Major Makes History: From the Shelter to the White House

by Jill Twiss, Maribel Lechuga (Illustrator)

Overview

Emmy-winning New York Times bestselling author Jill Twiss delivers the tale of President Biden’s friendship with Major, the first shelter dog in the White House. Written in the dog’s voice, it tells of the German shepherd’s adjustment to the White House, and his urgent calling in life—to support and care for the president. Hilarious and filled with heart, this story includes back matter highlighting past presidential pets and information on adopting shelter animals.

When President Joe Biden adopted his shelter dog Major from the Delaware Humane Association in 2018, their bond was immediate. President Biden rescued Major and provided him with a loving home. What he didn’t know is that Major would also rescue him too.

Major tells the captivating, funny story of how he and Joe first met, and their journey to his brand-new home, the White House.

As a first dog, Major has a lot of work to do! It’s not easy being a presidential dog. Major defends President Biden from vicious vacuum cleaners, helps in the garden by digging holes, and drinks afternoon tea from the toilet bowl, along with his buddy Champ. But his most important job of all is helping Joe become a better version of himself.

Educational, fun, and adorable, this is a heartwarming book about the bond between a president and his very special shelter dog from the bestselling author of Everyone Gets a Say.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063118768
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/28/2021
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	1,138,133
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 10.10(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Jill Twiss is the author of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents: A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, a New York Times #1 bestseller. She is also a comedy writer who has won multiple Emmys, WGA Awards, and Peabody Awards for her work as a staff writer on HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. In her not-so-spare time, Jill writes sentences for the Scripps National Spelling Bee on ESPN and is working on a musical about the women of the Seneca Falls Convention.

Editorial Reviews

2021-08-11
A presidential dog tells all.

Alternating between cutesy-poo preciousness—“I am a dog, but you could probably tell that already. You seem pretty on the ball, for a person”—and doggy high spirits, the Biden pooch tells his story. In Major’s telling, meeting Joe in an animal shelter (“a place where dogs like me can rescue the families that need us”) led directly to the White House. “Coincidence? Well, I don’t think so.” Shrugging off the multiple biting incidents (“Sometimes I get too excited”), he lays out days of walks, playful mischief, and gathering around the toilet for “afternoon tea,” to which Twiss adds an afterword on presidential pets of the past and a list of shelter adoption resources. The vice president and other people of color join both the Bidens and a multibreed cast of shelter dogs in Lechuga’s buttoned-up cartoon illustrations—as, repeatedly, does Major’s canine counterpart Champ, whose death in June 2021 goes unremarked before the author’s note. Young readers may need a parental gloss. Otherwise, the illustrations follow in the familiar unreliable-pet-narrator tradition of so many first-person-animal picture books, depicting Major and Champ wreaking havoc as they “help in the garden” and cowering under a table while a staffer vacuums even as Major boasts of “defend[ing] the house from our most ferocious enemy.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Canine chronicles of the current administration abound; this one too is outdated, if a bit more waggish than most. (Picture book. 6-8)

Kirkus Reviews