Elections around the world: ePals World Elections Center is intended to help students learn about global election processes, candidates, and issues by involving them in a wide range of interactive activities. The site, featuring projects and activities for whole-class and independent learning, includes videos on the recent French presidential inauguration, the 2012 Venezuelan presidential candidates, the U.S. Republican and Democratic Conventions, and more. In “Students Speak,” users can share their thoughts through their writing and artwork. Students can also make and upload a Presidential Minute” video in which they address their country’s leader with their concerns and advice. There’s a section where users can check out videos that were previously uploaded concerning past elections.  In the “Teachers’ Corner,” educators can find “Election Projects” such as “Romney–Obama Presidential Election” and “What Are Constitutional Governments?”

Kids can also research and share information about their country’s candidates with each other. In addition, there’s an international focus with fact pages for countries that have had or will have presidential elections in 2012, including the U.S., the Russian Federation, Taiwan, Mexico, Slovenia, Gabon, South Korea, France, Sierra Leone, and Venezuela. This section includes materials focusing on each country’s political structure, such as its form of government, election processes, terms of office, voting regulations, and more. Among the games available are “On the Road to the White House,” “Win the White House,”  “Get the House in Order–The United Kingdom,” “History Challenge Australia,” and many more.

“Every teacher understands the power of the teachable moment,” says Nina Zolt, ePals co-founder and chief learning officer. “The World Elections Center provides a terrific opportunity for students around the globe to explore, communicate with peers, and generally become involved in 2012 elections and issues around the world that will have a direct impact on their futures.”

Tell Me a Story

Literacy initiative: Storyline Online is a free streaming video site where members of the Screen Actor Guild (SAG) read children’s books with the goal of promoting literacy and inspiring the love of reading. Annette Bening is the latest volunteer actor to lend her talents to this project. She reads Avi Slodovinick’s The Tooth (Kane/Miller, 2010) while the illustrations by Manon Gauthier are scanned, with some animation added. In the story, a little girl goes to the dentist to have her tooth extracted and notices a homeless man on the street. When she leaves the dentist’s office, she gives him her tooth and tells him to put it under his pillow.

For each book, there are downloadable supplemental activities to strengthen comprehension and verbal and written skills. To date, there are 25 books in the program, each read by a different actor. They include Betty White narrating Gene Zion’s Harry, the Dirty Dog (Harper, 1956), James Earl Jones reading Evelyn Coleman’s To Be a Drum (Albert Whitman & Company, 1998), and Jane Kaczmarek reading Thank You, Mr. Falker (Philomel, 1998) by Patricia Polacco.

“If the pundits and talking heads are to be believed, politics in America is dirty business. Lobbying, partisanship, pork-barrel spending, and mudslinging make up no small part of it. There is much more to politics, though. Beneath the necrotic layers of scandal and corruption are the birth-right essentials of policy, governance, civics, and people. This collection of books, websites, and films attests to that with content, style, and format that are ideal for children and teens.”

So begins the introduction to a list of K-12 titles on the American political process and the presidency recommended by youth services librarian Jennifer Prince in our September issue.

From websites to apps, here are more resources on the election:

Best Websites for Teaching the Presidential Election By Eric Langhorst

Election resources to share By Joyce Valenza

Touch and Go app review: Countdown to an Election By Daryl Grabarek

Vote for Me! | Prelude to the Presidential Election More book recommendations by Joy Fleishhacker

And have you been following the KidLit Election? Great fun over at the Horn Book. A recent post:

KidLit Election 2012: Third-party tickets

The Secret Lives of Presidents: A behind-the-scenes look at the residents of the White House By Kathleen Baxter

The Horn Book is holding a KidLit Election

Start with Beverly Gherman’s First Mothers (Clarion, 2012), a catalog of powerful women who had powerful influence. Abigail Smith Adams, the wife of John and the mother of John Quincy, urged her husband in a letter to “Remember the Ladies… Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.” She was always willing to tell both of them what to do. Even after her son Lyndon became president, Rebekah Baines Johnson edited his speeches and reminded him to stand up straight. George H. W. Bush’s mother, Dorothy Walker Bush, was a great athlete. She disliked braggers, and she always told her children to remember how lucky they were.

