Dear Mr. President

When Sam sees the U.S. president on TV announcing the need for a wall—the leader is never fully seen or named, although the wave of orange hair is a giveaway—he fires off a letter to POTUS declaring that he needs a wall, too: he’s forced to share a bedroom with his older brother, who “exactly fits your description of an undesirable person.” More letters follow in this one-way correspondence as the bedroom wall idea takes hold in Sam’s mind and the other, bigger wall takes over public conversation. A teacher assigns a research project on defensive walls throughout history (as the teacher notes, “some of them didn’t quite work to plan”). Sam’s initially dismissive parents (“I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a lot of negative feedback,” Sam writes) are inspired to facilitate some much-needed communication and negotiation between the siblings—which, their father points out, “are always preferable to separation.” With economic, wry prose and stylish, observant watercolor and ink cartooning, Siers (Arlo and the Ginkgo Tree) and Villeneuve (the Loula books) offer readers ripped-from-the-headlines proof that the political is indeed personal. Ages 5–8. [em](Sept.) [/em]