Thankful: The Very First Thanksgiving Day by Rhonda Gowler Greene

This is the food, gathered and blessed,
the corn and sweet berries, and wild turkey dressed,
Shared on the very first Thanksgiving Day.

Beginning at the heart of the Thanksgiving story, Rhonda Greene's The Very First Thanksgiving Day (Aladdin), utilizing the familiar "house that Jack built" verse form, clearly signals that this rhyming account is aimed at young children. Working closely in tandem with artist Susan Gaber, whose acrylic paintings of youngsters involved in the Pilgrim story glow with energy and light, this retelling has much to offer the picture book audience.

Greene uses an engaging stratagem to tell the oft-told tale, beginning, like Jack's house, with the end of the story and working backward, through the harvest, the planting with the aid of the Indians, the hunger and sickness of the first winter, the long voyage, and at last the colonists' hopeful departure from their own land, leaving behind everything except their hope:

This is the land where it all began.
The land where a brave group made ready their plan
To travel the ocean that never would end,
That sometimes was foe and sometimes was friend....

Gaber's skillful illustrations, in full-page and double-page spreads, flesh out the simple verse, telling the historic and dramatic story visually with admirable force. And from this beginning in the old-country harbor, author Greene proceeds to reverse the action, taking the reader again back to the harvest celebration in a recapitulation of the feast of Thanksgiving which the reader can now appreciate fully.

Not far from the houses, built in straight rows,
That stood in the hot sun and harsh winter snows
And sheltered the Pilgrims who farmed the new land,
Who steadfastly labored and toiled by hand.

Who learned from the Indians, skillful and strong,
Who knew how to live through the winters so long.
And ate of the food, gathered and blessed,
The corn and sweet berries, the wild turkey dressed,

Shared on the very first Thanksgiving Day.

Dressed in its colorful, inexpensive paperback edition, The Very First Thanksgiving Day, with its satisfying cadence and striking illustrations, deserves its own place at the table for Thanksgiving reading.

T is for Thankful: P Is For Pilgrim by Carol Crane

Across the Atlantic Ocean
A lone ship on a vast sea.
Ablaze with a new hope,
All praying to be free.

Carol Crane's P Is for Pilgrim: A Thanksgiving Alphabet (Sleeping Bear Alphabets) begins this strikingly illustrated alphabet-in-verse book, one of the beautifully designed titles in the Sleeping Bear Alphabets series (listed here), with the arresting verbal image of that tiny ship amidst the vast Atlantic. Artist Helen Urban's striking paintings, nostalgically idealized as they are, give young readers an idea of the life of young colonists in the first days of Plimouth Plantation.

Crane draws upon later aspects of American life in this alphabet book, loosely linking Feast, Harvest, Mayflower and Pumpkins, Squanto, Tom Turkeys, and Wampanoags with other symbolic national icons as the Bill of Rights and Individual Rights.

For a more historically authentic account, see Diane Shore's gloriously illustrated This Is the Feast, Laura Melmed's equally beautiful This First Thanksgiving Day: A Counting Story or Joseph Bruchac's incomparable Squanto's Journey: The Story of the First Thanksgiving, reviewed here.

Without a Prayer! Two Bad Pilgrims by Kathryn Lasky

In 1620 a ship called the Mayflower left England bound for the New World in the west. On board were Pilgrims seeking a new life in a land where freedom.....

HEY! THIS IS BORING! HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT US---FRANCIS AND JOHNNY BILLINGTON--AND HOW MUCH FUN WE HAD ALMOST
BLOWING UP THE MAYFLOWER, LIVING WITH THE INDIANS, AND CAUSING LOTS OF TROUBLE IN THE NEW WORLD!

Literature is full of bad boys, from Tom and Huck on, but who knew that two naughty lads were among those staid, gray-clad Pilgrims?

Well, it seems that the Pilgrim Fathers filled out their passenger manifesto with several families of what the Pilgrims called "Strangers"--some of them adventurers, some scofflaws one step ahead of the constable--who boarded alongside the Winthrops and the Bradfords. Of especial note among these were the Billingtons, a family with two sons, Francis and John. Records show that their parents were no prizes, but Frankie and Johnny were decidedly something else!

In the hands of Newbery-winning author Kathryn Lasky, the waggish Frankie and Johnny tell their own story their way in her latest, Two Bad Pilgrims (Viking, 2009). The brothers' boast that they almost blew up the Mayflower is documented as no idle brag: bored with the seemingly endless games of "draughts" (checkers), "naughts and crosses," (tic-tac-toe), and "Lummelen," (keep-away) on the long voyage, it seems the two got their hands on some "squibs," gunpowder twisted inside a paper straw, used like matches to ignite cannons. Caught almost "red-handed" just in time, the Mayflower escaped, as one of the Pilgrim Fathers put it, "through God's mercy a great danger...." on the high seas, no thanks to Frankie and Johnny.

WE WEREN'T SO BAD. MAN, THERE'S BAD AND THEN THERE'S REALLY BAD. WE WERE JUST MIDDLING BAD. SO WE NEARLY BLEW UP THE STINKFLOWER. IT WASN'T LIKE WE MEANT TO!

