Teresa Schapansky

I received this through LibraryThing Early Readers.

A short red of 73 pages but very interesting reading. It is an introduction to coin collecting wrapped in a short story, told by a student and the teacher.

An assortment of kids join an after school coin club for various reasons. The main storyline is how the teacher became interested in coins as a child. It also touches on the history of coins and that their value can vary as can their history.

The authors are Canadian and the examples are Canadian, yet the term can apply to most currencies.

My parents were coin collectors, so this isn’t a strange topic, but it was nice to read of the subject in a more approachable style of writing. It is a good introduction for anyone curious for a view about coin collecting. There are also illustrations to pull the younger readers along.… (meer)

I won a copy of this book just as my middle grade son discovered an interest in coin collecting. We live in the US and this story is based in Canada, but that actually made it more interesting to us since it included coins and history we didn't know already.

The book is a mixture of a story and numismatic information and will appeal to children of elementary and middle school ages. The story of how the teacher got into collecting coins reminded me of a Little House on the Prairie type of story - showing what life was like in a past era while teaching important life lessons.

My only complaint is that the book really needed a better editor. There is missing and incorrect punctuation in much of the book, especially when transitioning from the current to past portions of the book. There are also flow problems when moving from one POV to another. It makes it confusing to read. If the book is read aloud by a parent, you should be able to clean that up while reading, adding a few words here and there to make it clear to your child who is speaking.

I think both coin and stamp collecting need to be revived with children today since there is valuable history to be learned from both types of collections and this book could be very helpful in getting a child interested in coins.… (meer)