A few days ago, I took my son to a children's book fair in his school. Amongst the colourful collection of Geronimo Stiltons, Captain Underpants, Wimpy Kids and Nancy Drews, one book caught my attention. It was titled So You Want to Know About Economics (2017) by an author I had not previously heard of, Roopa Pai.

What really impressed me about the book was that it was endorsed by Raghuram Rajan, former Reserve Bank of India governor. Rajan wrote (on the front cover): "This short, entertaining, well-written book is a quick and irreverent introduction to Economics." And, on the back, he continued: "If you never had the time to plough through dreary Economics textbooks, but still want a flavour of its key concepts, illustrated with examples from daily life, this is the book for you."

Now, I really respect Rajan for his pro-free market views (I read his Fault Lines (2010) with rapt attention) and if he could give such a positive endorsement, I felt it must be quite apt for my son.

My son is 13 years old and I have had with him, from time to time, free-wheeling conversations on economics. I especially wanted him to know the difference between capitalism, communism, socialism and totalitarianism and to understand that profit is not really a dirty word. I also wanted him to appreciate the benefits of living in a democracy, however flawed it may be.

I started by giving a cursory glance through the book to see what stuff it contained and, to my surprise, ended up reading it completely in one go!

Roopa Pai (I learnt from the internet) was trained as a computer engineer but then switched to journalism writing for Target among other outfits. She has written over 20 books for children and has won the Children's Book Trust Award. She also won the Crossword Popular Award for Children's Writing in 2016 for The Gita for Children. Apparently, she "did not know the first thing about [economics]" before writing this book.