The Very First Thanksgiving Day

Rating:
Summary: Lovely!
Review: The poetic text and rich art of this book complement each other perfectly. It presents a good amount of information in a simple format so that even young preschoolers can start to understand the origins of this tradition. This book reads like a classic...it's lovely!

Rating:
Summary: An introduction to Thanksgiving for the very young
Review: This is a beautifully illustrated picture book for young children about the original Thanksgiving feast for the pilgrims and indians (the author's preferred term based on historical precedence, as she explains in the Foreword). The text is placed into a gentle rhyme that takes us back to the landing at Plymouth rock, where a series of lovely paintings then depict the people's lives in their village by the harbor that first year.

It is obvious that the illustrator put a lot of careful attention into researching for historical accuracy. This is a teaching technique that is particularly effective for an age group in which a picture is truly worth a thousand words. Although hardships and struggles are hinted at in both rhyme and painting, the real focus is on the positive relationship between the two peoples as the Indians helped the Pilgrims adapt to their new home.

The only caveat -- for christians and anyone who is a monotheist -- is that this book nowhere mentions God, who is after all the reason for this holiday. It is a significant historical fact that the Pilgrims fled England due to religious persecution, and that this first Thanksgiving Feast was in Giving Thanks to God for His blessings and bounty. Later, Abraham Lincoln officially pronounced Thanksgiving as the last Thursday in November and reaffirmed that it was a holiday specifically set aside to revere God. So, the author's careful avoidance of this fact is a disappointment to me.

But if you are more on the politically correct side, you will find this book to be a perfect introduction to Thanksgiving for your children.

Rating:
Summary: Strong text, rich illustrations
Review: This story begins and ends with the very first Thanksgiving Day but the scope of the book is much wider than that day. The carefully rhymed text and realistic illustrations invite the reader to take a step back, then another, and another, all the way back to the Pilgrims leaving their homeland and boarding the Mayflower. The result is that the day is put into historical context in a way that's understandable even to the very young. This is a wonderful, age-appropriate look at what the Pilgrims had to go through just to get to the first Thanksgiving Day, and how the Indians helped them.