Father of Our Country: George Washington The First President by Sarah Albee

In 1776, the colonists in America declared independence from Britain. The two sides called it the American Revolution.

Of course, to King George and his subjects in Great Britain, it was a rebellion, and he sent warships, cannons, and more troops to put down the uprising in his largest colony.

The Americans needed an army, and for that they needed a general.

George Washington was the general who led the American army. He was brave and fair. 

After a long and difficult war, with some battles lost and some won, the British Army surrendered, and the Revolutionary leaders asked Washington to continue to lead the country. But Washington declined. He chose to return to Mt. Vernon, the farm in Virginia he had inherited from his brother Lawrence. He had married a widow, Martha Custis, with two children and even more land, and Washington wanted to become a successful planter.

He said, "I retire," he announced.

But the new country needed help, and Washington returned to public life to help write the Constitution and became the first president of the new United States, guiding the nation through two terms. Sarah Albee's George Washington: The First President (I Can Read Level 2) (Harper-Collins, 2017). This Level 2 beginning reader is a fine introduction to historical biography for early independent readers. It provides a full summary of Washington's life, including his family story, his early work for the British Crown and service with the British army in the French and Indians' War and his leadership in the formative days of the new American republic.

Illustrator Chin Ko supports Albee's narrative well with active and realistic illustrations with much visual information for young readers, and the book offers a substantial supportive appendix with a timeline of Washington's life, a special photo essay on slave life at Mt. Vernon, with a fascinating section on the black double agent spy who was part of Washington's critical spy network that helped win the war. This is a great book for classroom libraries and an informative and rather absorbing read for early primary students suitable for a biography or history report in that period leading up the Presidents Day.

Doing Chores for Abe: Abe Lincoln At Last! (Magic Tree House #47) by Mary Pope Osborne

The third thing to break the spell
is a single feather from a hero's hand.
Use it wisely to give him hope--
the hope he needs to heal his land.

The Magic Tree House whisks Jack and Annie back in time on their third Merlin Mission, back to 1861 at a momentous time in the nation's history. On the brink of war with the southern states, Abraham Lincoln and his family have just moved into the White House. When Jack and Annie land in a tall tree, they see a crowd flocking into the President's House for a gala reception, many of the mob hoping to meet with the President and plead their own cases. Jack and Annie wonder how can they even find the President in such a clamor. Abe Lincoln is obviously the hero, but how do they find this mysterious feather, and how can it give him hope at this perilous moment in history?

But as they start down the rope ladder, they are attacked by a small whirlwind in the form of a little boy, a very bossy boy, and his gentle older brother.

"Hello!" the boy shouted when he saw Jack and Annie. "Who are you? Why are you in our tree house?"

"It's not your tree house!" said Jack.

"Yes it is!" the boy said confidently.

"Tad, hush!" said the older boy. "Don't mind my brother Tad!" he shouted.

"But it's ours!" Willie!" said Tad. "The White House is our house! And the tree house is in our yard! I'm coming up!"

But their meeting with the excitable Tad and his brother Willie turns out to be lucky for Jack and Annie, who do get a promise of a meeting with their dad Abe later when he goes for his daily ride. For insurance, though, Jack and Annie take a sip from the magic potion left for them in the tree house and make a wish to meet Lincoln and fulfil their mission.

But Jack and Annie find it hard to "trust the magic" as they suddenly find themselves in a forest, meeting a dirty, tousle-haired boy who calls himself "Sam" and promises to take them to Abe Lincoln when he finishes grinding his corn at the mill. Then, to their horror, Sam's horse kicks him in the head and they find themselves compelled to take him home on that same balky horse and try to do his chores while he rests his aching head. Chopping wood, getting water from a spring, milking Sam's cow and making cornbread for dinner turn out to be more than they can handle, but all ends well, as Sam's father returns from a long absence in Kentucky with a new wife and a wagon full of goods, including books for Sam to read. In gratitude for their help, Sam gives them his favorite quill pen and inkwell of blackberry ink.

Just as Sam begins to explain that he's been playing a prank on them, the magic ends and Jack and Annie find themselves hurled through time back to the lawn of the White House, where President Lincoln greets them warmly, saying he remembers them from the time when he was a boy and they helped him home and tried to do his chores.

"I spent the day with you once long ago," said the president. "And you vanished, right before my eyes, outside our log cabin in Indiana."

"You were Sam?" said Jack.

Lincoln smiled. "I haven't seen you since that day so long ago. And you haven't changed at all. Why have you come back?"

Jack realizes he knows how to answer, what to say to fulfil their mission, and taking the feather pen, he writes a message for the troubled new President.

Never lose hope. This land will live peacefully as one nation one day. With freedom for all. You have our word.

Mary Pope Osborne continues her best-selling beginning chapter series with her latest, Magic Tree House #47: Abe Lincoln at Last! (Random House, 2012), just in time to honor Lincoln on Presidents' Day, with a message of hope that is still good to hear today. For teachers and students doing research, there is as always a companion nonfiction title,
Magic Tree House Fact Tracker: Abraham Lincoln: A Nonfiction Companion to Magic Tree House #47: Abe Lincoln at Last! (Random House, 2012).

Historic Meeting: Lincoln and Douglass: An American Friendship by Nikki Giovanni

Barack Obama may be the first African-American president when he moves into the White House, but abolitionist Frederick Douglass was probably the first African-American guest invited by a president to the inauguration gala there.

Indeed, as the elegantly dressed guests filled the White House ballroom on the inauguration evening of March 4, 1865, Mary Todd Lincoln noticed that her husband kept looking around for someone.

"Is something wrong?" she queried.

"I'm looking for my friend Frederick Douglass. I had invited him to come and bring his wife," Lincoln responded. "Oh, there you are, Fred," he said a bit later. "I thought I saw you a while ago."

"Yes, sir, you did," said Douglass, "but there was a misunderstanding about the door through which I was to enter. The gentleman invited my wife and me to go around to the rear door, and we declined. No matter. It has been cleared up."

Despite the displeasure of some of the guests, it was an historic moment when the two old friends shared the inaugural celebration that night in the White House Indeed, a degree of shared history already lay behind the two unlikely allies. Both were virtually self-educated, and both overcame much to become the leaders who shared that historic meeting and symbolic moment.

Giovanni tells how Lincoln and Douglass first met when Lincoln became a congressman from Illinois. Douglass sought him out as a possible supporter in the cause of Negro emancipation. The two also shared, as the author points out, a love of good food and the need to laugh together despite the deep discord of the time in which their friendship developed. Over the years Douglass pushed his friend toward his eventual belief that the nation could not prosper or continue while the institution of slavery persisted. What the two set in motion has been a long time coming, but then, as we know from another eloquent president, "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

Award-winning poet and author Nikki Giovanni's Lincoln and Douglass: An American Friendship (Henry Holt, 2009) is just in time to join the celebration of Abraham Lincoln's bicentennial birthday. Joined by artist Bryan Collier, the co-creator of their Caldecott Honor book and Coretta Scott King award-winning Rosa,honoring Rosa Parks, Giovanni's picture story of an significant American friendship is a welcome addition to books for young readers about our sixteenth president--and about his unlikely but remarkable friend.