What Does the President Look Like? A book to help make history cool.

With the Inauguration coming up, a lot of us will be watching and following the day's events on TV. That also means a lot of questions from curious kids about...well, all kinds of things. There are a lot of books that talk about politics for kids, but my own girls have been enjoying What Does the President Look Like?, an original book that describes presidential history through the lens (no pun intended) of media and technology through the years.

 

Author and political historian Jane Hampton Cook's premise is that while we're all familiar with President Obama's face from TV and YouTube and digital photos, before any of those, there were different ways that we formed perceptions about our leaders and learned what they looked like.

She takes us through time with random trivia and fun facts, from George Washington's portraits and the political cartoons of the 18th century, to the importance of photography in Lincoln's election, the movie newsreels of the 1930's, and even the Nixon-Kennedy TV debates.

Adam Ziskie's illustrations are artoony but evocative, in a muted palate of earth tones, and not only bring the ideas to life, it makes the whole thing kind of cool for tweens who might be over the idea of picture books.

My one complaint is that the book needs more book. Kids about 7 and up who will be interested in this kind of topic in the first place can handle a book you don't read in one sitting. The historic gaps are a little random: Nixon's election is mentioned but not his impeachment. Oddly, the 1980s don't come up at all, even as the 24-hour news channels came into existence. And the only mention of President Clinton is that he launched whitehouse.gov--unusual considering his infamous MTV interview and saxophone solo on the Arsenio Hall show were notable (and fun facts!) as far as a candidate's use of mass media to reach a younger voter. In fact, George Bush's dog Barney gets more ink. (Though I can't say for sure whether that has to do with the author's previous job working as webmaster in the Bush White House.)

Still, my kids really enjoyed learning a little here and there about the presidents, and the best part is that it inspired us to go look up more stories on our own, guided by what they found most interesting. Who'd have believed they really wanted to look up pictures of Grover Cleveland. -Liz

Find What Does the President Look Like? by Jane Hampton Cook and Adam Ziskie online at our affiliate Amazon.

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