Thankful: Two Views: Off to Plymouth Rock by Dandi Daly Mackall and 1621 by Catherine Grace and Margaret Bruchac

Pilgrims flee!
Sail the sea.
Knowing there's no guarantee.

Mayflower ship,
Dangerous trip!
Waves that rock and winds that whip!

Crashing, splashing,
Lightning flashing.
On to Plymouth Rock.

In light, rhythmic verse which appealingly tells the Pilgrim story without making light of their suffering and sacrifice, Mackall's On To Plymouth Rock is an inviting retelling of the Pilgrim's story which led to the first celebration of thanksgiving by their company. Massasoit and Squanto share the spotlight in this retelling as they school the English colonists in New World agriculture and food preparation and share, along with their people, a prominent position in the portrayal of the three-day feast.

Pilgrims call,
One and all,
Come and celebrate the fall.

Pumpkins, cherries,
Turkey, berries,
Here at Plymouth Rock.

Glad to share--
Bow in prayer--
Harvest blessing everywhere!

Gene Berett's lively and gentle caricatures of the colonists and Native Americans and their surroundings are shown in a warm autumn palette and careful detail. Especially clever are the decorated frames for each page layout, which feature objects (shipboard hardware, household items, fruits and vegetables) appropriate for each section of text. This book is a great starter for classroom units and a good family read aloud to reinforce the Thanksgiving story for young children.

Pair this book with Catherine Grace's and Margaret Bruchac's 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving, which gives a decidedly non-Eurocentric view of the roots of our national holiday. Strikingly illustrated with National Geographic's photographs of the 2000 reenactment of the first Thanksgiving at Plimoth Plantation and the adjacent Wampanoag Village, this depiction of the three-day feast gives us our best opportunity for a historically accurate representation of how it might have looked and smelled and tasted at the first day of the thanksgiving celebration at Plymouth. True, there was no real pumpkin pie or cranberry sauce as we know it, and venison and seafood probably overshadowed the mythic turkey on the tables, but the gratitude for the bounty of this beautiful continent was already present even then.

Grace and Bruchac do give us a deeper look into the politics of the first year at Plimouth Plantation. For example, they suggest that the 90 Native American men who first showed up at the feast were actually a defensive scouting party of warriors alarmed that the noise and musket firing heard from the English village might prefigure an attack on their own villages. The authors also debunk the costumes often depicted at the feast: the Pilgrims did not dress solely in sombre black and tall hats, and the Wampanoags, who are often shown in loincloths and Plains Indian-style war bonnets and blankets, actually wore deerskin suits and few or no feather decorations at all.

A alternative view of our revered Day of Thanksgiving as a Native American Day of Mourning is indeed a new view of the holiday for most of us, but a worthwhile reminder of the price someone always pays for another's bounty. Still, this book is a valuable addition to the history of our nation from which young people can learn much that is new about this well-worn subject.