A local woman has been using her lifelong love of coins to write a book, create artwork, and raise money for a good cause.
“I think my love and obsession with pennies began when my older sister convinced me to trade all of her darker coins she had in her piggy bank for all of my shiny ones,” says Carole Horton, author of Cents of Humour.
“I was too young to know the value of money and I thought she was giving me more than I was giving her!”
When Horton launched her debut children’s book at the Timmins Public Library on Dec. 11, she also used the event to collect pennies from attendees, which she uses to make murals. The book launch hosted more than 60 attendees and raked in about $114 worth of pennies — approximately 11,400 coins in total — as well as other monetary donations which, in addition to being used in Horton’s murals, would go towards the Timmins Food Bank.
“From the time I published the book until Dec. 25, I said that whatever pennies I got from people, I would donate three cents to the penny because that’s how much it would cost to make one these days,” Horton says.
“I was going to give money to the library for doing my book launch or give it to TH&VS and they said they didn’t really need it,” she says. The TH&VS music department performed a song, written by Horton, to be played at the book launch.
“I decided to donate to the food bank because at this time of year it’s hard and I know that at Christmas they give a lot away.”
Cents of Humour follows the adventures of a family of coins, and introduces children to different types of currency, how money is used and what each type of coin is worth. It also covers other concepts which include debit, credit, crypto, inflation, and counterfeiting.
Horton is working on a second book and is in the process of translating her first book to French. She has lots of ideas, including a board game featuring her characters. Her website will launch later this month, and feature links to games and other resources for teaching children about money, as well as a place to buy her book. She also has plans to place copies of the book in community book boxes around the city.
“Now that my characters are established, in subsequent books we’re going to go to Cryptotown to learn about cryptocurrency. We’re going to go to different countries to learn what their currency is all about. These are the adventures that they’re going to get into and kids can learn a little bit about money in a fun way,” Horton says.
The idea for the Coin family came about while Horton was making her first mural. She says she never set out to write a children’s book, but the idea of a penny as a cute character stuck in her mind before expanding to include other coins and currencies.
“I love reading, but I never pictured myself to be writing,” she says.
Horton has collected enough pennies to make two more murals so far — for reference, her first mural required more than 6,000 pennies to make. She says she only uses Canadian pennies because American pennies are still circulating and fairly easy to find, while Canada discontinued the coins in 2013.
Anyone interested in purchasing a copy of Cents of Humour can email Horton directly at [email protected].
