Obama and daughters shop for books, ice pops on Small Business Saturday

In the tiny Upshur Street Books in northwest Washington, the casually dressed Obama and his daughters browsed for books with the help of the store manager, Anna Thorn.

The post-Thanksgiving book-browsing outing has become an annual tradition for the First Family.

On Saturday in the softly lit shop adorned with Christmas lights, excited employees mingled next to platters of colorful cupcakes. Outside, cheery store windows featured books of fairy tales and a green handwritten "Shop Local" sign. The bookstore opened last November.

The Obamas bought nine books that spanned age brackets, including three young-adult novels by Cynthia Voigt, “Purity: A Novel” by Jonathan Franzen, “Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights: A Novel” by Salman Rushdie, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck, Book 8” by Jeff Kinney, and “Dork Diaries 1: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life” by Rachel Renée Russell.

Afterward, they dropped by Pleasant Pops cafe, where the unusually warm late-November day called for ice pops.

The Obamas quizzed employees on their recommendations before ordering a cookies and cream pop for 17-year-old Malia, cranberry apple for 14-year-old Sasha, and strawberry ginger lemonade – a store favorite – for the president.

"That sounds just really fancy," Obama said, shelling out $9 for the goodies - "a bargain," he said.

"This was the highlight of my Small Business Saturday," he said, smiling.

Part of the American Thanksgiving tradition is shopping for holiday gifts, with big box stores and shopping malls offering massive sales on Black Friday.