Bedtime With Barack, John, and Hillary

Local bookstores are selling more political-themed children’s

Book	Main Character	Tear-Jerking Moment	Over-the-Top Moment	Moral of the Story	Reality Check
Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope by Nikki Grimes	Hope personified	At the end, the mother blinks back tears as the little boy who	Hope follows Obama around the world, whispering encouragement and	Obama has a varied background that encompasses multiple races,	Eric Jackson, publisher of the children’s tale Help! Mom! There
My Dad, John McCain by Meghan McCain	War hero turned straight-talking maverick	The section on McCain’s time as a POW will move both parents and	The illustrations depicting McCain’s plane crashes feature a sky	Bravery and patriotism can get you anywhere—maybe even to the Oval	Target audience of eight-year-olds can’t vote, and parents likely
Hillary Rodham Clinton: Dreams Taking Flight by Kathleen	The little Hillary that could	After being ineligible for NASA, losing the high-school election,	The book’s girl-power theme assumes that Clinton’s political	Little girls should always dream big and never let anyone hold	Dreams Taking Flight was released the same day as the Obama book
We the People: The Story of Our Constitution by Lynne Cheney	The Founders	After the culmination of months of debate and despair in a	Absent from the debate over making slaves count as three-fifths of	When property-owning white men band together to form a democratic	It reads like a schoolbook. Founding Fathers substitute for the

This article first appeared in the November 2008 issue of The Washingtonian. For more articles from that issue, click here.

Bekah Grant