What Can a Citizen Do? | Hardcover Picture Book

Democracy, inconveniently, appears to require participation.

What Can a Citizen Do? by Dave Eggers and Shawn Harris asks a question that becomes considerably more complicated the longer you think about it:  what does being a citizen actually require? Following a group of children as they transform a lonely island into a community, the book makes its case through small acts rather than grand speeches. Show up. Help someone. Speak up when something is wrong. Listen. Participate. Make room for other people. Eggers delivers the ideas in playful rhyme while Harris builds a wonderfully strange visual world around them, resulting in a children’s book about citizenship that has surprisingly little interest in flags or memorizing the branches of government. Apparently a society is just a lot of people deciding, over and over again, that they have some responsibility for one another. A useful thing to learn before you’re old enough to vote.

The Details

• What Can a Citizen Do?
• Written by Dave Eggers
• Illustrated by Shawn Harris
• Hardcover picture book
• Explores citizenship, community, participation, responsibility, and helping others
• Rhyming text with full-color illustrations
• Recommended for ages 5–8 / grades K–3
• 52 pages
• Dimensions: 10.1" x 8.1" x 0.6"
• Publication date: September 11, 2018

About the Author:  Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers is the author of novels, memoirs, nonfiction, and children’s books, and the founder of independent publisher McSweeney’s and cofounder of 826 Valencia, the youth writing and tutoring organization that grew into a network of programs around the world. He has spent much of his career making books, helping other people make books, and constructing increasingly elaborate arguments for why writing still matters.