If you’re at a loss to explain the phenomenon that is Donald Trump to your children, help may be at hand – from A Child’s First Book of Trump, published this week.



US comedian and writer Michael Ian Black has written the book, published by Simon and Schuster, and although the 32-page picture book is released under the publisher’s Books for Young Readers imprint, it’s more likely to appeal to adults, says the author.

Black, who lives in Connecticut, describes the presumptive Republican presidential candidate thus:

The beasty is called an American Trump

Its skin is bright orange, its figure is plump;

Its fur so complex, you might get enveloped.

Its hands are, sadly, underdeveloped.

And where does it live? On flat-screen TVs!

It rushes toward every camera it sees.

It thrives in the most contentious conditions

And excretes the most appalling emissions.

“I think you could read it to your children if they don’t scare easily,” Black told the Hartford Courant. “It’s clearly aimed at adults who are finding themselves feeling a little befuddled at the rise of a certain orange beast.”

The publisher said the book, illustrated by New Yorker contributor Marc Rosenthal, would be “hysterical if it wasn’t so true”, and added: “The Trump is a curious creature, very often spotted in the wild, but confounding to our youngest citizens. A business mogul, reality TV host, and now … political candidate? Kids (and let’s be honest many adults) might have difficulty discerning just what this thing that’s been dominating news coverage this election cycle is. Could he actually be real?”

The cover of A Child’s First Book of Trump. Photograph: Simon & Schuster

But Black admitted that he was asked by his editor to lighten the tone after completing a “strident and angry” draft in a single weekend.

The result is a Dr Seuss-style rhyming tale which, Black told the Courant, is the perfect medium for describing Trump.

“I think silliness can be an effective satirical tool,” he says. “I think there’s something more subversive about silliness, and more palatable to a lot of people.”

“As a satire, there might be certain expectations from an adult’s point of view reading the book that it should rhyme. It felt correct to fulfil expectations about what a children’s book should be. I purposely put it in Seussian format to just sort of undergird the satirical nature.”

In much darker graphic guise, Trump is also appearing in a Marvel comic as a super-villain named MODAAK – Mental Organism Designed As America’s King.

Based on longstanding villain MODOK - Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing - Trump appears as a huge head with tiny limbs in Spider Gwen annual #1, out now. While writer Jason Latour doesn’t specifically call his villain Trump, the likeness appears rather more than coincidental. MODAAK is seen referring to one brown-skinned character from Texas as “foreign filth”, and Latour makes a reference to the digs at Trump’s extremities with a line where the villain threatens to “crush you in my powerful hands”.