{"id":2374280,"date":"2024-11-28T23:35:01","date_gmt":"2024-11-29T04:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/is-hakeem-jeffries-the-next-dr-seuss-washington-examiner\/"},"modified":"2024-11-28T23:37:43","modified_gmt":"2024-11-29T04:37:43","slug":"is-hakeem-jeffries-the-next-dr-seuss-washington-examiner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/is-hakeem-jeffries-the-next-dr-seuss-washington-examiner\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Hakeem Jeffries the next Dr. Seuss? &#8211; Washington Examiner"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fis-hakeem-jeffries-the-next-dr-seuss-washington-examiner%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2374280&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has released a children&#8217;s picture book titled &#8220;The\u2063 ABCs \u200bof Democracy.&#8221; Distinct from\u200c typical political books, this work targets young readers and aims to teach the alphabet using themes \u2063of American values and \u200cdemocracy. The\u200b book originated from Jeffries&#8217;s speech as he began the 118th Congress, where he emphasized\u2063 democratic principles over autocracy. While his\u200b political message resonates with \u200dadults, the adaptation \u200dinto a children&#8217;s book has\u200d received mixed \u200dreviews from kids, with some finding \u2064its content less engaging. The illustrations by Shaniya Carrington\u2064 provide \u200ca vibrant visual appeal, mixing traditional\u2063 and playful styles. This \u2063shift towards children\u2019s literature by politicians, including former Arkansas Governor Mike \u200dHuckabee\u2019s book on Donald Trump, suggests a potential trend among <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/people-who-trash-their-family-in-public-cant-be-trusted\/\" title=\"Don&#039;t trust those who publicly criticize their own family.\">political\u200c figures<\/a> to \u200creach younger audiences through an unconventional medium.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><\/p>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><span class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-button\"><i class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-icon td-icon-mobile\"><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><span class=\"tdb-header-search-button-mob dropdown-toggle\" data-toggle=\"dropdown\"><i class=\"tdb-mobile-search-icon td-icon-search\"><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><span class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-button\"><i class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-icon td-icon-mobile\"><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<div class=\"tdb-drop-down-search\" aria-labelledby=\"td-header-search-button\">\n<div class=\"tdb-drop-down-search-inner\">\n<form method=\"get\" class=\"tdb-search-form\" action=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/\"><\/form>\n<div class=\"tdb-aj-search\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/#\" role=\"button\" aria-label=\"Search\" class=\"tdb-head-search-btn dropdown-toggle\" data-toggle=\"dropdown\"><i class=\"tdb-search-icon td-icon-search\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<h1 class=\"tdb-title-text\">Is Hakeem Jeffries the next Dr. Seuss?<\/h1>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-title-line\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<div id=\"Brid_1885856\" class=\"tpd-featured-video bridtv\"><\/div>\n<p>Politicians and their ghostwriters regularly churn out books in many different well-worn genres, including memoirs, policy manifestos, and novels. Still, House Minority Leader <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/hakeem-jeffries\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Hakeem Jeffries<\/a>&rsquo;s (D-NY) latest book, published in November by Grand Central Publishing after his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/breaking-arizona-state-rep-issues-call-to-withhold-states-electoral-college-votes-to-joe-biden-due-to-significant-evidence-of-fraud\/\" title=\"BREAKING: Arizona State Rep Issues Call to Withhold State&#039;s Electoral College Votes to Joe Biden Due to Significant Evidence of Fraud\">party&#038;rsquo<\/a>;s stinging losses in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/house-of-representatives\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">House<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/senate\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Senate<\/a>, and White House elections, is a departure from what his predecessors would have written to help boost future campaigns.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-paywall\">\n<p>That&rsquo;s because <em>The ABCs of Democracy<\/em> is a children&rsquo;s picture book, specifically the subset of children&rsquo;s picture books that help them learn the alphabet. These books, on the whole, sell well. Yet they usually aren&rsquo;t political since preliterate children have not yet been granted the franchise.<\/p>\n<p>Take <em>Dr. Seuss&rsquo;s ABC<\/em> as a successful example of the genre. The second of 26 alphabetical entries reads: &ldquo;BIG B. little b. What begins with B? Barber baby bubbles and a bumblebee.&rdquo; A later entry answers the letter question for N with &ldquo;nine new neckties and a nightshirt and a nose.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and the cover of his latest book, &ldquo;The ABCs of Democracy.&rdquo; (John McDonnell\/AP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Jeffries&rsquo;s guide didn&rsquo;t start as a children&rsquo;s book. Rather, it was a catechism of sorts for House Democrats. As the <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\">newly elected minority leader<\/a>, Jeffries would give the first speech of the 118th Congress before handing the gavel over to Republicans. His brief address just after midnight on Jan. 7 thus sought to rally the sleepy opposition.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We will never compromise our principles,&rdquo; Jeffries said. &ldquo;House Democrats will always put American values over autocracy, benevolence over bigotry, the Constitution over the cult, democracy over demagogues.