The White House: A Meet the Nation's Capital Book

As Americans prepare to go to the polls in November what better time for adults to take their 4–8 year olds on a tour of the White House in this interactive picture book by Lindsay Ward. Ward is a veteran of a huge catalogue of children’s books characterized by big, bold and colorful layout combined with an educational bent with a heavy focus on dinosaurs and vehicles.

In this instance children’s journey into the White House is told through the eyes of three children of similar age who inhabit different worlds inside the building itself. Jack is visiting his dad, a pastry chef; Theo is one of the President’s children who has lost his dog; and Ellie is on a field trip visiting for the first time. Searching for a lost dog is a clever device to tour through the building while keeping a story that keeps children’s attention, with the classic “can you spot Penny the dog” in pages full of detail and text.

Much like the Richard Scarry books, a single page can encompass multiple different elements appealing to children of different ages and giving the book a longer life span as it can be approached from several angles. “Did you know?” boxes live alongside a people centric approach to explaining the Cabinet—however the dry title of some of these roles (hey kids what does the Head of Storeroom do?) may not stand the test of children’s attention span.

Trialling it on my four- and six-year olds there was a long impromptu discussion on what job they would rather do, although many of the drawings are of adults holding clipboards which doesn’t excite in the same way uniformed personnel tend to. In what could be considered a political divisive move, but one that the author could never have predicted when she wrote it, the president in this book is a woman of color. An example to inspire perhaps rather than to reflect the history of the role to date.

Using animals, food, and exciting transport options, Ward transforms what essentially is a very famous office environment into something that children can engage in although it could have benefitted from a larger number of “search and find” items to keep levels of interest high.