Review: Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country

Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country edited by Jory John.  McSweeney's.  2009.

It will make you laugh.  It will make you cry.  It will make you realize how far we've come, and how far we need to go.  It is also a book where tweens write the content, and adults are the main audience, when usually on this blog it's the other way around.


Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country is a compilation of drawings and letters written by kids and tweens who are a part of the 826 tutoring programs located around the country in urban areas.  Here's what many of the kids have on their minds: getting out of Iraq, that war is a bad idea in general, the economy, the environment and picking out the Obamas' puppy.  Many of the writers also let Obama know that he is their friend, and that even though they are offering him advice, that they back him up.  I wonder if this has to do with the fact that for these inner city kids, many of them the children of immigrants and from mixed backgrounds, the current president reminds them a little more of themselves than presidents past.

Here is one of my favorite letters from nine year old Brooklynite Alexis Feliciano, got to love a kid who gives a real life example:

"One thing you could fix is the economy.  Something happened to me: I went out to lunch at Starbucks and I wanted to buy a cup of whipped cream and normally it's forty-three cents, but now it's seventy-five cents!  The price raised thirty-one cents for no reason.  You should try to change things like that from happening."