'Click, Clack, Moo'in the White House Library?

Chances are you won’t see Click, Clack, Moo (S & S, 2000), The Tale of Despereaux (Candlewick, 2003), or Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Abrams, 2007) in the White House library. But if students at Milton Terrace South Elementary School in Upstate New York have their way, these and other children’s books will be on the library’s shelves by the time President-elect Barack Obama and his family move in.

As part of an election lesson created by media specialist Susan Penney, the school’s K–5 students embarked on a program called “In Books We Trust.” Their goal? To hold a school-wide election of all the students’ favorite books, with top winners intended for the new First Family to enjoy.

Penney initially recruited kids from the school’s third- to fifth-grade gifted and talented program, and together with their teacher, they researched books, took a virtual tour on www.WhiteHouse.gov, and scoured many Web sites to find out whether the White House library housed any kids’ titles.

“We couldn’t categorically say no, but from what we could gather, most of the books were either scholarly books, gifts to presidents, or presidential papers,” says Penney, adding that based on what they saw, her students were inspired to transform the White House library into a “kid-friendly and meaningful place for children.”

The entire school got involved when Penney decided to ask each grade, under the guidance of their teacher, to nominate their favorite books. Each grade then whittled down their choices to two titles, with Principal Joseph Lopez even getting to include his own pick, Carol McCloud’s picture book Have You Filled a Bucket Today? (Nelson, 2007).

The entire student body held a school-wide vote in the media center on election day, complete with a voter registration and a ballot box.

Parents, teachers, and volunteers have already donated the 16 titles—which include E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (1952) and Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia (1977, both HarperCollins)—and Penney has plans to contact her local representative Kirsten Gillibrand, as well as Senators Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer to make sure the books get promptly delivered.

“If nothing else, we’ve managed to get all the kids reading these books,” says Penney. “The program has been such a huge motivator.”