QUICK TAKES - April 3, 2009

President Obama’s half-sister has a book deal for a children’s picture story.

Maya Soetoro-Ng’s “Ladder to the Moon,” based in part on Obama’s mother and other family members, will be published by Candlewick Press at a date not yet determined. According to Candlewick, Soetoro-Ng will pay “homage to her mother’s tradition of storytelling.”

The late Ann Dunham is mother both to Obama and Soetoro-Ng, who was born in 1970, nine years after the future president. (Obama and Soetoro-Ng have different fathers.) Soetoro-Ng, who teaches at an all-girls school in Honolulu, campaigned for her half-brother and spoke at last year’s Democratic National Convention.