Where Real Life and Fiction Meet on the Campaign Trail

Life is hard for when your dad is running for President. You have to leave your overseas boarding school to go on the campaign trail with your parents and on top of that your father’s PR guru renames you with what she deems an Americanized nickname and then has a thirty-something year old man ghostwrite a vacuous blog for you. What is an adopted South Asian teen to do?

Although certain aspects of the book eerily remind one of Bridget McCain it is instead a timely and well-written teen novel by Mitali Perkins. In First Daughter : Extreme American Makeover, Perkins’ main character, Sameera (Sparrow) Righton’s crunchy conservative father James Righton is running for the Republican presidential nomination. Sparrow’s parents have always been protective of her privacy but have to bring in their daughter for family appearances. From the beginning Sparrow knows she has to have a makeover but what she thought it would just be confined to new clothes, makeup and haircut has become a complete personality overhaul. She quickly finds out that the PR team has manufactured an alter ego named Sammy that she must become and she is expected to giggle during interviews with reporters, blow kisses to the crowds and authorize a PR controlled blog that discusses the weighty topics of the day: hot guys, shopping and how she looks. Sparrow writes her own blog on her “MyPlace” page where she discusses her views on different topics such as third world children being sold into slavery, her struggles with religion and faith, and what it’s like to be suddenly thrust into the life of a celebrity. Her father’s political marketing team prefers to go another way. They want a “Sammy” to project what they think a 21^st century teenager is like and Sparrow has to fill that role as First Daughter .

Perkins culls facts from past political elections and interweaves it with what she thought might happen in this current election. This book was released in the summer of 2007 and at that time McCain was down in the polls. In the story the Democratic nominee is a female and the Republican candidacy was clinched weeks before the Democrats’ nomination was in place.

Perkins story also depicts a current trend of young people being interested in politics. According to current news polls, the youth vote has been showing up for the 2008 primaries/caucuses. To help engage female voters who are too young to vote in this election but still want to keep up with what’s going on Sparrow has an actual blog on the net that young political hawks can click on.

With a title like First Daughter you can probably guess that Sparrow’s dad wins the election. And if you want to know what happens in his first year in office you can read the sequel,First Daughter: White House Rules.

So has Perkins accurately predicated that there will be a South Asian First Daughter in the White House next year? Read the books and decide for yourself.

For more books to get you interested in the 2008 election you can read:

Political Profiles: Barack Obama by Kerrily Sapet

Hillary Clinton by Dwayne Epstein

John McCain: Serving His Country by Barbara Silberdick Feinberg

First Boy by Gary Schmidt