Thanksgiving Books

Read some Thanksgiving books to give your children a proper perspective. A few years ago I shared the following with some of my friends.

Each year I look for a new book about the Pilgrims & Mayflower to read aloud this year. Last year we read Landing of the Pilgrims, a Landmark book. This year my friend, Gwen Hattaway, told me about a great book - Mourt's Relations (a journal of the Mayflower Company).

When I looked through our bookshelf I found an updated version of Mourt's Relations, Homes in the Wilderness, edited by Margaret Wise Brown. We know Brown from our favorite bedtime story - Goodnight Moon. Although this is a modern translation of the journal kept by Governor William Bradford and others of the Mayflower company, it still retains much of the sentence structure and writing styles of the authors.

Homes in the Wilderness describes the landing of the Pilgrims on Cape Cod, their search for a homesite, the first meetings with Indians, and the final building of the settlement at Plymouth.

A few of our favorites when our children were young (& they still enjoy reading them as a teen) are below.

Sarah Morton's Day
Samuel Eaton's Day
Tapenaum????

Our family has enjoyed these 2 books for the past 10 years. Ever since our oldest was in Kindergarten, we have read them each year. The photographs remind us of what life was really like in those first few years of the Plymouth colony.

You might enjoy reading a review of these 2 books right here:
My kids (4 and 6) love this book, and want it read to them again and again. It follows a day in the life of young Sarah Morton, a historical character who was a child in early Plymouth Colony. It shows how the people lived then and how their world view differed from ours, yet it entertains at the same time. It can serve as a springboard for discussions on many different topics -- history, responsibility, religion, family, grief, hard work, and no doubt others.

Save yourself some money and you can find these books at your local library.