What Presidents Are Made Of, by Hanoch Piven

This book contains unique vignettes of seventeen presidents. What makes this book unusual is how the author includes both whimsy and fact. Each president has a portrait, and a paragraph detailing a few interesting facts about the president. For example, George W. Bush was the first president to ever have owned a baseball team, and his portrait has eyebrows made out of hotdog buns, and a nose made out of a hot dog. Very clever! The choice of objects in the portrait is often a puzzle in need of solving.

This book is appropriate for all levels of readers, as kids are never too young (or too old!) to learn about our presidents. An added bonus is the chronological listing of all the presidents with their real portraits in the back of the book. This book received the Parents Choice Foundation Award.

What I love most about this book is the whimsy. I love imagining how in the world the author decided what to write about the president, and how he went about choosing the items. When I think of how many autobiographies there are about each president, I wonder how Mr. Piven managed to cull through them all and choose his trivia facts to include in the book, as well as how to choose which presidents to include!

Keywords: World War II, involuntary, Habitat for Humanity, embarassed, flaunt, Supreme Court