Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out
Age Range: 10 and up
Grade Level: 5 - 6
Parents’ Choice Foundation Recommended Book Award, Fall 2008
School Library Journal Best Books of the Year 2008
The Horn Book Fanfare, Best Books of 2008
Publisher’s Weekly 2008 Best Books of the Year, Children’s Nonfiction
2008 Cuffie Award, Best Nonfiction Treatment of a Subject, Honorable Mention
Scripps-Howard News Service Favorite Children’s Book of 2008
2009 American Library Association’s Great Web Sites for Kids
2009 American Library Association Notable Children’s Book for All Ages, Nonfiction
2009 National Council for Social Studies and the Children’s Book Council Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People 2
2009 International Reading Association Teachers’ Choices Booklist Selection
2009-2010 National Endowment for the Humanities We the People “Picturing America” Bookshelf Award
For classroom and reading resources, click here.
SUMMARY
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough introduces Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out, a creative tour de force, in which 110 renowned authors and illustrators have donated their poetry, prose, and art to help advance the cause of young people’s literacy and historical knowledge. The book’s content—illustrations, essays, short stories, presidential letters, personal reflections, and historical accounts—inform and entertain, offering a window on more than two hundred years of American history.
It’s our hope that adults will share Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out with the young people they live with and work for, not only to rouse their interest in our nation’s heritage, inspire young people on their journeys to become future leaders.
REVIEWS
“In this sumptuous pro bono volume, 108 children’s authors and illustrators (with the occasional celebrity, president or other official chiming in) contribute original art, personal reminiscences, short stories, poems and historical vignettes about the White House and its residents. The generally chronological arrangement begins with a reproduction of the mansion’s original 1792 RFP and closes with a nighttime view of an empty chair. In between, it offers comments on the early African-American connection by Walter Dean Myers and Milton Meltzer; Richard Peck’s account of William Henry Harrison’s search for a good milk cow; Steven Kellogg’s envisioning of a Presidential Pet Show and much besides.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Eight years in the making, as a special project of the National Children’s Book and Literary Alliance, the arrival of Our White House is truly a major event in children’s publishing. The book is a treasury of essays, personal reflections, letters, poems, speeches and comics, demonstrating that the most celebrated house in America is simply bursting with stories.”—Children’s Bookpage