“Though the president reads aloud with his children in the evenings—he and Sasha are finishing ‘Life of Pi’— parenting in the White House is more complicated. Because the first couple cannot move freely about, their relatives take Malia and Sasha to the bookstore, on a walk through Chinatown, to the multiplex to see ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.’ Last spring, according to Sher, well-meaning White House residence staff members tried to give the girls cellphones, so their parents could always reach them; the first lady stepped in to refuse.”

—excerpt from the New York Times Magazine, Sun., Nov. 1

Photo (top): Damon Winter/The New York Times