A young girl accompanies her mom to work and hopes to meet her mysterious boss, the POTUS. She tries to imagine what POTUS must be like.
Picture book, fiction
Interest Level: K-3; Reading Level: 3.6
3 out of 5 stars
In this story we meet Penny, who is going to work with her mom at a “big white house. Her boss’s name is POTUS. Isn’t that a funny name?” Penny doesn’t know who POTUS is, so she begins to imagine who might have this weird name.
Her mom gets busy, so Penny sets off on her own and asks each staff person she finds if they know where POTUS is. Through these interactions, readers learn a little about the different jobs around the White House.
Finally Penny meets up with POTUS, and is a little disappointed to realize that POTUS is …. human. The twist to the story that older readers will get, is that POTUS is a woman. For the older reader, it seems that the big unveiling of what makes this POTUS unique should be the person’s gender, but Penny acts like POTUS being female is to be expected.
For young readers, they will learn a common acronym for the President of the United States, as well as a little information about the different people who maintain the physical White House. Some day the fact that POTUS is female will be irrelevant, but until then, the ending is a surprising twist.
by Rachel Ruiz; illustrated by Melissa Manwill
Capstone Young Readers, 2016