It's time! Are you feeling all cozy and ready to start baking and watching kids parade around in cute little construction paper Pilgrim hats! And reading some of the BEST BOOKS ALL YEAR?!!!
In November (Cynthia Rylant)
I love this book so so so much and I am SO excited every year when it's time to read it again. It combines beautiful lyrical prose with impressionistic illustrations: "In November, the smell of food is different. It is an orange smell. A squash and a pumpkin smell. It tastes like cinnamon and can fill up a house in the morning, can pull everyone from bed in a fog. Food is better in November than any other time of the year."
Over the River and Through the Wood (Lydia Marie Child)
This lovely little book intersperses single-color illustrations accompanying the song text with double-spread full-color illustrations on the following pages (so you get 2 pages of song, 2 pages of illustrations). This is the original method of going to grandmother's house, complete with horse-drawn sleigh, so expect some breathtaking Edwardian couture! Sheet music is included at the end.
A Turkey for Thanksgiving (Eve Bunting)
This favorite made it onto my original very short (4 books only!) list back in 2016:
This one is so charming--Mr. Moose sets out to ensure that his wife has a turkey at the table for Thanksgiving dinner. Other guests come along on the hunt, but Turkey doesn't want to come! (It turns out happily for all involved.) The illustrations in this book are beautiful (all the animals are bedecked in their Scandinavian finest), but it's the words that really evoke the stark beauty of November: "The earth smelled of ice and moss as they crunched along. Above them a crow hung, black as a puff of wood smoke."
Thanksgiving is Here (Diane Goode)
This fun book is so evocative of Thanksgiving Day--the noise, the chaos, the million cousins and groaning tables. There's so much going on in every illustration!
In 1492 (Jean Marzollo)
Another quick rhyming book with only a few lines per page--this Blue Ribbon Book is a great pick for younger children: "In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue/He had three ships and left from Spain; he sailed through sunshine, wind, and rain." I like that this book acknowledges that Columbus actually landed in the Bahamas, traded with the Arawak, and was NOT the first American.
This Is The Feast (Diane Shore)
Also a rhyming book, this book covers the Pilgrims' initial 18 months in the New World, from the Mayflower through the first winter and into harvest. It acknowledges the more difficult parts of the story (the death and disease among the Pilgrims the first year; the fact that the Pilgrims took over land cleared by Patuxets prior to plague) and ends with the first Thanksgiving feast, prominently featuring the interactions between Pilgrims and native peoples.
Oh, What a Thanksgiving! (Steven Kroll)
By the author of The Biggest Pumpkin Ever, this fun book features an imaginative boy who looks at the world around him and tries to see what it would look like if he was living in Plimoth (which then leads to some fun illustrations like a boy getting off a school bus and running towards a wattle and daub cottage!). This goes all the way through Thanksgiving day preparations so it's a fun way to contrast what it would have looked like for the Pilgrims vs. our modern day Thanksgiving.
The First Thanksgiving (Jean Craighead George)
Lots of detail here! This one is pretty fact-heavy but still very accessible and the illustrations are BEAUTIFUL. This book focuses heavily on the contributions of Squanto and Massasoit to the Pilgrims' survival.
The Pilgrims' First Thanksgiving (Ann McGovern)
This contains essentially the same information as the previous book, but more condensed and suitable for younger readers. If I was going to categorize these by age, I would say this book is perfect for 2nd-3rd grade readers--Nathan is enthralled by the Pilgrim children's tasks described in this book (watching the cornfield, turning meat on a spit, making mattresses, gathering grasses to thatch roofs, digging clams, etc.).
Plimoth Plantation Live-Action Photograph series
**This entire series is SO COOL. I would recommend starting with Sarah Morton's Day, which is my very favorite, and then maybe adding a book a year.
Sarah Morton's Day (Kate Waters)
This is one of the very first books I ever purchased for our home library. I loved this book so much as a child! A ten-year-old interpreter from Plimoth Plantation posed for all the photos; the book takes you through what her day would have been like in November of 1627. Cannot recommend this one enough!! We especially love all the details about their clothing and chores.
Samuel Eaton's Day (Kate Waters)
Samuel is seven years old, and his day takes place in July of 1627--his first time helping with the rye harvest! (This is also one that I read to my kids when they're complaining about doing their chores.) So interesting to compare with Sarah's responsibilities and their differing households.
Tapenum's Day (Kate Waters)
Tapenum lives half a day's walk from Sarah and Samuel, with the Wampanoag tribe. I really like that the book works to introduce Tapenum's vocabulary with Wampanoag words, just as it did with some of the more archaic verb forms that Sarah and Samuel use. This is SUCH a great complement to the earlier two books and I wish I'd had it when I was a kid!
On the Mayflower (Kate Waters)
Set a year earlier in 1620, this story talks about the experience of Will Small, ship's apprentice on the Mayflower, and Ellen Moore, a passenger on the Mayflower. As with all of Kate Waters' Plimoth books, this text is honest about the death toll among the Mayflower pilgrims (it's noted at the end of the book that Ellen does not appear in colony rolls after the Mayflower landed and it's likely that she died. Samuel and Sarah both have new step-parents as well after their parents' deaths).
1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving (Catherine O'Neill Grace)
This one is not actually a story--it's more for older kids who are into "fact books," but I include it with the other four because it includes photos from the actors at Plimoth Plantation. This is fairly extensive (still a picture book, but broken into chapters) and also includes an appendix about the actors who recreate the past at Plimoth, as well as a chronology of European contact with the Wampanoag people over the last 1000 years. Total wealth of info here and one that gets heavy use at our house every November!
Happy reading, friends!!
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