What Presidents Are Made Of

Today, my granddaughter told me that one of the presidents built houses. She learned about Jimmy Carter from this book.

There are two things that interesting about "What President Are Made Of." The first is that Hanoch Piven puts together portraits of the presidents using ordinary objects, from blue jeans to jelly beans. Put together a peanut, a little ladder and hearts cut out of miniature American flags and you have the nose, mouth and eyes of President Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer who know builds houses for the homeless. So the idea is that the objects are representative of the individual president. The other interesting thing is which presidents Piven chooses to depict because while you might know to associate Bonzo the chimp and jelly beans with Ronald Reagan, who is going to come up with anything equally iconic for the likes of Millard Fillmore? But overall Piven sticks to the obvious choices, although we do get William Howard Taft and Calvin Coolidge instead of Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson (the latter being the only president since JFK who is omitted). Actually, Piven is making a concerted effort to get beyond what kids will find in the history books. We all know that George Washington was the first president, that Abraham Lincoln ended slavery, and that Franklin D. Roosevelt led the U.S. during World War II. But Piven wants to know what the presidents were like: "Did they make jokes? Did they play with their children?" The results are moments that usualy do not make it into the history books, so we see Washington fighting fires, Lincoln making fun of his looks, and FDR being a picky eater (which is something kids should be able to relate to). I can see "What Presidents Are Made Of" being useful to teachers of American history even if we are talking about those teaching high school students. You can show one of these portraits and have students figure out why Piven used the objects that he used. Usually the explanations are right there, as with the head of Richard Nixon being made of a tape recorder and George W. Bush as the former owner of the Texas Rangers so that his nose is a hot dog, his eyebrows a hot dog bun, and his mouth a baseball. But the pictures are a lot bigger than the text so that you can show them to the class and see how much the cherubs know about the presidents. Beyond that the principle applied by Piven here to the presidents can be expanded to other people, famous and otherwise. So I can see class projects where students come up with similar collages for other presidents and famous people, or even for themselves. The idea of an iconic portrait made from objects could be used in a lot of interesting ways (and can make decidedly different Christmas presents for the kids to send Grandma and Grandpa).

[This review was first published in the "Ephrata (Pa.) Review."] In this fun book, the creator has assembled whimsical collages portraying 17 presidents-using objects appropriate to each president's personality, involvements or quirks. Nixon's portrait is assembled from a tape recorder; the cassette spools become his eyes, the buttons his teeth, the curly cord his hair. (Because Nixon was terrible with machines, he arranged it so that his office tape recorder turned on automatically; he unwittingly recorded his and his staff's misdeeds.) Jimmy Carter's portrait features, among other things, peanuts (his nose), a mini-ladder (his mouth) and mini-tools, highlighting his career as a peanut farmer and his work with Habitat for Humanity. In an introduction, Piven encourages readers, "to try your own `object portraits' of the presidents." He certainly provides ample inspiration.