Princess Persephone Loses the Castle

by Sheila Bair, Manuela López (Illustrator)

Overview

"Author Bair has serious finance credentials. She is a former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and current chair of Fannie Mae—and, now, an author of whimsical personal finance books for young children."—Booklist

An inexperienced royal learns a valuable lesson about reading the fine print.

Princess Persephone was cold in her castle on freezing Ganymede. So, when Aluminum Jim came calling to sell her tin sheets to nail onto the exterior walls to keep out the cold, Persephone was only too happy to agree to a loan and sign the contract without reading it. What could she do when the tin sheets didn't work, she couldn't repay the loan, and Jim claimed the castle?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807566527
Publisher:	Whitman, Albert & Company
Publication date:	05/11/2023
Series:	Money Tales
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	7.70(w) x 9.80(h) x 0.20(d)
Lexile:	AD640L (what's this?)
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

Sheila Bair has had a long and distinguished career in finance, academia, and government. She is perhaps best known as the Chair of the FDIC during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, when she was twice named by Forbes Magazine as the second most powerful woman in the world. A lifelong advocate for strong financial regulation and consumer protections, she is the author of the New York Times bestseller Bull by the Horns, her memoir of the financial crisis, and is a frequent op-ed contributor and TV commentator, as well as author of several children's books on financial matters.

Manuela López is a freelance illustrator living and working in Terrassa, a small city in the northeast of Spain. Since she earned a Certificate of Higher Education in Illustration she has been working on children's books with many local publishers.

Editorial Reviews

"Sheila Bair uses illustrations and fun stories to demystify finance for children and the adults who read to them."—AARP The Magazine

From the Publisher

2021-07-27
Loans, interest, and debt all get their day in the sun in this tale of a princess hornswoggled by a smooth-talking siding salesman.

Princess Persephone is distraught by the drafts in her father’s castle. When Aluminum Jim offers to sell and install tin siding on her home, she leaps at the chance. He even offers her a loan with a 50-page contract. Ignoring the sensible objections of Spice the dragon, Persephone signs without reading the contract. Unsurprisingly, after a sloppy installation job, her first bill comes due, and she discovers that she owes more than she can pay. Before you know it, she’s lost her castle entirely. Written by a former FDIC chair, the book valiantly attempts to simplify the concept of predatory lending and its risks but gets in over its head. The urge to teach children to “Beware the Trickster Lender” (as the backmatter further elucidates) is a noble one, but much of the text will remain obscure to young readers despite its expression in rhyming couplets (“With interest compounded annually, / The loan, it balloons exponentially”). Most baffling is the complete absence of a glossary at the end of the book. Should a child reader manage to engage with the material and wish to learn more, they’ll be hard-pressed to define such terms as lien or default—rightly identified as “mystery words”—or even contract. Bair’s Billy the Borrowing Blue-Footed Booby, illustrated by Amy Zhing, publishes simultaneously and addresses consumer debt in abab stanzas.

Predatory lending may someday yield great works of children’s literature, but that day is not today. (Picture book. 9-12)

Kirkus Reviews