{"id":10549,"date":"2010-12-06T19:49:12","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T19:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=10549"},"modified":"2015-10-29T00:52:10","modified_gmt":"2015-10-29T00:52:10","slug":"obamafiction-for-children-imagining-the-forty-fourth-u-s-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=10549","title":{"rendered":"Obamafiction for Children: Imagining the Forty-Fourth U.S. President"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obamafiction for Children: Imagining the Forty-Fourth U.S. President<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Children’s Literature Association Quarterly
\nVolume 35, Number 4<\/a> (Winter 2010)
\nE-ISSN: 1553-1201 Print ISSN: 0885-0429
\npages 334-356<\/p>\n

Philip Nel<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of English
\nKansas State University<\/em><\/p>\n

In a column published five days after the 2008 election<\/a>, journalist Jason Whitlock<\/a> said of the president-elect\u2019s life: \u201cHis is a tale that should be read aloud at bedtime in every American neighborhood.\u201d It was already<\/em> being read aloud in some neighborhoods. Even before Senator Obama<\/a> had won the election, there were twelve juvenile titles about his life: two picture books, nine chapter books, and one comic book. From the election to the end of his first year in office, another forty-seven books were published: thirty-six more<\/em> chapter books, seven more picture books, two comic books, one book of poetry, and one board book. And that doesn’t include the Obama Paper Dolls<\/em> book, coloring and activity books, the titles about Bo the dog, nor the many books about Michelle<\/a>, Sasha<\/a>, and Malia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To have this many children’s books about a candidate\u2014or about a president so soon in his term of office\u2014is unusual. During the campaign, Republican presidential candidate John McCain<\/a> had seven titles to Obama’s twelve: five chapter books, one comic book, and one picture book (My Dad, John McCain<\/em>, written by his daughter Meghan McCain). During George W. Bush’s<\/a> presidential campaign, there were two juvenile titles about him. By the end of the first year of his presidency, add another four. By the end of his eight-year presidency, Bush inspired twenty-nine fewer books than Obama did in his first year\u2014thirty titles in all, and that includes one anti-Bush satire, Dan Piraro’s The Three Little Pigs Buy the White House<\/a><\/em> (2004). The marked difference in tone between the Bush book titles and the Obama book titles suggest that publishers and authors see the forty-fourth president quite differently from the forty-third…<\/p>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obamafiction for Children: Imagining the Forty-Fourth U.S. President Children’s Literature Association Quarterly Volume 35, Number 4 (Winter 2010) E-ISSN: 1553-1201 Print ISSN: 0885-0429 pages 334-356 Philip Nel, Professor of English Kansas State University In a column published five days after the 2008 election, journalist Jason Whitlock said of the president-elect\u2019s life: \u201cHis is a tale […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,1196,8,20],"tags":[4642,4641],"class_list":["post-10549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-childrens-literature-association-quarterly","tag-philip-nel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43565,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10549\/revisions\/43565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}