BOOK NOOK REVIEWS: Thanksgiving Edition

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the US. I hope my friends all around the country are enjoying this day with friends and family. If you spend any time reading on this special day, here are a few books you might want to add to your family library to help celebrate this special day! And the turkey fellow above was sketched by yours truly a few years ago as part of a Doodle Day challenge. Let me know in the comments below if you’ve read any of these wonderful books…

A thirteen-year-old boy and his mother move to a farm in rural Virginia where he and his grandfather develop a growing bond while trying to hunt a wild tom turkey for their Thanksgiving dinner.

Max is excited about the big turkey he has picked out for his family’s Thanksgiving dinner. He and his sister help prepare the fixings, and soon his friends and relatives bring their own dishes and merriment. Abby Levine’s humorous, rhyming story gets to the heart of the Thanksgiving celebration. Max and his family were first introduced in This Is the Pumpkin.

A boy and his family endure a difficult nine-week journey across the ocean and survive the first winter at Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts.

The Pilgrims embarked on their legendary Mayflower voyage in 1620 in search of religious freedom and a better life. The settlers were unprepared for the hardships they would face at the end of their journey, but with the help of their neighbor Indians, the Pilgrims survived the first year in their new world. Then, when their fall harvest was plentiful, the Pilgrims and the Indians joined together in a three-day celebration, the first Thanksgiving.

Combining fiction and nonfiction, this dramatic story follows the Robertson family as they prepare for Thanksgiving in the year 1841. As with all Canadian pioneer families, Thanksgiving is a special day for the Robertsons, but this year they have more reasons than usual to give thanks. Each chapter of the story is enhanced by information about the pioneer period and how Thanksgiving was celebrated in the past. Children will learn about the wild harvest, harvest superstitions and how the First Peoples celebrated the harvest. The past comes alive through hands-on activities such as making a corn dolly or learning to play conkers.

What better way to understand the joys and sorrows of the Pilgrims than to read their own words? Nearly four hundred years after they were written, the Pilgrim’s own writings are still the most dramatic account of their adventure in the New World. In Pilgrim Voices, Connie and Peter Roop pair vivid passages from diaries and journals with Shelley Pritchett’s rich paintings to reveal the true flavor of the Pilgrim experience.

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Donna L

Hybrid award winning author; aspiring sketch artist; and 4th Degree Senior Certified Taekwondo Instructor. Host of BOOK NOOK REVIEWS. Member of SCBWI. Mom to fabulous son and adventurer delving into the tricky world of indie-publishing.

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