President Barack Obama’s children’s picture book “Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters” will be released Tuesday — but don’t expect its young audience or lyrical style to inoculate it from controversy.
“Have I told you lately how wonderful you are? How the sound of your feet running from afar brings dancing rhythms to my day?” the 31-page book opens, along with a drawing of Malia and Sasha Obama striding confidently followed by Bo.
Continuing in that vein, Mr. Obama asks, “Have I told you that you are creative?” to introduce “a woman named Georgia O’Keeffe [who] moved to the desert and painted petals, bone, bark. She helped us see big beauty in what is small: the hardness of stone and the softness of feather.”
The other qualities: “smart” (Albert Einstein); “brave” (Jackie Robinson); “a healer” (Sitting Bull); “have your own song” (Billie Holiday); “strong” (Helen Keller); “honor others’ sacrifices” (Maya Lin); “kind” (Jane Addams); “that you don’t give up” (Martin Luther King Jr.); “an explorer” (Neil Armstrong); “inspiring” (Cesar Chavez); “part of a family” (Abraham Lincoln); and “proud to be an American” (George Washington).
The choice of Sitting Bull has already produced some rumblings since USA Today first wrote about the book over the weekend. The book calls Sitting Bull a man “who healed broken hearts and broken promises. It is fine that we are different, he said.” It notes in the appendix that Sitting Bull “spoke out and led his people against many policies of the United States government. He is most famous for his stunning victory in 1876 over Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn.”
Full story: Obama Book Hits Kids’ Section Shelves – Washington Wire – WSJ