Exploring Money Lessons in ‘I Am Money’ Book Review

From a distance, the cover to I Am Money looks like an anthropomorphic credit card, wearing big glasses in front of the Arc de Triumph. It seems like an odd fit because, if it’s money in front of the French landmark, wouldn’t it be a Euro? No, the money on the cover to I Am Money is certainly an American bill. Look closely at the upper left and the $20 can be seen plus the other shapes and scribbles that people associate with it. Right, I’m back on board, I love money, and young children need to learn about money-especially certain aspects of it. If I Am Money does that in a way that’s interesting and curious to young readers we have something that’ll cash in with that crowd.

I Am Money is the book that the story time crowd needs to hear. They also need to dig the message of the book. As you get older it can be a very subtle message. Money is not just money, it’s a tool, and tools can do any number of things. I Am Money plays it fast and happy until just before halfway through the book when it channels its age-appropriate Dave Ramsey message. This does not mean that it gets dour, serious, and otherwise not fun.

This simply means that our titular twenty dollar blll stops spending its paper brethren on foolish ‘wants’ and asks audiences what it can really do. The dollar starts to preach it old school and asks audiences what they can do to earn, save, spend or give our erstwhile cash. I Am Money even quotes that phrase that parents of a certain generation used to say, “burn a hole in your pocket.” If I had a dollar for every time my father said that then I’d be able to play Robotron at least 868 times.

The stack of cash proceeds to tell readers that it could pay for a music lesson. Meanwhile, the kids at story time are just realizing that music lessons cost money?! That is true, ditto those art classes-they cost money, but it could have a payoff because investing in yourself, getting better at the things you like to do could allow you to get paid for those things in the future. Making a career out of those things would allow you to do one of the coolest things, which is to share.

It’s on these two pages where the cash is seen giving needed supplies to the guinea pig rescue organization. Throughout the book the money has been with a silent, un-named guinea pig who has been his comic foible.  As cash is walking down the city street, we saw the guinea pig looking cool with his light-blocking sunglasses. The guinea pig made several questionable purchases but was also purchased by the cash early in the book. The guinea pig was the Woodstock to his speckled self being Snoopy.

I Am Money has a goofy, footloose quality that won’t put off young readers. The early-elementary crowd wants to love money. They aren’t averse to learning about things that they have an interest in. This is a fun book that educates and teaches a lesson, which is a very rare commodity. The final two pages of the book has longer text with ten factoids written for the older person who’s reading the book aloud to share with the audience. They cover self-confidence, believing in yourself, creative problem solving, physical things vs. experiences and critically thinking about ways or concepts people use to make money. At a surface level, those can be heady, intimidating concepts, but again, that’s the magic of I Am Money. It presents those ideas in a way that won’t scare or intimidate young ages. Instead, it makes them curious about something they already care about and allows them to see money as a tool, or an instrument.

I Am Money is by Julia Cook and Garrett Gunderson with illustrations by Josh Cleland, and is available on Sourcebooks Explore.

There are affiliate links in this post.