BEACON OF HOPE

A respectful profile of Barack Obama, from childhood to the White House.

Readers will have to learn elsewhere that Obama is still alive and a public figure, since the appended timeline ends in 2017, before much of the intended audience was born. Rappaport’s narrative ends even earlier than that, with approving references to his overseeing the 2011 assassination of Osama Bin Laden and the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order. Still, along with laying out major events in his life (so far) in a narrative punctuated by direct quotes, she does illuminate some nuances in his character. She notes that he lived comfortably in Indonesia rather than in “hovels” like many of his neighbors and that he didn’t have the smoothest relationship with his distant, autocratic birth father. More significantly, the author links early lessons in Civil Rights history from Obama’s mother (“Five days a week, at four in the morning”) and guidance in treating others with compassion from his loving adoptive father. She also links his resolution of his early confusion about his own racial identity to his later firm, principled commitment to equality across lines of race and social class in the face of determined opposition from Republican opponents and “vicious assaults” from the media. Flashing that wide smile from an early age, he cuts a dignified figure in Engel’s illustrations, both in cozy family settings and posing before racially diverse crowds.

Further cements the 44th U.S. president’s status as a strong role model and an admirable human being.