Mayor Pete

March 15, 2020
From childhood to office to who-knows-where? Be inspired by the life of Pete Buttigieg. For politically minded readers, Sanders and Hastings provide a concise account of the life and political career of the mayor-turned-presidential candidate. Sanders, an elementary school teacher, knows how to communicate effectively with children and delivers his text in a friendly mix of easy and more-complex sentences. While the majority of the text is written directly, the occasional folksy metaphor adds a little buoyancy. When introducing Buttigieg's future husband, Chasten Glezman, Sanders states that "like Indiana sweet corn, a relationship began to grow." Hastings' digital illustrations capture the humanity of his subject and depict the highs and lows of a life in politics. Many of the illustrations appear to be inspired by photographs of Buttigieg on the campaign trail and in his daily life. While the attention is solely on Mayor Pete, the background artwork features a range of ages, ethnicities, and genders interacting and engaging with Buttigieg. There is no mention of his fraught relationship with South Bend's African American population, and his stint with McKinsey is covered in one sentence; the book ends before his March 1 withdrawal from the 2020 presidential race. The backmatter includes a timeline, selected bibliography, information about running for president, and (most importantly) a pronunciation guide for "Buttigieg." Young readers curious about the ongoing political race will find this to be a useful book to help them learn more about this former (and possibly future) presidential hopeful. A worthy candidate for your shelf. (Picture book/biography. 6-10)

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May 4, 2020
Recurring motifs lend Sanders’s forthright narrative a quality that’s reflected in Hastings’s digital illustrations. Buttigieg’s political life is pithily sorted into wins and losses (a failed bid for high school treasurer is followed by his election as class president, and he becomes mayor of South Bend, Ind., after an unsuccessful run for state treasurer). Given the timing of the book’s publication, the 2020 U.S. presidential candidate’s most recent political foray is not included in detail, but Sanders closes on a hopeful, open-ended note. Back matter capsulizes the ways in which the politician, in sync with the series title, “did it first”: being the first millennial, candidate “married to a partner of the same gender,” and veteran of the Afghanistan war to run for U.S. president. An accessible and informative picture book biography. Ages 4–8.

April 15, 2020
Grades 1-3 The first title in the Who Did It First? series to focus on a single groundbreaking individual?rather than a collection of subjects?spotlights Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay man to run for the U.S. presidency. Throughout, this short biography links Mayor Pete with his hometown of South Bend, Indiana, by emphasizing it?the location of the University of Notre Dame as well as abandoned factories?as a city of losses and wins. Sanders tracks Buttigieg, the son of two professors, from his days walking past gutted factories to and from school, through losing his first election in high school and coming back to win the student body presidency, to his successful run for mayor and his entry into the U.S. presidential race. The digital illustrations are fairly lackluster, but Mayor Pete's story, grounded in the theme of losses and wins that carries readers into the future, is well worth the while.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

June 1, 2020

K-Gr 3-"Only time will tell who Pete Buttigieg...will become." This recurrent phrase expresses the theme of this admiring overview of the life of the first openly gay presidential candidate. Sanders ably describes important stepping stones in Buttigieg's life, from his childhood in South Bend, IN, to Harvard and beyond-Tunisia, England, and Chicago-before his return to South Bend, where his early political career was interrupted by his Naval Reserve service in Afghanistan. Sanders notes parallel political life experiences: losing an election in high school before being elected senior class president and losing an election in Indiana before being elected mayor of South Bend. Public service is a major theme throughout the book, but so is Buttigieg's personal identity. The importance of Buttigieg's candidacy is emphasized by the cover's tagline "first-of-his-kind man running." The back matter includes a guide to the pronunciation of Buttigieg, the requirements to become president, a time line, and selected sources. Hastings's digitally created art often shows the former mayor with diverse crowds, reinforcing the writer's reference to South Bend as "a community that welcomed all people." VERDICT An important picture book biography to add to school and public library collections.-Kathleen Isaacs, Children's Literature Specialist, Pasadena, MD

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