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WHEN PENNY MET POTUS by Rachel Ruiz

WHEN PENNY MET POTUS

by Rachel Ruiz ; illustrated by Melissa Manwill

Pub Date: July 1st, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62370-758-3
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers

A common political acronym is decoded when a young girl accompanies her mother to her White House job and meets the mysterious "POTUS."

Penny is a bright and curious little brown-skinned girl, but she's lacking one crucial bit of information about her mother's boss: who is POTUS, and what kind of weird monster must it be? Penny spends a chunk of the day imagining a blue-furred, horned creature with its own plane and a team of tentacled secret agents. When Penny goes wandering, she finally runs into POTUS, a bespectacled white woman with brown hair. After all her speculation, the girl is surprised not that the president of the United States is a woman, but that she's human. Illustrations feature big, expressive faces and give the White House an institutionally friendly vibe as well as a sizable, diverse staff to make it run smoothly. But the story plays a little loose with Penny's age, which is never established. If she's too young to recognize the president on sight, isn't she also too young to be wandering around the White House alone?

As a sweet, simple miniexplainer of a very specific bit of jargon, it works, and the election-year timing couldn't be better.

(Picture book. 4-8)