Mayor Pete: The Story of Pete Buttigieg (Who Did It First?)

Recurring motifs lend Sanders’s forthright narrative a quality that’s reflected in Hastings’s digital illustrations. Buttigieg’s political life is pithily sorted into wins and losses (a failed bid for high school treasurer is followed by his election as class president, and he becomes mayor of South Bend, Ind., after an unsuccessful run for state treasurer). Given the timing of the book’s publication, the 2020 U.S. presidential candidate’s most recent political foray is not included in detail, but Sanders closes on a hopeful, open-ended note. Back matter capsulizes the ways in which the politician, in sync with the series title, “did it first”: being the first millennial, candidate “married to a partner of the same gender,” and veteran of the Afghanistan war to run for U.S. president. An accessible and informative picture book biography. Ages 4–8. [em](July) [/em]