La Rue for Mayor- Mark Teague

This book is a good way to introduce campaign trailing to students. It focuses on a dog named Ike who has aspirations to become mayor. The first thing I noticed was the red, white, and blue coloring on the cover that is designed to look like a campaign poster. This book shows children how a campaign works because there are individual letters on each page that tell the story. Ike writes letters which take up part of the page and then the rest consists of his imagination. The pictures demonstrating his imagination are images that dogs dream of in black and white coloring. I like how the illustrator kept the images that he wishes will happen if he becomes mayor in black and white, while the actual images are in color. The fonts of the words are creative because it looks as if the signs were printed by hand, making the posters look realistic. I like that there are newspaper clippings on almost every other pages that are also typed to look like it is a real article. There are many ways I could incorporate this book into my classroom. I could have mock elections in my classroom and have each student make their own election posters. I could also have each student write as if they were writing to a mayor or the president. I think that students will like how each page has an article and then a colored image that demonstrates what each article is talking about. I would recommend teachers to have this book in their classroom for young students specifically interested in elections.