Throughout the long-awaited summer breaks, a majority of teenagers are out taking trips to the beach and staying out late with friends, the idea of school forgotten for 6 weeks. However, during the 2020 quarantine summer, trips and parties were mostly canceled due to social distancing guidelines and mandatory lockdowns. 

Senior Yejin Sohn took advantage of the long summer break and published her very own children’s book, My Precious Dollar, which teaches kids about the concept of money and the base tens counting system used in elementary schools today. 

After reading many picture books with her little sister, Sohn said “[she] already had an idea of what the story should be like”, due to summer boredom, Sohn was able to write and illustrate the book within a month. 

Her book features images of teddy bears, lollipops, laptops, and even jewelry, all of which were drawn by Sohn herself. She also illustrated a young girl, the main character of the book, who wonders how much she can buy based on a certain dollar amount. The text also varies color and font based on the item or dollar amount being discussed. The font and color then remain consistent throughout the discussion of the object in question. 

In Sohn’s book, one lollipop can be bought with one dollar, translating the concept of money into a more tangible situation, allowing younger kids to better understand how money works. The dollar amount in question gets larger on each page, moving from a singular dollar to ten dollars, to a hundred dollars, all the way up to a million dollars counting up by the base tens system. 

Throughout the writing process, Sohn learned that “invest[ing] in an illustrator” would have been very beneficial because the drawing process was “very frustrating”. With drawings that correlate directly with the text, drawing out even a hundred lollipops, not including other objects discussed, would take a significant amount of time. 

Not having any previous experience with book writing, publishing, and distribution, Sohn published her book on Amazon on July 17, 2020, where it is now sold and produced. By publishing her book through Amazon and not publishing her book through a publishing company she realized, “It’s pretty easy to publish your own book”, Sohn said, and that “anyone can do it if they really wanted to”.

Despite being a published author on Amazon, Sohn does not intend to pursue a career in writing or publishing and currently plans to go to college where she wants to major in economics.