easy to understand, informative & encourages your kid

What an unhelpful way to think about money! Money is about power and banking is about accumulations and distortions of that power. This book simply teaches kids to close their eyes and trust the banking system, which it literally describes as magic. The only magic is how any book published after 2008 can say this with a straight face. Definitely worth every penny.

Excellent book. Teaches concept of saving and banking to kids in simple and joyful way

I usually love the Kids Book About [Something] books, but the banking one kind of missed the mark for me. It got caught up in describing banking as magical and mysterious—not really the approach you need to strip away the mystique and confusion. Also, the money tree analogy went so far as to seem literal, as though money really grows on trees. There was also way too much ink spent on panics and bank runs. Maybe those are relevant to a very recent news event, but they are really rare. Including them in a fundamental explainer about banks suggests they are more common.

Maybe it would be too deep of a dive to make comprehensible, but explaining the difference between consumer/commercial banking and investment banking might have been helpful. ie, the kind of banks an average person or business might use vs. some of the more notorious and (in)famous banks that make headlines.

I don't know. It's really important that kids understand how banking and money works, but I don't think that this book is going to get them to that point. It's really confusing and all over the place.

A Kids Book About Banking