are mandated to have to learn. Teachers have to teach some simple economic concepts, beginning with wants and needs. So this book is just right on. “I think it’s crucial for our children be aware of how fortunate they are, and to start thinking about how they can give back.” The boy really wants these shoes that everyone else has, but he is very poor. He’s being raised by his grandmother and she knows he needs new boots, he does not need these fancy sneakers. But he wants them so badly! And they visit different shops and finally he sees those shoes at a thrift store, but they’re too small. He doesn’t care, he still asks his grandmother to buy them, which she does. But they hurt his feet whenever he wears them and they cause blisters, so ultimately he stops wearing them. By the end of the story he is giving the shoes away to another boy in the class who is also from a poor background. It’s a hard decision for him to give the shoes away, but he does. It’s such a nice story. It is. It’s hard to teach budget constraints when perhaps our families are not as constrained as some others. It’s very easy to give in when our children say, ‘But everyone else has one.’ We don’t want our children to stick out like a sore thumb; we want to help them fit in. Yes, and that’s why a lot of these books in my top five have this international and poverty focus: that’s my own leaning. I think it’s crucial for our children be aware of how fortunate they are, and to start thinking about how they can give back. It’s important for them to see the world with more open eyes and be less materialistic – rather than getting caught up in ‘I’ve got to have this’, ‘I really want that’."

"Exactly. The economics here is a little more sophisticated. The general themes are women in science, which economists write about as well, and women breaking into non-traditional occupations. But there’s another concept that is embedded in some of these content standards and that’s innovation and invention: how innovation helps to improve our standard of living. Yes, the illustrations are just incredible – the detail and the warmth and the humour embedded in them. So this book is about a young girl who is an inventor and an innovator, who designs these contraptions, and that’s the economics part of the book, even though it’s not really that clear in the story. Violet invents different airplanes and helicopters, and she is on her way to an air show where she wants to show off her inventions when she notices that there is a boy-scout troop stranded in the river. So she misses the air show, and instead she rescues this troop. She comes home all disheartened because she missed her air show, but at the end of the book she is celebrated because she is a hero who rescued these people who needed help. It’s hard to escape the power of the media. You may not have Barbie dolls and princess stuff in your house, but whenever the children exit your door they are going to see that at their friends’ houses, they see commercials, it’s just everywhere. And I think sometimes it’s even harder when it’s the other way around. We were at a house this weekend where there was a little two-year-old boy who likes the princess stuff. He wanted to dress up in a princess gown and a tiara, and he was so happy. And the parents let him, thankfully, but I could tell they were a little embarrassed. We all laughed, but the gender roles… why is to so uncomfortable for these parents to see their little boy enjoying wearing a tiara and a princess dress?"

"Yes, it’s actually based on a non-profit organisation called Heifer International. People donate money and the Heifer project donates livestock animals to people in poor countries, who then use the animals to become self-sufficient. For example, goats and cows – they can sell the milk, or they can sell the wool or make the wool into arts and crafts, or they can use the cattle to plough their fields. The organisation even has a catalogue – you can use it to choose a goat, and have the goat go to a country, and you learn about the family who gets the goat. Sign up here for our newsletter featuring the best children’s and young adult books, as recommended by authors, teachers, librarians and, of course, kids. So, in the case of this book, it’s about a girl named Beatrice who lives in an African country – I think it might be Kenya or Uganda. She has some younger siblings and they’re very poor, and she doesn’t go to school. She has to work to help take care of her siblings and she does some farm work also. But her dream is to go to school. So then they get this donation of a goat, and Beatrice is able to sell the goat’s milk and she gives the money to her mother and it turns out her mother has been saving for Beatrice to go to school as well. So the goat’s milk allows them to buy Beatrice’s uniform and her books. Then, at the end of the story, she’s able to go to school and she is just so happy. The words, the sheer happiness that this girl can finally go to school, it really brings tears to one’s eyes. It’s such a good book. Exactly, and also in this case the richness is coming from investing in oneself. When you get an education you’re investing in your human capital, to use the economics jargon, so Beatrice and her mother are investing in Beatrice as human capital when they send her to school, which is a very good use of one’s savings. Another good thing about this book is that I believe some of the proceeds for every book sold go back to the Heifer Project."