Other First Mothers had traits they passed on to their famous sons. Ida Stover Eisenhower had brilliant organizing talents, which her son Dwight, the future general and commander-in-chief, inherited. Susanna Boylston Adams had a terrible temper—a flaw her son John shared. Abe Lincoln had two strong mothers: Nancy, his biological mother, who loved to wrestle and insisted he go to school, and Sarah Bush Johnston, his stepmother, who had a house full of books and a great sense of humor. The opinionated Sara Delano Roosevelt scolded her son, Franklin, for not letting her meet Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, who was fighting the Nazis. She wanted to tell Churchill how to run the war. Like mother, like son.

Joe Rhatigan’s White House Kids: The Perks, Pleasures, Problems, and Pratfalls of the President’s Children(2012) points out the pros and cons of being an offspring in the most famous house in America. The downsides include a lack of privacy, extremely busy parents, and the possibility of doing something embarrassing that could end up in the media. The upsides? You get to travel in Air Force One with your dad. Your new home has a movie theater, a basketball court, a bowling alley, a swimming pool, and a tennis court.

Some First Kids had personalities as remarkable as their fathers’. Abraham Lincoln’s boy Tad set up a table and sold refreshments to visitors by the White House entrance. Gerald Ford’s daughter, Susan, held her high school prom in the East Room. Ulysses Grant asked his son Jesse why he often showed up late for breakfast. “When I was your age, I had to get up, feed four or five horses, cut wood for the family, take breakfast, and be off to school by eight o’clock,” the president said. Jesse smiled at his father and replied, “Oh, yes, but you did not have such a papa as I have.” And then there was Alice, Teddy Roosevelt’s beautiful daughter. She attended formal dinners with her pet snake, Emily Spinach, wrapped around her arm.

Emily Spinach wasn’t the only unusual pet that lived on Pennsylvania Avenue, according to Julie Moberg’s Presidential Pets: The Weird, Wacky, Little, Big, Scary, Strange Animals That Have Lived in the White House (2012, both Charlesbridge/Imagine!). Lewis and Clark sent two grizzly bear cubs to Thomas Jefferson, who sometimes walked them on leashes on the lawn. John Quincy Adams kept an alligator in the East Room bathtub for two months.

Andrew Jackson owned a parrot that swore at his guests. The people of Bangkok gave Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes the first Siamese cat in America. William Taft kept a cow because he liked to drink lots of fresh milk, and Calvin Coolidge had a pet raccoon. Imagine the conversations this title will spark among your booktalk audience.

People have always been fascinated by how the heavily guarded White House residents really lived. Here’s a chance to do some snooping. And in a busy election year, these three books, perfect for fourth through eighth graders, will add a welcome human touch to your discussions.

Sure, there are plenty of apps devoted to November’s election, there just aren’t that many that explain the process to those too young to cast a ballot. Those listed here should get the conversation rolling about how we elect a President and the men who have held that the office.

For older students look for apps produced by mainstream media outlets with a focus on election coverage. Start with the major newspapers. In addition to hourly news updates, The Washington Post’s  W P Politics  includes “campaign files,” an interactive polling map, and a fact checker that “accesses the veracity of candidates’ statements,” awarding “one to four Pinocchios” when deemed necessary. Viewers can also watch videos of candidate’s ads—these alone will generate some lively classroom conversations. It doesn’t get much better than this one, and it’s available for free.

The NY Times Election 2012  (The New York Times) app promises all readers access to a half dozen “top” news stories. However, only subscribers can view candidate pages and videos and photos from the campaign trail, read the latest polling news, and receive live election results. High school students who love politics are probably already following Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook  (Politico) on their iPhones or iPads. Right now the daily news from this Washington insider is full of election-related coverage, and it’s all for free.

