Great News: Obama to Publish Kids Book

Doesn't this guy have a day job? Where does he find the time between all the parties, golf and wrecking our economy to write another book? Or does he have a ghostwriter like with his past efforts?

Not content with solving the problems of an ailing U.S. economy, Barack Obama has now published a book of children's stories.

Of Thee I Sing: A Letter To My Daughters is a tribute to 13 groundbreaking U.S. authors, including the first president George Washington and artist Georgia O'Keeffee.

The book, which is due for release in November, features his two daughters Malia, 12, and Sasha, nine, walking their dog Bo on the front cover.

It runs at 40 pages and an initial print run of 500,000 copies will be made, at a cost of £17.99.

Forty pages and they're charging that much for it?

Mr Obama has pledged to donate any proceeds from the book to 'a scholarship fund for the children of fallen and disabled soldiers serving our nation'.

Chip Gibson, publisher at Random House - which is also produced Mr Obama's previous works Dreams From My Father and The Audacity Of Hope - said the book was intended for children aged three and above.

'It is an honour to publish this extraordinary book, which is an inspiring marriage of words and images, history and story.

Wipe the spittle off your chin, Chip.

More here.

Obama agreed with Random House in 2004 to write a children's book, which, according to the publisher, he completed before he became president. "Of Thee I Sing" is part of a $1.9 million, three-book deal with Random House reached in 2004, according to a disclosure report filed in 2005, when Obama was a U.S. senator from Illinois. The other two books were nonfiction.

A financial disclosure form released by the White House in May 2010 refers to an agreement — originated in 2004, amended on Jan. 9, 2009, shortly before Obama became president — for a "nonfiction work, the subject to be determined," that would not come out while he was in office.

The children's book and the nonfiction work are separate projects, although both are part of the three-book deal, said Obama's literary representative, Washington attorney Robert Barnett. The other nonfiction book was "The Audacity of Hope," released in 2006.

Something seems very dubious about this book deal.