The Obama Family Tree

School Library Journal

Gr 3-6–These books feel hastily cobbled together, with basic material that is repeated nearly verbatim throughout the volumes, stock photographs that are used multiple times, and a layout that is almost identical in each book. The facts spread over six volumes could be easily condensed into one, as a large part of the information is about the president and his campaign. The volumes on the daughters, and even the one on Michelle, don’t contain enough new information to warrant separate titles and are filled with sidebars of nominally related facts, such as a box about other presidents from Illinois in Malia. The text is littered with slang such as “dissed,” “stoked,” and “chill,” providing a contemporary bent, but one that could become outdated over the years. There’s nothing here to give staying power to this series, but libraries looking for immediate information about the current president may find Barack adequate for report writers and interested students.–Jody Kopple, Shady Hill School, Cambridge, MA