To drive home discussions about the Electoral College consider downloading the Electoral-Vote.com (Dubbele.com; Gr 9 Up; Free) app, which will bring users to the website. The site, which has been tracking elections for a number of years, includes detailed maps and commentary (sometimes snarky) on the presidential and senate races. It includes current poll results, graphs, and news features, and links to articles from a range of periodicals and blogs. The 2012 Map: The Presidential Election App is a better choice for younger students (Cory Renzella; Gr 5-9; $1.99), and it’s available in 12 languages. The projected electoral map is easy-to-read and there are daily updates and brief notes on where current presidential polls are in place. Users can create maps with their own Electoral College projections and share them with friends via Facebook, Twitter, and email. As they scroll through the archive of electoral maps from 1789 through 2008 they’ll see the borders of the country change, watch as third parties pop up, discover the shrunken map of 1864, and read the embedded notes on each election. For a simple Electoral College map that can be manipulated for classroom use Election Map 2012  (Teq; Gr 4 Up; $1.99) will also work. A look at the last four election maps is included.

Most of the apps for younger students feature lists of the men who have held the office of Chief Executive and provide a few facts about each of them. U.S. Presidents  (Encyclopaedia Britannica/MEDL Mobile; Gr 3-6; $1.99) opens with a rendition of “Hail to the Chief” and a photo of President Barack Obama. Beyond this screen viewers can access a page of images of the presidents in chronological order. A tap to any portrait brings up information on the subject along with additional tabs leading to facts about that president’s vice president, First Lady, and birth date, and a bit of trivia. Information on national landmarks, and the lyrics of “Hail to the Chief” are also provided. After exploring the app viewers can take a quiz to test their knowledge of presidential facts answering such questions as “Who was the first U.S. president to be elected with no prior political experience?” and “Who was the only president to serve two terms that weren’t back to back?”

The “clear interface” of The American Presidents and First Ladies  (Multieducator, Inc.; Gr 4-8; $.99) allows users to sort the lists of leaders and their spouses either alphabetically or chronologically. Each entry includes personal facts, along with a page of information on the president’s early years, family, election, “presidential promises.” The full text of each man’s inaugural text is also included. Information on the First Ladies includes the years before and after each woman’s spouse was in office. Highlights of the app are the embedded videos, which include photos and audio clips. Unfortunately, some out-of-date information and typos mar the overall presentation.

What Does the President Look Like?  (Kane Miller; Gr 4-8; $2.99 ), based on the book by Jane Hampton Cook and illustrated by Adam Ziskie, takes a different approach to presidential history. It offers a visual survey of the men who have held that office, along the way providing “succinct history of visual media, from portrait making through digital imaging.” Here’s what our reviewer, Erin Sehorn, had to say about the app’s options: “The “timeline” chronicles major events in presidential history, as well as the technological evolution of photographs, movies, television, and the Internet. On each page, glowing stars allow users to learn more about the technological advances of presidential image making through pop-up pictures, early political cartoons, and newsreel footage. “Resources” links to the websites used as source material. There are a few glitches—for example, in the “Gallery” portraits appear only briefly, making it difficult to study an image. Overall, though, kids will enjoy this production.”

Our youngest students may not know the ins and outs of how someone makes it into the White House, but they do know that a visit to that famous abode is cause for excitement. While conversation of the election swirls around them, share Marc Brown’s Arthur Meets the President  (ScrollMotion, Inc.; $2.99), based on the author’s picture book. In this story, the aardvark’s essay on “How I Can Help Make America Great” wins him and his classmates a trip to the White House to meet the president. En route the characters (and viewers) see and learn about a few other famous Washington, DC landmarks, and perhaps, take a moment to ponder what their contribution to our country might be.

Eds. note: After a brief hiatus during the transition to our new website, our app reviews are back. —moving from School Library Journal’s blog roll into a column, and pushing out in our Extra Helping enewsletter. Archived reviews can be found on the SLJ website under “Blogs and Columns.” However, to ensure you receive all of our postings, be sure to add “Touch and Go” to your RSS feed.