Two students from Hillsboro-Deering High School, as part of the Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) program, published their first comic book. “The Heroic Adventures of Dollar Doug” was written by senior Penelope Bows and junior Caylee Lugo, who also provided the illustrations.
Bows and Lugo were inspired by their Financial Literacy class at Hillsboro-Deering and felt that the course information was important enough to share with younger students. They decided to target fifth-grade students and customized the message to meet that audience. However, it has an appeal to all. While creating the comic book, they constructed different financial situations in the areas of budgeting, credit, needs and wants, organization, and investing, where a character in the book was about to make a poor financial decision. This is where the comic’s hero, Dollar Doug, appears to help guide the character into making a better choice.
Bows and Lugo will be doing readings of their comic book to the Hillsboro-Deering fifth-grade classes. They will have copies of their comic book available for those students.
“I thought this was an incredibly clever way to deliver some great basic financial advice to kids. The story is fun and the artwork is great. I am very excited to see them compete with this” said DECA advisor Marc Payeur.
The team will be competing in February at the NH DECA State Conference in the Financial Literacy Project. They hope to take home top prize and qualify for the international competition in late April.
