If You Go With Your Goat to Vote, a happy 411 on voting for kids

Some Christmas music is great in July. Those are the great songs that succeed as being well crafted, played and seasonally timeless without relying on smaltz or stations that have airtime to fill after Thanksgiving. Children’s books that revolve around a certain theme or time of year are like that also. If You Go with Your Goat to Vote shares that in common in that it’s a great book that emerging readers can enjoy any time; even during those periods when people aren’t frothing at the social media mouth about candidate A or B. In other words, it doesn’t have to be an election year for your reader to enjoy this book.

If You Go with Your Goat to Vote has no political agenda. It’s also not the election equivalent of If you Give A Mouse A Cookie. This is more of a great good-night, animal-centric, rhyming book that ages three through seven will enjoy. It doesn’t rely on rhymes to make the point to those emerging readers. Instead it lets the animals and their babies carry the story as a myriad of critters and their offspring head off to the polls on the second Thursday in November.

We see a goat and her kid. There’s a duckling and her drake. I see a gosling and a gander. Over there a peachick is walking out with her mom, the peacock just after they’ve voted. There are lots of animals that are all either on the way to vote or on their way back for young children to marvel at.

Children will come for the animals and stay for the message to vote. Adults will come for the get out the vote message and end up loving the animals. The pictures in the book are by Andrew Roberts and are utterly happy. It’s great to see a happy book. While it may seem obvious to state that, but it’s especially so when the subject of the book is voting and its importance.

If You Go with Your Goat to Vote is happy. Nowadays people don’t associate election days as a happy occasion, but they are and they should be. This is the peaceful transition of power that happens every four years on a presidential level and every two years for the folks in congress. While it may be cumbersome to experience on social media and the candidates may not be exactly whom we’d like them to be, this is still a pretty good system and teaching your kids the habit of voting is important to maintaining it.

The size of the book is perfect. Adults can read it once to their emerging readers or if they want to hear it again then it’s short enough to do so and not extend bedtime by too much. The colors match the illustrations very well also. The animals are all chilled out and happy, while the pages are filled with warm-colored animals on their way to the polls in one manner or another. Those older than second grade will find the book too easy, but those in that space or younger will find that it’s just right for reminding them about the 15^th Amendment.

If You Go with Your Goat to Vote is by Jan Zauzmer with illustrations by Andrew Roberts and published by The Experiment Publishing, an imprint of Workman Publishing.

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