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April 30, 2009 – 8:21 pm | by missus13
President Obama reads to children
In his very busy first hundred days the president of the United States of America made time to read Where the wild things are.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama welcomed thousands of children and families to the White House Easter Egg Roll Monday, calling it “one of the greatest White House traditions.”
Shortly after kicking off the event, the first family walked to the storytime stage to read to a group of children. Entering the area, Obama shook hands with many of the children in the front row.
The president read “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak, which he called “one of my favorite books.” He stood in front of the seated children, slowly rotating the book, so that everyone could see the pictures.
Obama pointed to one picture in the book and said, “That’s a wild thing. It’s like a dragon-looking thing.” At one point, he got the group of children to try staring without blinking their eyes. One little girl’s eyes were so big the President started laughing.
Mr. Obama asked the children if they had ever been in a “wild rumpus” like the book was describing. As he read about the imaginary beasts in the book and the adventures of the book’s main character (a little boy named Max wearing a wolf suit), Mr. Obama howled and spoke in a monster voice.
“You guys look like you have a wild rumpus all the time,” he told the kids.
At the end of the story he asked, “Are there any wild things here? I just want to make sure,” and issued a soft wild thing-like growl along with the cheering of the crowd.
Next, Mrs. Obama and her mother took turns reading “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” by Laura Joffe Numeroff . The first daughters turned the pages of an oversized copy of the book to show the illustrations.

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