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Jeffries, representing the eastern Brooklyn 8th Congressional District of New York, built a head of steam as he continued alphabetically. By the time he got to &ldquo;maturity over Mar-a-Lago,&rdquo; the Southeast Florida headquarters of former and now incoming President Donald Trump, Democrats cheered. He finished to a chorus of cheers by Democrats and a few boos by House Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>For the text of the book, Jeffries, now 54 with two adult sons, essentially stripped out the &ldquo;House Democrats will always&rdquo; part and printed the rest of it, one pairing at a time. There is an introduction upfront to supply historical context. The choice to move from speech to book without reworking the text produces some clangers, at least where the getting-ready-for-bed set is concerned.<\/p>\n<p>This writer&rsquo;s 3-year-old son was not impressed. &ldquo;Um, not good,&rdquo; was his verdict. The 5-year-old daughter was slightly more up on the book because she liked the pictures.<\/p>\n<p>Those were supplied by Shaniya Carrington. Described on the back cover as &ldquo;an African American digital illustrator from Brooklyn,&rdquo; Carrington has some range and shows it off. The portraiture is mostly spot-on. Some illustrations have an Obama-era &ldquo;hope&rdquo; vibe. Others are more playful. The cover has a splash of cherry blossoms, with the title&rsquo;s lettering on Capitol Hill steps and children playing among the letters.<\/p>\n<p>Jeffries wasn&rsquo;t the only national politician to experiment with children&rsquo;s books around this campaign season, and it may thus be a growing trend. Former Arkansas Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee wrote the <em>KiDS GUiDE to President Trump<\/em>, extolling the virtues of the once and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/2020-was-the-brian-stelter-of-years\/\" title=\"2020 Was the Brian Stelter of Years\">future president<\/a>. Trump rewarded Huckabee, a two-time GOP presidential hopeful, for his support with a nomination to be America&rsquo;s ambassador to Israel.<\/p>\n<p><em>The ABCs of Democracy<\/em> lies at the intersection of two different recent trends in children&rsquo;s books. The first trend is new novelty children&rsquo;s books that are aimed at niche markets. Permuted Press put out <em>The<\/em> <em>ABCs of Metallica<\/em> in 2019, for instance. (&ldquo;J is for James \/ Who sings and plays rhythm guitar \/ His powerful voice and down-picked riffing \/ Helped Metallica get this far,&rdquo; reads one entry, in part.)<\/p>\n<p>The second trend is a greater openness to politics in mass-market children&rsquo;s books. To wit, Ibram X. Kendi&rsquo;s <em>Antiracist Bab<\/em>y sold north of 300,000 copies. It even received an extra sales spike when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked then-federal Appeals Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson about it during the February 2022 Senate hearings on her successful Supreme Court nomination.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Whether or not children will be interested in such books in great numbers is an open question. The children&rsquo;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ore-power-grid-damaged-40000-still-without-power\/\" title=\"Ore. power grid damaged, 40,000 still without power\">book market<\/a> is one in which third parties (parents and grandparents) that are not the target audience (children) do the lion&rsquo;s share of buying. However, the children must sound the book out or sit still long enough to have it read to them. That gives them the sort of veto power that goes curiously unmentioned in <em>The ABCs of Democracy<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Jeremy Lott is the author of <\/em>Growlilocks and the Three Humans<em> and other children&rsquo;s books.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <script data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/cdn-cgi\/scripts\/5c5dd728\/cloudflare-static\/email-decode.min.js\"><\/script><script>!function(){var g=window;g.googletag=g.googletag||{},g.googletag.cmd=g.googletag.cmd||[],g.googletag.cmd.push(function(){g.googletag.pubads().setTargeting(\"has-featured-video\",\"true\")})}();<\/script><script>var _bp=_bp||[];_bp.push({\"div\":\"Brid_1885856\",\"obj\":{\"id\":\"27789\",\"width\":\"1280\",\"height\":\"720\",\"stickyDirection\":\"below\",\"video\":\"1885856\"}});<\/script><script defer src=\"https:\/\/services.brid.tv\/player\/build\/brid.min.js\"><\/script><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is Hakeem Jeffries the next Dr. Seuss? His new book, &#8220;The ABCs of Democracy,&#8221; is a children&#8217;s picture book that diverges from typical political literature<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2692,"featured_media":2374281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/wb-politics-hakeem-jeffries-abc-democracy-jeremy-lott-112724B2-1024x591.webp","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[45843,32854,32076],"class_list":["post-2374280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dr-seuss","tag-hakeem-jeffries","tag-washington-examiner"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/wb-politics-hakeem-jeffries-abc-democracy-jeremy-lott-112724B2-1024x591.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2374280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2692"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2374280"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2374280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2374284,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2374280\/revisions\/2374284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2374281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2374280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2374280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2374280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}