Taking a page from the Schoolhouse Rock! playbook, Selene Castrovilla (Revolutionary Friends) and Jenn Harney (Pirate & Penguin) offer a fine nonfiction picture book, George Washington's Spectacular Spectacles: The Glasses That Saved America. This take on true historical events--known as the Newburgh Conspiracy, according to an author's note--finds George Washington behaving not so much like the father of his country as like America's dorky dad.
The book begins in Newburgh, N.Y., in March 1783 with a big reveal: "George Washington had to wear glasses. It was a secret." Washington is embarrassed by his glasses, convinced that they make him look "odd" and "weak." When he learns that his army's officers plan to storm Congress because they're angry about not being paid for fighting in the Revolutionary War, Washington puts on his glasses behind closed doors and writes a letter to a congressman on the matter. When he receives the man's written reply, he wants to read it aloud to the officers, but there's a hitch: How can Washington do so without first donning his glasses?
George Washington's Spectacular Spectacles is written in the language not of history books but of we, the everyday people: when Washington wasn't wearing his glasses, "all he saw was fuzz, fuzz, fuzz." With her caricaturish Photoshop art, Harney both captures and contributes to the humor of the situation, giving the army officers the look of priggish dandies and Washington a silly walk that may call to mind some notable Brits: Monty Python. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author