Madam President by Lane Smith

Madam President by Lane Smith

Rating: 3.5 stars

I'm a stay-at-home mom with three young kids, so...keeping current with the news is not my first priority.  I must (sheepishly) admit that there have been a few times when I've heard a big piece of news and had to pretend that I already knew about it.  For example, troops being pulled out of Iraq.  This is particularly embarrassing when your dad is a retired general and your brother-in-law is active duty.  I'm pretty ashamed about that one.

But even I know that next week is the Presidential Election!

See, I ain't no dummy.  Just a tiny bit ignorant as I'm wrapped up in the immediacy of the needs within my own little existence on this planet of ours.

Why, the President is the most important person in the whole wide world!
(And the most humble.)

My choice aside, it's been fun to listen to Lorelei have a small opinion on the matter.  "I'm voting for our President, of course!" she tells me every time I bring it up.  Of course I tried to find a few books on the subject so to provide Lorelei and Ben some background into the election.  I had high hopes for this one, but don't love it as much as I expected to.

The words in the book outline the President's job.  If you close your eyes and just listen, you'll get an accurate description, complete with kissing babies and taking photo-ops, creating a good Cabinet and brokering treaties.  If you open your eyes, you see that each picture illustrates the grade school-version of that job.  Well, kissing babies is still kissing babies...  But brokering treaties involves fighting classmates, and attending a state funeral involves the death of a frog, nothing more.

A President needs protection at all times.

I do appreciate Lane Smith (click here for reviews of his books on my blog).  And I think I'll appreciate this book in another year or two, but right now the jokes are a little too old for Lorelei.  The little girl who is Madam President has her nose in the air in the vast majority of pictures, and I just don't like that image.

This is a good book for elementary students, I think...  I'll keep it in mind in four years, as long as I'm aware of the election that will take place then.