"This is illustrated by Korky Paul , who is quite well-known. I love Korky Paul, he’s my absolute favourite illustrator and I stumbled upon this book early on, before I even started the EconKids project. I was reading the book to my kids and I was struck by the illustrations but then as I read it I thought, ‘Wow this is all economics!’ It’s about a little boy in a fictional Middle Eastern country who lives above a bakery. He cannot afford to buy anything from the bakery, but he loves to smell the smells and he even designs a contraption to help him smell everything better. The baker is this grouchy old man who gets really annoyed and demands the boy meet him in court – he wants the judge to order the boy to pay for the smells. So the judge orders the boy to bring five coins the following day. The next day the baker and the boy come back to the judge, and the judge clinks each coin loudly into a metal bowl. He asks the baker, ‘Did you hear that?’ and the baker says ‘Yes!’ And the judge says, ‘Did you like the sound of that money?’ And the baker says, ‘Yes!’ And then the judge says, ‘Well, consider yourself compensated!’ And he gives the coins back to Sanji. That story is about what in economics we call an externality: when something that somebody produces has either a benefit or a cost for other people that is not included in the price. So in this case it’s the smell of the baked goods – other people can enjoy the smell, but they don’t have to pay for it. That’s a positive externality. A negative externality is pollution: when firms produce goods but they pollute the environment and nobody pays for it. It’s a very sophisticated concept, and yet here it is, in this picture book for young children. Mostly by coming to the website, and there’s also the papers that I co-authored with Shelby Hawthorne, who started the list. But I also volunteer: in schools, in classes where my children are. There’s also an international organisation called Junior Achievement – they do a lot of work teaching economic and financial literacy, and I’ve done some volunteering work with them as well. By the way, there is a children’s book that was a book of the month about a year ago, that I do also want to mention. It is more classic economics and it’s called Isabel’s Carwash. The author is Sheila Bair, who has been chairman of the United States FDIC for the last couple of years. So she’s one of the most important financial regulators in the world and she has written a couple of children’s books about saving, investing, and interest rates. Isabel’s Carwash is about a girl who wants to raise money, but she needs a loan, so she borrows from her friend. She promises them the loan back, plus some interest and she starts her own business which is a carwash. There’s risk involved – so it’s all the classic things – risk, interest, lending, investing. It’s a good book. Yes, and I use that as an example that you can get a picture book by a high-profile person, teaching traditional financial topics for a young child to understand."

"The youngster in this book is concerned about his family finances. His father is an inventor and an innovator who has left his regular job and they don’t have much of an income stream. Their house is going on the market; he is worried about having to move away, and he’s desperate to stay. Then he finds a rare baseball card and he realises that at auction it can go for close to $1m. He takes it to a dealer and the dealer convinces this boy and his friend that the card is not worth very much at all, and he gets just $120 for it. Later he finds out that the card was authentic and that he’s been swindled. That’s all economics in terms of the family finances and the value of the card. It’s a scarce card, so it’s worth quite a bit of money. The entertaining part and the reason I like it so much is that the boy and his friends put together a little SWAT team. It’s fabulous entertainment in terms of their antics, what they do to get the card back. It’s very, very exciting, a fun read, and a real page-turner. Gordon Korman is a well-known author and the story is very well done."

