Presidential wanna-be John F. Kerry apparently doesn't even know how to read to children.

He folded his lanky frame, sat on the floor and opened "Abiyoyo" by Pete Seeger, a book about a giant tamed by an African boy and his father, whose magic wand makes the giant disappear. Mr. Kerry, whose daughters are long since grown, kept neglecting to show the children the pictures.

Luckily, he was sitting at the feet of a former first lady.

"John, make sure he can see that," Mrs. Clinton prompted at one point.

"John, turn it around one more time," she said later, asking the children, "Can you see?"

Mr. Kerry obliged, but still seemed to have politics on the brain as he narrated the story of the magic wand - "Zoop!" - making things disappear.

"I could go zoop! and Republicans would disappear," he said.