The Next President - by Kate Messner & Adam Rex (Hardcover)

This book is a great way to talk about presidents and the changes they can make. I like the idea that this book leaves open the idea that your child could be president if they wanted to.

An excellent book that includes the diverse backgrounds of many of our Presidents before they became President. An image of Trump is included as a young boy while he attended high school explaining education is important. Illustrations of JFK, Obama, and H Clinton are included to show that religion, race, and gender do not prevent you from running for office. This book gives children the opportunity to see that they, too, could one day become President of the United States.

Excellent book. It is not a list of presidents. It shows the lives of people before becoming president. There are beautiful illustrations showing diversity. It also gives children a chance to dream that they could one day be president. It’s a wonderful book that shows presidential history in a way that’s easy to understand and interesting to kids. (For the record, 45 is in the book, and Hillary is presented as the first woman nominated by a major party not as president. People really need to read the book before posting bogus reviews). I am happy to add this book to my granddaughter’s collection!

Loved the fact that it showed what the presidents to be were doing as kids while they introduced the one serving. Loved that it was so inclusive at both the beginning and end and focused on hope and that any child today could be our next president. My grandson who just turned 10 was trading it in the car.

I loved this book and loved the premise behind the book. For those saying she skipped Trump....she did not! And as far as the pictures they were not in order on the wall it went from JFK to Obama so she wasn’t purposely skipping our current president.

Such a sweet and encouraging book for children. Who will be America's future presidents? It could be anyone! I was surprised to read reviews by people who either didn't read the book, or missed the purpose of the book. An uproar about a missing photo for president 46---when in fact, we will not have a name or face to fill that spot for several more months. The more we read, the more we learn.

I just received and read Kate Messner’s new picture book. It is interesting, intriguing, and hopeful: a sort of brief history of our presidents,1 - 45 (although not all are pictured) with some thought-provoking ideas about who might come along in the future, including the reader of the book. There is information from The Constitution that explains who can be a president, too. I included two pictures: one from near the beginning and one near the end. Well done!

A note from the author. Please read the book before you write a review! These people giving it 1 star don’t have a clue what they are talking about. The book is NOT a timeline of presidents! TRUMP is in the book because it’s a book about their lives BEFORE becoming president. Recently, there was a social media post about THE NEXT PRESIDENT, my picture book with Adam Rex, suggesting that it did not include the current president. That's not true, but I've gotten some emails and social media replies about it. Some were offensive and rude, but I've tried to respond to the ones that weren't, and I'm posting one of those replies here - An Open Letter to Rose (and anyone else who's wondering about the book). Hello, Rose! Thanks for your email asking about The Next President: The Unexpected Beginnings and Unwritten Future of America's Presidents. I've gotten a handful of emails recently from people who saw a social media post from someone who didn't read the book and was under the mistaken impression that President Trump is not included in it. However, he is in the book. He's on the same page as Clinton and Bush, who were also 15 years old the year JFK took office, and Obama, who was born that year. The illustration shown in the post you might have seen is not a list of presidents. It's a page about how America's presidency has evolved. The text on that page talks about how America's earliest presidents "might have been surprised if they'd been around to see a Catholic or African American man elected president...or a woman nominated by a major party for the highest office in the land." That's why JFK and Obama are pictured as presidents on that page, and why, on a different wall, there's a portrait of Hillary Clinton. As you note, the frame for President #46 is empty, because we don't know yet who that person will be. If Trump is reelected in 2020, he'll still be president 45, and if Biden is elected, he'll be President #46, but he won't be in that illustration either, because he wouldn't be breaking new ground in the way the others did. I have received other emails and social media replies - some of them quite vulgar - from people who object to other things in this book. Some hate Hillary Clinton so much that they object to a fact about her being included in a book for kids. Others hate that Adam's illustrations of the museum patrons include a wonderfully diverse group of people who appreciate art and history. That is one of the things I love best about this book, and if people object to it, this is most definitely not the right book for them. Anyway - to get back to your question, President Trump was not left out of the book. He is included in the same way the other 44 presidents are, illustrated in the years leading up to their presidencies, because that is what the book is about. It may well be that you don't like the book anyway, and that's okay. One of the wonderful things about books is that there are so many of them, and I hope you find some that you love. Best wishes, Kate

So disrespectful, and some day when kids grow up they will say, what a stupid book, they didn’t even know their own current president.

Horrible, didn’t even mention tromp and he’s the best president the United States has had in a long time.

This book takes a different approach to presidential history by focusing on what people's lives were like BEFORE becoming president. This shows the variety of people who have filled the position, and toward the end, three people who broke the mold (or attempted to) are briefly highlighted: Kennedy, the first Catholic President, Obama, the first African-American President, and Hillary Clinton, the first female presidential candidate nominated by a major party. These three people are pictured on a spread, with Hillary on a separate wall. That scene is never identified as a "Hall of Presidents." The accompanying text explains the pictures, including a question - And where is the next president now? There is a blank space with a number 46 beside it. As of the printing of this book, we don't know if there will be a 46th president in 2021. If Trump is re-elected, he stays #45. Obviously JFK and Obama aren't in chronological order. Only looking at the illustration without reading the text on the page has led to some erroneous conclusions. The book is organized into time frames or eras: 1789, 1891, 1897, 1961. These sections stop at 1961 because (to date) we have had no president that wasn't living in 1961 or before. Trump is listed in this section. Again, the emphasis is on the presidents' lives before they were presidents. There are a few snapshots of past presidents including Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Jackson. Toward the end of the book, the author states that probably at least 10 of our future presidents are alive today. They may already be working in government, or they may still be kids. Since the entire book has been about who presidents were before becoming presidents, readers can wonder who will be next some day. Could it be them? Children dreaming of becoming president of the United States is not a new idea, and this book keeps that dream alive in the minds of young readers.

Horrible!!! that they left out a President

This book implies Hillary Clinton was president and omits the current president Trump. This is revisionism.