In the name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Most Merciful.
Do you guys remember I talked about reading a book during Ramadan? You can refer to the post embedded below.
In the end, I did not read the book during Ramadan! Gah! I am inspired by Thomas Shelby’s character trait of remembering and tying up loose ends. So I finally got around to it and here is my book review!
It is actually a short read. Easily completed within a couple of hours. I do not understand why I took too long to get around to reading it. It kind of disappointed me in the sense that I expected this book to really delve into the methods more elaborately.
The flow of the book is okay. You have your usual structure of introducing what money is, the history in the way people use money, and the evolution of money from coinage to cashless and contactless. The introductions are quite succinct because after all parents would want to get a brief understanding of it in order to explain the topic of money to their children. That being said, I wish there was more of an active involvement of the author in conveying to the parents who read this book. For example, what are the keywords to use for the different age groups to understand the concept or how to paraphrase the definition of transaction for them. There are suggestions in the book to help parents in coming up with solutions to explaining or teaching the concepts related to money for different age groups. I just wish it was more consistent throughout. I do not know. Maybe I was expecting more handholding. There are some cool ideas inside, which definitely can help parents guide their children. The more difficult concepts for children, even myself actually, come in the later part of the book. The author did try to explain those difficult concepts by naming the type of games children can play or day-to-day activities that will invoke children’s active participation. Just simple methods that will make the abstract concepts become more tangible to children.
There were some typographical errors. It could be because this was a first edition and the editor was also the author. Sometimes, you need a fresh pair of eyes to go through your content. It seems like it was produced by a single person under Amazon Germany. However, I am not sure if the typos were a result of transcribing from print to digital, since I read the digital version of it. A few formatting inconsistencies as well, which does not take away the message of the book too much.
Although the author wrote from the context of Germany, there were attempts to make the text globally relevant so parents should still be able to use this guide comfortably.
I think this book has a great potential to be revised with expansions to certain aspects. For example, there could be simple lesson plans attached to each chapter or concept or they could be consolidated at the end. The book could also segmented into various age groups in terms of the explanations for parents to use on their children. Believe me, it is not easy to teach and not all of us are equipped with the ability to make difficult subject matters easy to understand. That sort of handholding between the author and the parents will definitely give parents more confidence in their teaching. On the other hand, this book also has the potential to be turned into a series, with each book focusing on different age groups. In that way, you do not have to dump everything into one book.
However, the book is also realistic in terms of making it a quick read for parents. Parents are not always privileged to take the time to learn. If they needed a quick tip, this book does it just fine.
Will I recommend you to read this book? If you just need quick lessons, this book may help you. You can just get right into the concept that you would like to teach your child without going through any fluff. If you are looking for a detailed step-by-step guide, this is not the book you seek. However, it does sort of lay out the concepts from simple to more complex ones.
And Allah is Al-Ghafoor, The Exceedingly Forgiving. – MM
Metropolitan Muslimah 