Ann D. Koff­sky and Pedro Rodríguez’s new chap­ter book about Har­ry Truman’s friend­ship with Eddie Jacob­son intro­duces young read­ers to sev­er­al events and con­cepts: Truman’s close ties to a Jew­ish cloth­ing mer­chant and the Unit­ed States’ recog­ni­tion of Israel; the broad­er issues of prej­u­dice, courage, and the way that per­son­al rela­tion­ships can affect pub­lic life; and learn­ing to view his­to­ry through the lens of a past era. From the mean­ing of the word ​“hab­er­dash­er” to the way anti­semitism can be unthink­ing­ly accept­ed, Koff­sky and Rodríguez pro­mote crit­i­cal learn­ing skills in an engag­ing and acces­si­ble story.

Har­ry Tru­man, who became pres­i­dent upon the death of Franklin Roo­sevelt, had the grave respon­si­bil­i­ty of lead­ing his coun­try through the end of the Sec­ond World War. Then, as Amer­i­can Jews and many of their non-Jew­ish fel­low cit­i­zens embraced the idea of a Jew­ish state in Pales­tine, Tru­man was forced to con­front an exis­ten­tial choice. Would the Jew­ish peo­ple, long exiled from their home­land and dec­i­mat­ed by the Holo­caust, be allowed to estab­lish a sov­er­eign nation? Truman’s back­ground in the rur­al Mid­west had not includ­ed many ties to Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties. Even after he became an expe­ri­enced Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cian, he har­bored the casu­al anti­semitism intrin­sic to Amer­i­ca at the time. But he did have one close attach­ment that ulti­mate­ly com­bined with polit­i­cal prag­ma­tism to influ­ence his decision.

As a young man, Tru­man became friends with Eddie Jacob­son when both were work­ing in Kansas City, Mis­souri — Har­ry at a bank and Eddie at a dry goods store. After Har­ry returned to his fam­i­ly farm, the pre­vi­ous­ly close friends lost con­tact but met again while serv­ing in the army dur­ing World War I. Koff­sky uses each chap­ter to raise ques­tions, skill­ful­ly inte­grat­ing dif­fer­ent themes and encour­ag­ing chil­dren to approach his­tor­i­cal fig­ures as ordi­nary peo­ple fac­ing chal­lenges. Har­ry and Eddie open a store togeth­er with excite­ment and opti­mism, but an eco­nom­ic down­turn leads to fail­ure. Eddie remains in the cloth­ing busi­ness, while Har­ry begins to build a career in pol­i­tics. When his busy sched­ule allows a trip back home, he makes a point of vis­it­ing Eddie, ​“to play cards or music, go fish­ing … or meet up at Dixon’s Chili Par­lor for some ribs.”

After describ­ing two ordi­nary guys and their endur­ing affec­tion for one anoth­er, Koff­sky reveals their col­li­sion with his­to­ry. One har­bin­ger of ten­sion is the chill­ing fact that Bess Tru­man, Harry’s wife, refus­es to wel­come Eddie to their home, even though he is her husband’s close friend. Koff­sky does not spec­i­fy the rea­son for this exclu­sion. Instead, she allows read­ers to infer it: ​“Eddie and his fam­i­ly could not under­stand it … They won­dered if Bess didn’t like Jews. It was hard to know.” This pet­ty hos­til­i­ty pales in com­par­i­son to the anti­semitism in the after­math of the war, when many Jews and their allies begin a con­cert­ed cam­paign to rec­og­nize a Jew­ish state in Palestine.

Now, Eddie Jacob­son is pres­sured to take a stand by using his unique posi­tion to per­son­al­ly approach his friend, who has become stub­born­ly eva­sive about meet­ing future Israeli pres­i­dent Chaim Weiz­mann. The result of their col­lab­o­ra­tion is far more suc­cess­ful than their ill-fat­ed cloth­ing store.

Rodríguez’s pic­tures, influ­enced by com­ic book art, con­vey char­ac­ters’ per­son­al­i­ties through their expres­sive faces. Peri­od details, from 1940s cloth­ing to radios, immerse read­ers in an unfa­mil­iar world with famil­iar emo­tions. One two-page spread shows a mul­ti­cul­tur­al group of Amer­i­cans writ­ing let­ters in sup­port of a Jew­ish state. Hold­ing their foun­tain pens, these com­mit­ted cit­i­zens are super­im­posed on a back­ground of cur­sive writ­ing and authen­tic postage stamps from the time. Each illus­tra­tion, paired with Koffsky’s text, forms a cohe­sive and engag­ing pic­ture of Jew­ish Amer­i­can history.

This high­ly rec­om­mend­ed book includes an author’s note and a timeline.