Your Money and the World: How to Spend, Save, Donate and Invest Sustainably - Cecile Biccari - ★★.½

AUTHOR: Cecile Biccari

ILLUSTRATOR: Naïade Lacolomb

TRANSLATOR; Jeffrey K. Butt

GENRE: Children's Nonfiction

PUBLICATION DATE: February 4, 2025

RATING: 2.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: An children’s guide about all things monetary, translated from the original French version. Means well, but too unstructured to be more effective, especially for the target age group.

This book is a translation of the French book “C’est ton argent! Que vas-tu en faire?” published in March 2024. The French title, translating to “It’s your money; what will you do with it?” sounds quite ordinary. However, the title of the English version appealed much more to me. “Your Money and the World: How to Spend, Save, Donate and Invest Sustainably” made this sound like a good guidebook for kids on how to use their money responsibly and sustainably. The intent is met to some extent, but the content needs much better organisation.

As you can see, the differentiating factor is the word “sustainably.” Spend, save, donate, and invest are all common factors in books about money management, but doing so without harming people, animals or nature is a requirement of the times. As promised in the title, the book covers not just the basic essentials of the four actions connected to personal finances but also highlights the importance of buying from safe businesses, protecting the environment by reducing consumption, being aware of the source of the product and the ethics of its manufacturing practices. All worthy topics.

Beyond this, the book also touches upon some abstract ideas such as the perception of richness and the relativity of wealth. It even brings up the issue of how we lose control of our spending by not being able to see how much we spend anymore. So the book does cover some pretty important points.

However, there are quite a few writing choices that left me befuddled.

💸 The book begins with a graphic comic about a young girl called Nora and her granny trekking through the forest. Granny trips over a treasure chest, and soon after opening it, they bump into Kiko, a magical mouse who is an expert in treasure management. Kiko then goes to take Nora through four magical doors, each focussing on one of the four topics of “Spend”, “Save”, “Donate”, and Invest”. Laura explores all four of these and even makes mistakes in her decisions. While I initially thought that a graphic comic would be a good way of explaining concepts to kids, I didn’t find its execution that great. This seemingly extensive story takes up just the initial eighteen pages of this eighty-page book. As such, it feels very rushed. Moreover, Nora’s decisions appear quite random and there seems to be no major learning after her failures. I was also surprised by how readily Granny allows her granddaughter to go wandering into magical doors with a strange creature while she stays back to practise her yoga. A book about money should still give a thought to child safety, right?

💸 After the above comic is done, the book suddenly changes style and goes into the usual graphic encyclopaedia mode, and the comic characters don’t pop up except in background illustrations. The two sections don’t blend into each other smoothly.

💸 Once the book finishes exploring the basic four actions you can do with money, it again changes track and talks about the origin and history of money. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Such a weird structure!

💸 For each of the four fiscal actions, there are too many topics crammed in without a thoughtful progression. This makes the end result feel hurried and bumpy. The idea of sustainability seems forced into a few chapters as it doesn’t proceed smoothly from the preceding topic.

💸 Considering that the book is aimed at readers aged 7 to 11, I was surprised to see mentions of blockchain tokens, bank runs, subprime mortgage crisis, and so on. Honestly, even a few adults also don’t know what these mean. How the heck will tweens understand such terms, especially when there isn't even an explanation provided?

💸 Even beyond monetary concepts, the book uses several difficult words that tween-aged kids would neither know nor understand. (How many younger tweens know words such as dopamine and serotonin and cortisol? ) There is no glossary at all.

💸 On a couple of the pages, the introductory text is at the bottom and the elucidation through graphics is on top. (For example, in the fisherman’s parable story.) This gets confusing to read.

All the above could have been sorted out with one strict round of editing.

The illustrations are great. Whether in the graphic comic at the start or in the encyclopaedic section, the graphics match the tone of the book well and are even inclusive in the depiction of humans. No complains in this regard.

About 3-4 years ago, I had read Clive Gifford’s “A Quick History of Money: From Bartering to Bitcoin”. Gifford’s book covered the history of money in a more sequential and logical way, while still ensuring that the content was age-appropriate. I guess I was expecting something similar from Biccari’s work, but as I am very fond of structured content, the somewhat random nature of the information and the broad range of topics without going in-depth into any, were somewhat disappointing to me.

All in all, I loved some of the themes tackled in this book, but I am not sure if it did complete justice to the topic. I truly appreciate the content about sustainable choices, but the overall presentation needed restructuring and finetuning, especially if it caters to kids as young as ages 7-11.

Perhaps if you opt for this book expecting a wide-ranging list of topics connected to money, you might find it more useful for your child. Considering the difficulty level of the content, I am not too sure of the right target age, but it might be a good option for younger teens.

I’m not making an outright recommendation as there are too many ifs and buts applicable. Please read the above feedback and some other reviews, and take an educated call.

2.5 stars, with the 0.5 being mainly for the illustrations and hence rounding down wherever applicable.

My thanks to Helvetiq for providing the DRC of “Your Money and the World” via Edelweiss+. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.