Grace For President

Author: Kelly DiPucchio

Title: Grace For President

Illustrator: LeUyen Pham 

Genre: Picture Book

Subgenre: Election and Presidency

Theme: Anything is possible if you work hard to succeed.

Primary and secondary characters: Primary- Grace, Secondary- Thomas Cobb, Mrs. Barrington, Grace's classmates

Award(s) date of publication: None, 2010

Publishing Company: Scholastic Inc.

Brief Summary and how I would use this book with students: Grace For President is about a girl who after realizing that there has yet to be a female president decides that she wants to become president. Her teacher decides to have an election at their school to teach her children about what it takes to become a president. The book talks about the different things that the two candidates running for president do to try to win over the votes. All of the remaining students in the class become the fifty states with each state having the accurate amount of electoral votes. On election day Grace's opponent Thomas Cobb is ahead by one electoral vote. The only state left to vote is Wyoming and he decides to vote for Grace. Grace becomes president and follows on with the duties that she promised she would fulfill as president. Grace realizes from her experience that hard work pays off and that she one day hopes to become the real president. I could use this book in my class to teach my students about the election and when talking about the previous presidents. The teacher in the book, Mrs. Barrington uses a very creative approach to educate her students on how the election process works. This would be a good way to educate my students either before having our own school election or simply in place of one if we cannot act it out- due to time restraints and the number of students. This book also teaches students that they can be anything they want when they grow up as long as they work hard and put their all into what they are trying to accomplish.