Fun little book to read with kids (or on a lazy Sunday on the couch for a refresher) to learn about the US Presidents. No complaints.

I received a digital copy of "Meet America's Presidents" in a Librarything.com giveaway. It contains tidbits of information about each of the presidents, including birthdates, terms served, and important events. I did find a pretty glaring factual mistake: President Lincoln is listed as "murdered just one month into his presidency", but it was actually one month into his second term. Other than that, it's a good book.

This book does what it is intended to do. It is for elementary students and provided an introduction to each president. It would be good for the collections for younger grades.

I read this book along with my 11 year old daughter. She really enjoys learning History... and fun and weird facts even more. This book is a mashup of those two things which was perfect for my Nonfiction genre loving girl. I personally am not the biggest fan of the genre but thought it would be interesting to give a go with my tween and document our two (usually) differing opinions. Let me start off by saying that this book introduces each president but giving their name, picture, party affiliation and number of terms served. The next page gives snippets about what they are known for and how they died. The next, and arguably the best, page gives weird facts about them, their family, nicknames etc... The last page was the most boring (as agreed upon by my daughter and I) of the bunch, it was dedicated to one of the president's personal quotes.

Now, onto the dueling reviews.

Daughter: "I thought that this was a funny read. I never knew that I had something in common with a president, president Obama also read all of the Harry Potter books... it's always great to hear of fellow PotterHeads! I loved how brief each entry was which helped make things more interesting... especially for my mom who finds History boring. I wish the weird facts section was larger. Finding out that a president kept an alligator in a White House bathtub as well as the fact that a president almost got killed by a chimpanzee made me giggle and want to read through those sections again.
Overall:
This is a great way for people to learn about our country's presidents. I really enjoyed spending time reading this with my mom and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to find out more about our country's leaders over the years".

My take: As stated a few times already, I am no lover of the Historical Genre. It might be due to how History was taught to kids of my generation. We were forced to memorize names and dates (boooooring!) and were never given fun/kooky facts like Hitler only had 1 ball (not relevant to this particular book but a fun fact nonetheless). These types of trivia make learning about the past more relatable and more fun which in turn makes retaining the information easier. Besides spending quality time with my mini-me, the weird fact section alone made the time spent reading this book worthwhile. It brought levity and a lot of insight into times long past. My daughter and I found it fascinating, and fun to guess, how each president died... spoiler alert, most presidents were weak of heart .. no pun intended.

Overall:
I have put my political points of view aside so that both my daughter and I could review this book solely on its own merits. Both my daughter and I agree that this book is a fun, funny, informative read with excellent pacing and (seemingly) well researched facts. We both highly recommend this read to any and all readers looking for basic knowledge on the 45 (at the time of publication) presidents.

~ Enjoy

*** I was given a copy of this book from LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review *** ( )

I loved the bite-size facts on each president. I appreciated that his political beliefs were not evident in his writing. I love history and already knew some about all our presidents but int this book I learned a great deal more! This isn’t a hard hitting book on history but it isn’t just fluff, either. Definitely worth your time. I’d be shocked if you didn’t enjoy this book. ( )