Bernie Sanders, the 75-year-old Vermont senator who shaped the Northeast’s punk scene and ran a surprisingly strong challenge to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries thanks to his promises of government-provided education and healthcare, has become an unlikely icon to 20-somethings pissed off at the state of the country. Now he’s aiming for a younger audience, penning a how-to guide for teens interested in getting involved in progressive politics, the Guardian reports.
Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution, due out from Henry Holt on August 29, is a kid-friendly version of 2016’s Our Revolution, in which Sanders chronicled his upbringing, first brushes with socialism, and emergence into American politics—capped off, of course, with an outline of his policies. According to the publisher, Sanders’s YA follow-up will hit most of the same bases, with an emphasis on calling on young people “to fight for a progressive economic, environmental, racial, and social justice agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment, and provides healthcare for all.”
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According to Teen Vogue, the book is peppered with infographics that break down issues Sanders placed in the crosshairs of his 2016 campaign, from income inequality to climate change, prison reform to crippling student loans.
“Young people are the future of our country,” Sanders told Teen Vogue back in May. “This book will expose them to an unusual political campaign, the excitement of politics, and what being a progressive is all about.”
Sanders is just the latest in a long line of political figures who have written books for kids. Back in 2010, Barack Obama published Of Thee I Sing, an ode to 13 Americans who inspired him in the form of a love letter to his daughters. And in May, Chelsea Clinton released She Persisted, a kid-friendly history of a handful of feminists.
Whereas Obama and Clinton waxed sentimental, it looks like Sanders’s book will be more practical, a how-to guide for budding activists.
“The current generation of young people is the smartest, most idealistic, and least prejudiced generation in the modern history of the United States,” Sanders writes in a foreword to the Guide. “This is a generation that is prepared to think big and move this country in a very different direction than we have been traveling for years.”
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