The Making of the Presidents
Maira Kalman’s ‘Thomas Jefferson,’ and More
“Away
back in my childhood, the earliest days of my being able to read,”
Abraham Lincoln nostalgically remembered on the eve of his first
inauguration, “I got hold of a small book. . . . Weems’ ‘Life of
Washington.’ ” The future president never forgot its vivid accounts of
the battles and heroes of the Revolutionary War, not to mention the
causes for which the founders fought. “I recollect thinking then, boy
even though I was,” he reminisced, “that there must have been something
more than common that those men struggled for.” The book’s stories
“fixed themselves on my memory,” he proudly added, acknowledging that
“these early impressions last longer than any others.”
It
is entirely possible that some other future president, boy or girl, may
cast eyes on these four works of presidential biography and poetry,
inviting the question: Will any of the books inspire young readers to
revere and emulate — or, just as usefully, question and critique — their
subjects? It’s probably too much to expect. Modern juvenile biographies
hardly strive for the Weems effect. They are mercifully shorter than
that notoriously bloated tome, and far less hagiographic. It is fair to
admit, on the other hand, that young Abe Lincoln would not have liked
books with “an edge,” just as today’s young readers would never stand
for the reverential bloviating in Weems’s megaselling bible of myths.
Yet even Lincoln would have appreciated the beautiful and often amusing
color illustrations that accompany the best of today’s kid-lit
biographies. In Lincoln’s day, a stilted engraving of a miniature George
Washington manfully admitting he had cut down his father’s cherry tree
was about as visually daring as things got.
Happily,
no such restraints inhibit the acclaimed artist-writer Maira Kalman,
whose exuberant Matisse-like style, eye for unusual detail, and
disarming bluntness enliven her breezy and typically offbeat life of
Thomas Jefferson. She talks children’s language, too. Her subject is
interested in “everything,” she enthuses in a text overflowing with
capital letters and emphatic script. “I mean it. Everything.” So is
Kalman. She illustrates and explicates on everything from Jefferson’s
freckles (20 of them in all, she thinks), formidable linguistic talents,
collecting mania, green thumb, fondness for ice cream, inventiveness
and inexhaustible energy. Then, once she has us ensnared in her
whimsical world, she hits us with five blunt pages on the horrors of
slavery, calmly and cannily introducing the subject with a spare
interior view of a cramped slave cabin, followed by a busy depiction of
enslaved cooks tending Jefferson’s kitchen, which he enters obliviously
each week, she tells us, merely to wind the grandfather clock.
It’s
about as much as readers aged 5 to 8 should be expected to absorb about
Jefferson’s — and his country’s — shameful hypocrisy without having a
sleep-inducing bedtime story descend into a nightmare-evoking
all-nighter. Kalman, a subtle but shrewd moralizer, is right on the mark
in summarizing Jefferson as “optimistic and complex and tragic and
wrong and courageous.” Her book is hypnotically charming, abounding with
striking little details that children will remember. Who wouldn’t be
enthralled to know that the author of the Declaration of Independence
had blazing red hair, liked peas, counted to 10 when he was angry, and
had his frayed coats mended with old socks?
C.
F. Payne’s soft-toned illustrations, which grace Doreen Rappaport’s
lovely little volume on Theodore Roosevelt, prove no less gripping,
although they hardly approach a Kalmanesque “edge.” The text inevitably
offers classic “weakling to he-man” inspiration, following young Teddy
(in truth not so nicknamed until he met his future wife, we’re told) as
he transforms from nearsighted nerd to Energizer Bunny workaholic.
Rappaport, who is strongest on Roosevelt’s childhood years, portrays the
grown-up T.R. as a crusader without warts, reforming the corrupt New
York Police Department, achieving military glory with the Rough Riders,
and busting selfish corporate trusts. The book sidesteps Roosevelt’s
tendency to use “bully” as both a catchword and a political tactic, and
brushes past his anticlimactic 1912 try for a White House comeback —
Doris Kearns Goodwin may now breathe a sigh of relief — but Rappaport
is no less persuasive than Kalman in evoking the virtues of energy and
curiosity. And Payne’s pictures advance the text with spirit and
inventiveness: The double-page illustration showing President Roosevelt
lassoing a gigantic fist gripping a wad of cash, to name one, neatly
evokes T.R.’s crusading spirit while wordlessly critiquing the American
mania for wealth.
With
similar proficiency, the illustrator AG Ford’s John Currin-like realism
makes Jonah Winter’s new biography, “JFK,” sparkle like a Life magazine
collectors’ edition, but here it is the text that produces the true
startle effect. Yes, of course, we will be told that John F. Kennedy,
too, adored study, exercise and family fun, but Winter opens his account
at the end of the story with a whale of a first-person revelation: He
was a 1-year-old perched on his father’s shoulders peering at the Dallas
motorcade on Nov. 22, 1963, just a few minutes before the president
lost his life. Winter watched Kennedy “waving to the crowds of cheering
people, watched him getting smaller and smaller as the car drove on.”
Could a 1-year-old really be left with such vivid impressions? A reality
check would be superfluous. Amid the recent avalanche of
50th-anniversary assassination rehash, how many other authors can offer
such an extraordinarily personal connection to the tragedy?
It’s
been a few years since I’ve read bedtime books to my grandson — he now
reads to me — but I would have happily chosen all of the above to read
to my own future president (and then tried stealing Kalman’s for my own
bookshelf). After all, what could be more nourishing and soothing than a
dose of inspiring success stories leavened by the occasional, if
sugarcoated, dose of reality? For variety, the poems in “Rutherford B.
Who Was He?” will surely entertain any little insomniac even if the
sometimes tortured rhymes won’t soon supplant Dr. Seuss. Still, one has
to give Marilyn Singer credit for rhyming “drudge” and “pudge” for Taft,
“underrated” and “celebrated” (Carter), “jazz cat” and “New Democrat”
(Clinton), and “Afghanistan” and “Yes, we can!” (guess who?).
Suppose,
as in the case of my grandson, it takes at least three books on one
soothing subject to elicit grudging consent for lights-out. From an
hour’s immersion in these four adorable volumes of presidential lore,
one encouraging common theme emerges: Jefferson “read many books,” Teddy
Roosevelt “gobbled up books,” and John F. Kennedy “loved words.” The
lesson is: Read, and then read some more. These particular titles would
not be a bad place to begin.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Everything
Written and illustrated by Maira Kalman
40 pp. Nancy Paulsen Books. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 5 to 8)
TO DARE MIGHTY THINGS
The Life of Theodore Roosevelt
By Doreen Rappaport
Illustrated by C. F. Payne
48 pp. Disney-Hyperion Books. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 6 to 8)
JFK
By Jonah Winter
Illustrated by AG Ford
32 pp. Katherine Tegen Books/HarperCollins Publishers. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8)
RUTHERFORD B. WHO WAS HE?
Poems About Our Presidents
By Marilyn Singer
Illustrated by John Hendrix
56 pp. Disney-Hyperion Books. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 6 to 8)