The Kid Who Became President by Dan Gutman – Book Review

Publisher’s write-up:

‘Judson Moon has done a big flip-flop. Immediately after being elected President of the United States, he resigned. Now, after a heart-to-heart with his running mate (and ex-babysitter) June Syers, Judd has decided to take office after all: He wants to make a difference.’

I got to know about this book following the inadvertent promotion of its prequel by John Oliver owing to the similarities of the kid’s campaign with that of Donald Trump, who unfortunately is now prefixed with the term President-elect. I thought I could get a glimpse of how the future would be under Trump considering how the author had serendipitously made an accurate depiction of the future; through the kid, Judson Moon’s campaign, which happened to be very similar to Donald Trump’s own campaign.

So, the book starts where it left off, and Judson Moon, the Kid who ran for president decides to go back on his promise of not taking up presidency, like a typical politician and thus, decides to become the President of the United States and he wanted to do something and make a difference, only to realise that it wasn’t as easy as he thought.

This book did a good job in bringing out how the Government actually works and what are the responsibilities and powers of the President and it perhaps does a better job at explaining than any book in school would probably be able to do. The author also did a good job at bringing out the difficulties of a President and how the President is not exactly a King and the book is about Moon’s struggle to manipulate the popularity ratings and stride through the Presidency.

However, I felt that the author, treating the campaign as a joke in the prequel was a good idea but then, the author continued to treat the Presidency in the same fashion, and a lot of supposedly presidential issues that came to Moon were true to his age, very childish and I shall not be revealing the exact details of what the issues were lest I end up revealing spoilers.

Despite that, I felt that this book qualifies for an excellent light read for an adult and a good book for children to read, particularly children from the United States. The book, however, did not live up to the expectations set by its prequel and thus, I would be awarding the book a rating of five, considering it was neither too bad nor did it have anything noteworthy and I hope, Donald Trump, when he takes up office; does the sensible thing like what this kid does, towards the end of the book.

Rating – 5/10

Have a nice day,

Andy