Can you really teach “Econ 101” to young kids?
Is that possible? By way of a friend’s introduction, I’ve bought and read both Under the Staircase books and wish I’d found them much earlier, when I was teaching homeschoolers. I’ve not seen anything like these books anywhere else. I hope to see more of them in the future. I passed mine on to a homeschooler with young kids. I’ll probably buy more.
What if you have a genuine passion for foundational principles that actually work to make people’s lives better, like the economic freedom, individual liberty, and personal responsibility for which so many Americans have fought and sacrificed for two and a half centuries? What if you come from a family who knows firsthand what happens when such liberties are taken away? (I.M Lerner is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. See her bio on the website, UnderTheStaircase.com, and in the book.)
What if you see evidence that young people, and even adults, are not being taught or reminded of those principles? What if those principles are in peril?
How do you take action to teach young readers (future voters) about important concepts regarding freedom of choice and freedom of opportunity? How in the world do you engage young kids with important thinkers like Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Milton and Rose Friedman, George Mason, Friedrich Hayek, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin?
A Stroke of Genius
Well, first you have a stroke of genius. Then you create engaging and admirable characters like 12-year-old Maya and 10-year-old Nate who discover they have a family with a secret past and a secret basement. Add a good, smart friend like Maggie who loves cryptography, mix in a Revolutionary secret society, mysteries to explore, puzzles and ciphers to decode, clues to find, hidden doors, tunnels, and rooms, shadowy “bad guys,” and throw them all “under a staircase” and you have a winning solution.
That’s the brilliance of the Under the Staircase books created by I. M. Lerner and her writing partner, Catherine Osornio. These able moms know how to give kids stories they can enjoy, characters they can relate to, and concepts they can understand. How? They bring the action close to home and into their everyday lives — their town, their school, family businesses, their grades.
In this first book, the kids find their school choice and their grades in danger from supposedly well-meaning, elected city officials who take advantage of an opportunity to break the rules and abuse their power while retaining their own special privilege. What happens? Will the kids get to keep the school they love? Will they get to keep the grades they earn? Will they solve the mysteries in time and get the help they need?
It’s an exciting and fun adventure for young readers, with charming artwork and ample illustrations to bring the heroes and their adventures to life. This book and the one that follows it should be on the bookshelf of every teacher and every kid.