Thursday 25 September 2014

Kid Presidents - True Tales of Childhood from American Presidents by David Stabler (Quirk Books)


Kid Presidents

True Tales of Childhood from American Presidents

Written by David Stabler

Published by Quirk Books

History teaches us many things, but to truly learn about history it's often more informative to hear it told by the people who make it.

American political history is fascinating to me and in "Kid Presidents" we get to find out that even the mightiest leaders of the western world were once snot-nosed joke-telling parping and pooping kids who usually got up to no good.

A stylised collection of stories told in the words of everyone from George Washington to Barack Obama, relays a sense that truly does make you believe that anyone can become president, and deep down kids are pretty much the same all over (particularly boys) despite a relatively privileged upbringing in some cases.

Quirk have a knack of nailing the presentation of their books, and here "Kid Presidents" is tricked out with awesome cartoon caricatures of the presidents themselves, to help impart their (sometimes fantastically embellished) tales. Do we really believe that George Washington was swept off his feet by a mighty dragon just after felling his father's favourite cherry tree?

It's a brilliant mix of tongue-in-cheek humour, mixed with a dose of fact but for us it was really the presentation and the humour that won us over - and it's a great little book to chip away at as you read all the anecdotes.

"Kid Presidents - True Tales of Childhood from American Presidents" by David Stabler is out now from Quirk Books.