Source: School Library Journal Book Review Stars, 2014
Age: 6-13
Assessment of Quality: Not only are the poems about all of the U.S. presidents up to Obama are inventive and informative, but the illustrations on each page are bold and interesting as well.
Assessment of potential use: this would be a fun book to include in a U.S. history curriculum as a tool to help learn about or memorize the presidents.
Assessment of appeal to children: The styles of the poems for each president vary greatly, some are even rhyming dialogues, which help keep children engaged.

This book is dedicated to poems about presidents! Each page has a poem about a different president with information included about the figure. Some parts of the poems are humorous and others are factual. This book is full of colorful and entertaining illustrations. The words are used differently on the pages to evoke varying emotions or responses in the context of the poem.

I would use this book in a third grade class and not any lower for the fact that it is about a bigger idea and it would be harder to keep younger kids engaged in this topic. I would do an interactive read aloud to show each president and make sure the students do not have any questions.

For this book, I would use it as a fourth or fifth-grade stand alone book. This book teaches great rhyming and shows how to tell stories through rhyme. Students would create their own poem after about what their presidency would be illustrated as in a poem. It is a great book to teach about the presidents and introduce poetry to students.

I would use this as an independent read for fourth and fifth graders because it is at their reading level. With both fourth and fifth graders, I will select various presidents I want my students to read about and make it so that only two students will read the same passage. Each students will underline important events mentioned in the poem and with their partner they will do more research on this event. Once they have researched efficiently, I will have the students share their finding with the class and everyone will take notes on the facts of these presidents. Another activity I will have both classes take part in, is writing their own poem for one of the Presidents that was not in the book or rewriting one of the poems. This activity will allow the students to spend time learning how to structure poems and help them learn new facts about the presidents. ( )