"This is also about family finances and difficulties but it’s linked to the current financial crisis. So there is a bit of an explanation about how the US got into trouble, with people taking out mortgage loans on which they could not sustain the changing interest payments, and how banks got into trouble because people weren’t paying back their mortgages. But it is a novel so it personalises it in the case of this family. It’s headed by a single mother (the parents are divorced), and she loses her job. Before, the mother was a high-powered woman who was paid a lot of money and the two girls had everything they wanted. Now, step by step, they have to give up most of what they’ve got used to, including their nice house. It talks about the adjustments that the kids have had to make from the point of view of the teenager who is telling the story. It’s very well done. It’s a lot of real economics, mixed with teen angst, a little romance and a sense of humour. Exactly. The book is highly relevant and very timely. It’s not an analysis of the crisis, but a couple of pages worth of some fundamental ideas, in teenager speak, of what happened – without being too much of a lecture. It’s not dry, it’s not didactic, which is why I put it in my top five. Yes, and they become closer as a result. They become closer as a family and the children also get past themselves. They’re better able to see the world around them in realistic terms. They become more open-minded, in a healthy way. Yes, it’s a pun on the Great Depression of the 1930s, but it’s not so much about the magnitude – I think the pun is on the idea that things are not so wonderful. The family is not going through a great time; it is in fact a difficult period. I think that’s the play on the word great – it’s not fun."

"This one is quite different from the first two – there is nothing about family finances. The main concepts are forced labour, specifically in the military in Myanmar, and also child labour, child education and the economics of conflict. It’s all wrapped up in a story about a country that most of us, even adults, don’t know very much about. The author did quite a bit of research and she did interviews. She’s got some insights so that anyone can learn a bit more about what is going on in Myanmar and why it is so difficult for people to maintain their wellbeing there. The two main characters are both boys, young teenagers, and one is drafted. He’s forced into the military – he’d rather be in school. The other boy is living in the jungle; he is a rebel fighter. It talks about how they meet and how their lives interact. They’re tough topics but it’s very informative if you don’t know much about Myanmar. It’s told from a child’s point of view, so even though it’s serious the novel is still for young people. It’s not too gruesome or too depressing and the ending is hopeful. Yes, in fact the World Bank is publishing its World Development Report this year on conflict, ie a whole book about the economics of conflict, as well as the social impact. So it’s very timely. Conflict is really development in reverse – progress poor countries make towards economic development slows down or is lost when there’s civil war and it causes a lot of economic hardship as well as social hardship for people."

"The Body at the Tower is part of a trilogy, and is the second in the series. The third one has not come out yet [it is due to be released in August 2011 in the UK]. It’s set in Victorian England. It’s a juicy romance novel for young people, but it’s just loaded with economics. It’s about a very poor young woman, who is actually half-Chinese, half-Caucasian, in a society that very much discriminates against people who are biracial. She is recruited into a school for female spies. She is sent on a mission and the person she falls in love with, they do a lot of bantering – it’s kind of a love-hate relationship. In this book there’s a murder, and it turns out the murder is all about profits, and the profits associated with payouts in the construction trade. So the crime is economically motivated – as is her job. She’s doing this work in order to survive; she has nothing else. As a reader who enjoys romance novels, it is kind of fun waiting for the third one to come out to see what happens… The three main ideas are the poverty, discrimination and profit. The whole crime revolves around profit. No, and the author notes that. She says this idea of a school for female spies is utterly make-believe because there was no such thing. Women at the time had no rights whatsoever."

"We’re always told that money doesn’t grow on trees, but in this book it does. The main character is a boy and he’s got some siblings and cousins whom he recruits into helping him get an apple orchard ready for harvest. It’s not his orchard; it belongs to their cranky next-door neighbour, and she says she will let him have it if he can produce a harvest and sell it for a certain amount of money. He’s sucked into this deal and he realises quickly that he doesn’t know the first thing about pruning trees, or harvesting apples. It’s this whole adventure about how to grow apples. There’s a lot of humour in the book, which is one of the two main reasons I liked it so much. But it’s also very informative about what it takes to grow apples. The economics here is about the natural resources but also about the marketing of the apples. There’s also a whole chapter where the kids are trying to decide how to sell the apples, where to sell them and how much to sell them for. There’s another chapter about the cost of all the inputs, how they’re racking up this charge account and it’s all being charged to the father. So there’s a ton of economics involved but it’s another very entertaining book. There is quite a bit of that, including a technical drawing. This is one book you’ll want to read for sure."