The presidential election is on everyone’s mind. And Syl Sobel knows it’s on kids’ minds, too.
Sobel, who lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland, is the author of Presidential Elections and Other Cool Facts, a book that lays out the election process from candidacies to conventions to the Electoral College, as well as superlatives and other presidential history, in accessible language that teaches kids ages 7 to 10 — and, really, adults who are new to the process — where our leaders come from in a way that’s easy to grasp.
“I just think it’s important that kids understand how the process works,” Sobel says. “And then the cool facts, the little bits of presidential trivia, I think, hold their interest.”
All in the Family
Sobel’s publishing career started as a family affair. He’s a lawyer who worked as a reporter during law school, and was in charge of publications for the Federal Judicial Center. In the late 1990s, he would tell his young daughters “my job was to make books for the U.S. government.” One night while reading a Washington Post kids’ page story on the government with his older daughter, who was in first grade at the time, she asked him, “Can you make a book for me on how the U.S. government works?”
Sobel remembers saying, “’I can do that.’” When he finished, “I gave it to her, put a little cover on it; she thought was adorable. She loved it, took it to school, showed it to her friends.”
When Sobel told his colleagues about it, they suggested he try to get it published. That’s how How the U.S. Government Works came to be.
After it came out, his younger daughter asked, “Well, what are you going to write for me?”
“That was predictable,” he says now. He asked her what she wanted him to write, and she suggested a book on presidents. And with the help of the girls, scouring children’s libraries for relevant books and facts, the first edition of Presidential Elections was born.
His daughters were an essential part of the process, Sobel says. “I could tell by the questions they asked [when] they weren’t getting it. And if they weren’t getting it, then I’d rewrite until I knew they were getting it. So I had a built-in test audience.”
They also forced Sobel to anticipate a child’s thought processes. He gave one vivid example: “Kids want to know who’s in charge. And they worry, if something happens to the person in charge, who’s going to be in charge? … People overlook the vice president. But it’s important to kids to know: What if something happens to the president? That’s something they think about. Does it all fall apart? No, there’s a vice president; there’s an order of succession. I might not have thought about that.”
His daughters do get little more than history from the books. “I do share a bit of the royalties with them, such as they are,” Sobel says.
After the presidential elections book, his editor asked, “So what have we got next?” Sobel replied, “That’s all I got. I only have two kids.” But thanks to the editor, Sobel has since come up with books on the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence.
New Editions
The presidential book has been updated after almost every election with new facts, but the process remains essentially the same. This is the fifth edition of the book, which first came out in 2000, just in time for the Bush-Gore election. “Great election to start with,” Sobel recalls.
The books are available online from the publisher, on Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes & Noble, and at a selection of local bookstores. They’re also available in many school libraries and often get set for lesson plans.
Sobel adds that he used to do a lot of school presentations on the election book, but not as much anymore.
“That changed in starting in 2016,” Sobel says. “I’m not going to get into a political statement, but among the many things that the last two elections and upcoming election have cost this country, the fact that teachers are reluctant to teach and have discussion about it in their classes, it’s really frightening.”
Sobel has a new publisher, Source Books, so all his books are due for new editions by the end of next year. He’s also working on a documentary about the Eastern Basketball League, about which he’s already written a book. “The Eastern League basically was the home of a whole generation of great African American players who were kind of shut out of the NBA because of the quotas,” Sobel says. “So now at age 68, I’ve become a filmmaker.”
Feature image courtesy Syl Sobel
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