McCain Camp Targets Five to Ten-Year-Olds With Picture Book

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Reporters on board John McCain’s campaign plane Wednesday got an early look at Meghan McCain’s soon-to-be-published “picture book biography” of her father, titled: “My Dad, John McCain.”

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The Simon & Schuster hardback, set to hit stores on September 2, is a brief, sentimental look at the familiar elements of McCain’s legendary biography, including his time in a Vietnamese prison and his run for the White House in 2000.

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Several pages are devoted to McCain’s military background and his imprisonment in Vietnam, with relatively little attention paid to his youth (he “broke a lot of rules” in high school, the book says) and to his time in Congress.

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Cindy McCain, along with Meghan’s siblings Jack, Jimmy and Bridget, are described fondly in the book — but the children from McCain’s first marriage are left unmentioned.

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Illustrated by Dan Andreasen, the pictures in the book are gauzy sketches of famous McCain iconography: there’s a drawing of his cadet head shot from the Naval Academy, as well as a rendition of a still-recuperating McCain’s meeting with Richard Nixon following his return from Vietnam. McCain is also depicted sitting forlornly in his Hanoi prison cell.

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The book is recommended for children between ages 5 and 10. But it does contain a mild dose of the politics, including some of the McCain campaign’s over-arching themes, particularly the notion that McCain "puts his country first."