An article of mine in the Sunday Review section looked at finding economic lessons in children’s books, with lots of contributions from economists and fellow parents. The list in the story was obviously just a start, and many readers had their own thoughts.
Pamela Paul, the children’s book editor of The New York Times, mentioned “Cheaper by the Dozen,” and Radhika Jones, an executive editor at Time Magazine, recommended “All-of-a-Kind Family” by Sydney Taylor, a series of books about a large immigrant family living on the Lower East Side before World War I.
And with the price of gold rising as investors scramble for safe havens, Jon Scieszka, author of “The True Story of the Three Little Pigs” (a great piece of media criticism, by the way) and “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Fairy Tales,” suggests that we should now read “The Goose That Laid the ‘Now Apparently $1,700-an-Ounce’ Egg.”
Over on Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok said, “I read my kids ‘The Little Red Hen’ — sort of like ‘Atlas Shrugged‘ for children.” Have a look at the comments, too.
Inevitably, some economists disagreed with the interpretations in the article. At Gametheorist, Joshua Gans wrote that “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was not so much about the evils of rampant consumerism as it was about “innovator rights and the use of trade secrecy as a means of intellectual property protection.” He added: “And, by the way, the moral message on that is in favour of such protection.”
For more examples of children’s books and their economic lessons, grouped by subject matter, there is an excellent resource compiled by the Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children. You can look up books that teach subjects as diverse as incentives and opportunity cost, or savings and scarcity. And contrary to the notion that children’s authors don’t understand the market economy, the site offers five books on markets and competition.
Another resource is on the University of Delaware Web site, with examples like “A New Coat for Anna,” which teaches about bartering, or “The Great Brain” books by John Fitzgerald, which might be more fitting for aspiring business school graduates.
What are some of your favorites?
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=8549ac17a8d0436e5828e707d70f9f0f