While the real Zohran Mamdani began a “Five Boroughs Against Trump tour” this week,  the children’s book character does the same thing, although not explicitly against Trump. In Zohran Walks New York (Calkins Creek, 32 pages), writer and illustrator Millie von Platen depicts the New York City mayoral candidate eating at a halal food truck in Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan; taking the ferry to Staten Island; attending a Mets game in Citi Field in Queens; joining the Polar Bear Club in “the icy waters of Coney Island” in Brooklyn; walking a street in the Bronx, evidently near his alma mater, the Bronx High School of Science. In-between, he rests on a park bench.

He also  takes the subway with his bride Rama Duwaji – specifically the N and the 4 trains, we’re told – on the way to City Hall to get married.

Everybody in the city looks happy, even the pigeons in the park and the rat on the subway platform.

“Zohran Walks New York” is mostly a picture book, but von Platen — whose bio in the book identifies her as Swedish Korean, raised in London and Stockholm, and “currently based in Brooklyn, New York” – includes a page of text that elaborates on the illustrations: Zohran not only ate biryani at the food truck, “he also advocated for fair food prices.”   He not only took the (free) ferry; he “advocates for accessible public transportation.” One might wonder if von Platen’s book, whose official publication date is the week before the November election, is part of a Mamdani campaign strategy to push his youth appeal to the next level – specifically to four to eight-year-olds. But there is one aspect of ‘Zohran Walks New York” that the campaign might not endorse. The price for this 32-page book is $18.99.