An informative primer on how money functions that doesn’t trigger the dismal science’s snooze button.
A sporty guide to the wide, weird world of money.
Scott starts with the early forms of barter; when barter outgrew itself as the population increased: “things that were traded simply didn’t match up evenly. There was no common medium of exchange.” Those mediums came, in the form of salt, cowrie shells, wampum, feathers, and precious metals and gems. Buoyed by Clark’s comic, explicative ink drawings, Scott sallies on to cover the evolution of currency and economy, mediums of exchange and standards, and charts the evolution of banks (“ ‘Bank’ comes from the Italian word banco, meaning a long bench on which money changers set up shop”). Numerous sidebars serve as attending footnotes to cover such topics as personalities, Hammurabi’s Code, banking supervision, and the Dodd-Frank Act. It is too much to ask this brief introduction to get into the mechanics of banking, but some illustrative examples would have been heaven sent. For instance, what triggers inflation? That would have helped the latter discussions of recession and depression. But even at surface level, readers will follow the dominos and get a good grasp of debt. They will also take a long look at “The Government Steps In,” and especially the Troubled Assets Relief Program, and likely ask, how has that alleviated the banking situation?
An informative primer on how money functions that doesn’t trigger the dismal science’s snooze button. (glossary, resources, index) (Nonfiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-58089-396-1
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Though usually cast as the trickster, Coyote is more victim than victimizer, making this a nice complement to other Coyote...
Two republished tales by a Greco-Cherokee author feature both folkloric and modern elements as well as new illustrations.
One of the two has never been offered south of the (Canadian) border. In “Coyote Sings to the Moon,” the doo-wop hymn sung nightly by Old Woman and all the animals except tone-deaf Coyote isn’t enough to keep Moon from hiding out at the bottom of the lake—until she is finally driven forth by Coyote’s awful wailing. She has been trying to return to the lake ever since, but that piercing howl keeps her in the sky. In “Coyote’s New Suit” he is schooled in trickery by Raven, who convinces him to steal the pelts of all the other animals while they’re bathing, sends the bare animals to take clothes from the humans’ clothesline, and then sets the stage for a ruckus by suggesting that Coyote could make space in his overcrowded closet by having a yard sale. No violence ensues, but from then to now humans and animals have not spoken to one another. In Eggenschwiler’s monochrome scenes Coyote and the rest stand on hind legs and (when stripped bare) sport human limbs. Old Woman might be Native American; the only other completely human figure is a pale-skinned girl.
Though usually cast as the trickster, Coyote is more victim than victimizer, making this a nice complement to other Coyote tales. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-55498-833-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
In a large, handsome format, Tarnowska offers six tales plus an abbreviated version of the frame story, retold in formal but contemporary language and sandwiched between a note on the Nights’ place in her childhood in Lebanon and a page of glossary and source notes. Rather than preserve the traditional embedded structure and cliffhanger cutoffs, she keeps each story discrete and tones down the sex and violence. This structure begs the question of why Shahriyar lets Shahrazade [sic] live if she tells each evening’s tale complete, but it serves to simplify the reading for those who want just one tale at a time. Only the opener, “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp,” is likely to be familiar to young readers; in others a prince learns to control a flying “Ebony Horse” by “twiddling” its ears, contending djinn argue whether “Prince Kamar el Zaman [or] Princess Boudour” is the more beautiful (the prince wins) and in a Cinderella tale a “Diamond Anklet” subs for the glass slipper. Hénaff’s stylized scenes of domed cityscapes and turbaned figures add properly whimsical visual notes to this short but animated gathering. (Folktales. 10-12)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-84686-122-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
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