Written by Mattie Reynolds
This book is about saving money, how people use it, and why. It emphasizes the vocabulary words “account, earn, habit, paycheck and value”.
Saving for the Future is a good reference book for a teacher to share with his/her class of young students. It might lead to different discussions. For example, at one point a girl wanted to save money for a basketball. She had saved for three months, but then it was too cold to play basketball outside. She saved for another month and bought a sled. Since children will want different things the class could talk about whether this was a good idea or not.
I thought it was interesting that the words described earning $10 for chores, and that you want a soccer ball for $40, but then didn’t help ask about how many weeks you would have to work for the soccer ball. Part of me wanted the math question to be there in the book. It could still be asked obviously, but I thought it would have been a good opportunity to ask that question. There is another example like that too.
The photographs are clean and bright. They don’t add a lot to the storyline. For example the family that has been saving to go on a trip are in the back hatch of their car – not out having fun. The boy who is earning money is by a lawnmower though and that makes sense. The pictures are fun to look at. There are mostly Caucasian, some Asian and a few African/American people in the pictures.
Review by Cheryl Baker, Mill Creek Elementary Media Center
Rating: ★★★★✩ (4 stars)
Interest Level: Grades K-3
Saving for the Future: An Introduction to Financial Literacy
Written by Mattie Reynolds
Lerner Publication Group
24 pages
Release Date: January 1, 2013
ISBN: 9781937529383 (hardcover)
