The President's Work: A Look at the Executive Branch (How Government Works)

Reviewed with Sandy Donovan's Running for Office.Gr. 4-6. As this election season stretches endlessly ahead, students may have questions about the process. These two slim books in the How Government Works series can provide some answers. In Running for Office, Donovan introduces fictional candidate Samantha Brown, a Democrat running for state senator, tracing her journey from her decision to run to her eventual election. Along the way, the author introduces various aspects of campaigning and voting--among them, primary and general elections, fund raising, and voting procedures. Sidebars provide extra tidbits, such as explanations of the two houses of government. Donovan's use of a fictionalized campaign adds interest, but her text is sometimes awkwardly juxtaposed with the many excellent color and black-and-white photos of campaigns and candidates from different decades, sometimes distancing readers from Brown's story.