OUR CONGRESS

A ghostly cat and other residents of the U.S. Capitol give a newly elected representative’s young daughter an introduction to Congress.

Left to her own devices while Mom takes care of official business, Alice finds a series of friendly tour guides—including the specters of a cat, James Madison, and Blanche Bruce, the first Black senator to serve a full term—who take her around the building and fill her in on the party and electoral systems, the jobs of each of the three branches as defined by the Constitution, and the legislative process. If Madison’s assertions that “we don’t put one person in charge of everything” and that only Congress makes laws “and even the president must follow them” will have ironic rings to readers up on current events (or, for that matter, U.S. history), such claims do at least indicate how the federal government is supposed to work. At times, though, the book offers a look at some harsher realities: A chart showing how bills become law includes some of the many ways a bill can die, Mihaly gives a nod toward the long struggle for equal voting rights for all, and the book provides a straightforward recap of the events of January 6, 2021. In the neatly drawn graphic panels, Alice (brown-skinned like her mother) encounters racially diverse groups of tourists, officials, and workers, including people who use wheelchairs.

A timely, basic, and, at least in spots, refreshingly frank overview.