Having nearly aborted a whole major chapter in American history doesn't seem to have inhibited the Billington boys. Put to communal tasks immediately when they set their feet on North American soil ("WE WERE ALLOWED TO PLAY FOR ABOUT THREE MINUTES BEFORE THEY PUT US TO WORK!") Frankie and Johnny managed to skip the labor detail most of the time, perfecting their tree-climbing skills to avoid detection. While they were goofing off in the treetops, however, they spotted some large bodies of water to the west, and one of these discoveries is known to this day as the Billington Sea. Avoiding close contact with their hard-working fellow colonists had another unexpected advantage: they and their parents waltzed through the "Great Sickness" with nary a sniffle, being, as their fellow colonists probably grumbled, too lazy to die.

Making himself scarce from schooling and labor did get Johnny taken hostage by the neighboring Nauset Indians, who didn't seem to be signatories to the treaty with Massasoit. The colonists had given the rascal up for a goner when word came of a wandering golden-haired lad living with the "natives" down around Cape Cod. Probably with understandable reluctance, the village elders negotiated for his return, in the process fortuitously establishing peaceful relations with the Nausets, who strangely seemed to have enjoyed Master Billington's sojourn with them.

"I'M B-A-A-CK!"

Pious Pilgrim history to the contrary, our first settlers were always a mixed lot, with their share of ramblin' guys who sometimes serendipitously brought their improbable good luck along for the ride and added to the colorful mix that is our land to this day. With insouciant asides from the two lads breaking into the earnest efforts of "the Professor" to narrate the official account of Plimoth Plantation, Kathryn Lasky's hilarious tales of the Billington boys will delight young readers with their little-known exploits. John Manders' caricature-styled illustrations add to the fun--and the historical facts--of the book. For older kids, who think they know it all about the Pilgrim Fathers, this new Thanksgiving story will be both a revelation and a total romp!

The First American Cats: Pilgrim Cat by Carol Antoinette Peacock

One breezy September morning in 1620, a stray cat prowled the docks, hunting his breakfast. The cat spied a plump mouse. He pounced--and missed. When the mouse escaped to a ship, the cat followed, landing on the ship's deck.

The ship was called the Mayflower.

While the cat was watching the mouse scampering onto the small vessel, a young girl, Faith Barrett, was watching the cat make its inauspicious boarding of the ship as well, a ship which was to make an auspicious voyage indeed. Faith was waiting with her parents and a large group of passengers sailing that day, and although she was both excited and anxious about the long voyage ahead, she couldn't help being interested in the cat who it appeared would be her fellow traveler.

Throughout the voyage, through storms and sea sickness and fevers, Faith caught glimpses of the cat, apparently eating well from the ship's abundant supply of rodents, and when she could, she slipped the little mouser a bit of dried fish she had saved. And when at last the stormy weather broke and the pale, sickly passengers made their way to the deck for their first chance at sunshine, Faith was overjoyed to see the cat, too, sunning himself on the deck. Happily, she scooped him up in her arms, and the cat purred his welcome right back.

Life ashore in the new colony was hard, and Faith had little food or energy to share with the gray striper, whom she had named Pounce, but as the survivors of the "Great Sickness" greeted their first spring in the New World, the loyal cat had become a member of Faith's family. As Squanto came to teach the people how to plant Indian corn, Pounce followed Faith into the fields, occasionally snatching one of the small fishes intended for fertilizer and eating it greedily from his hiding place beneath Faith's skirts. But Pounce also paid his way, prowling the fields and keeping the mice and birds away from the growing crops as best he could, and as the harvest began, her family was happy to have the accomplished mouser to protect their stores. Pounce grew plump and Faith slept soundly with a happy purring cat beside her each night.

But one day Pounce didn't come home from the fields. She searched everywhere, but no cat came to her call. Days passed and Faith was sad.

Then one day Squanto led some men to the Eel River to fish. Faith and the other girls followed along.

Squanto stopped suddenly. He crouched beside a hollow log. Wordlessly, he beckoned to Faith.

There was Pounce, five tiny kittens snuggled beside her.

"Pounce! Thou art a girl--and a mother as well!" cried Faith.

Gently, Squanto lifted Pounce and the kittens and placed them one by one in Faith's apron.

The cat population of Plimoth Plantation took a great leap forward that day, and when the first harvest thanksgiving rolled around, there were five new, truly American cats to enjoy the leftovers.

Carol Antoinette Peacock's Pilgrim Cat (Albert Whitman Prairie Books), was inspired by her visit to the restored Plimoth Plantation, where her own daughter spotted a "re-enacter cat" among the costumed "Pilgrims" there and asked if there really were Pilgrim cats on the Mayflower. Research showed that there were indeed, and also three historical girls who might have befriended one of them on the voyage. From this idea the composite characters of Faith and her cat Pounce grew into this piece of historical fiction for young readers. Nicely illustrated in Doris Ettinger's gentle realistic style, her engaging text finds a novel way to retell the familiar story of the first Thanksgiving in an appealing and personal way that young animal lovers will remember.