This book speaks about former first lady Michelle Obama's life before becoming the first lady of the white house; it also talks about Michelle Obama's accomplishments as well as her beliefs. I rated this book with four out of five stars because it was very informative, and I think it will be a good read for the young girls in my classroom. I would use this book in my fifth or sixth grade English class as a premise for having my students write their biographies. With all political beliefs set aside, this book opened my eyes, and I was able to see there is more to a person than the surface level information that is read and understood through the media. ( )

Michelle Obama is the an inspiring first lady and inspiring to all girl, women, and first ladies out there. Michelle Obama was one of the first ladies I know that helped fix the education system did a lot of just out side and trying to fix the generations and open them up to new ideas. She has ran many company's and has many charities to help others and give others to find jobs and just to help others.Michelle Obama was born on January 17, 1964 in Chicago, Illinois, USA as Michelle LaVaughn Robinson.Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, Obama is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. In her early legal career, she worked at the law firm Sidley Austin where she met Barack Obama. She subsequently worked in non-profits and as the associate dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago as well as the vice president for Community and External Affairs of the University of Chicago Medical Center. Michelle married Barack in 1992, and they have two daughters.

I found this book very interesting and it told me stuff that i usually didn't even know about Michelle Obama, which to my surprise i found very interesting. ( )

The Who Is/Who Was series is incredibly popular amongst its target audience of upper elementary/lower junior high students, so I've been reading a few to see how good they are. Being as they all written and illustrated by different creators, there seems to be a great deal of variation in the quality of the finished product.

This biography of Michelle Obama is of a poorer quality than the other titles I've read in the series so far. For starters, it feels like this book is more Who Is Barack Obama? lite than it is Who Is Michelle Obama?. Obviously the First Lady's story is going to be wrapped up in the President's, but at times it seemed like there were a lot more details spent on him than on her. The author also mentions about five times that Michelle Obama is beautiful. While I happen to agree, this is a subjective opinion, not a fact. Furthermore, I think in a title designed for young children, the emphasis should be far more on intelligence, work ethic, and achievement rather than on physical appearance. To be fair, those are talked about as well, but hearing about Obama's good looks twice in the prologue before even mentioning those other qualities seemed like a serious misstep.

Like with other titles in this series, the book breaks up the main text with pull-out pages with other historical information. In other titles, these are often about contextual information that enriches the reader's knowledge, such as the civil rights movement. For this title, every single one is about another First Lady and her contributions to history. This is fine in and of itself, but they were showing up long before we got to Obama becoming First Lady. One even appears directly after the prologue and before the first chapter, which felt very jarring and out of place.

On the plus side, the book is broken down into short chapters, which makes for easy places to take a break, although it is a short enough read that advanced readers could probably finish it in one or two sittings. Back matter includes a bibliography (with books for a child audience starred) and timelines of Obama's life and the world at large. The illustrations included throughout the book break up the text, but they are so loosely sketched that they really add nothing to the overall experience. ( )

I would use this book in a fourth or fifth grade classroom and teach the children to creat timelines of someone's life. They could chose a book to read about someone else and then create a timeline on a poster board. This book is great because it has all the important dates for this project and is also entertaining because it talks about the personal life of Michelle Obama also.

My song picked out this children's biography to read at bedtime from the Who was?/Who is? series and we both noted that despite her prominence, neither of us knew much about Michelle Obama. So it was interesting to learn her life story, one of hard work and great accomplishments, and be reminded of just how quickly the Obamas went from ordinary Americans to the White House (and Michelle likely has a lot more life to live so there will be more to her story). The book included short features about some other First Ladies from America's past dispersed through the text. I thought the book tended to overemphasize Michelle Obama's beauty and fashion sense at the expense of her talents and accomplishments, but otherwise was a good introduction to her life. ( )