In a quest to teach my daughter something about Thanksgiving, I checked out the following books from the library. Next Thursday, she’ll be expecting rhyming men without shirts serving a half burnt turkey in drag.
P is for Pilgrim: A Thanksgiving Alphabet written by Carol Crane and illustrated by Helle Urban
In case you were wondering, X is the signature made by pilgrim women who couldn’t write. Accompanying the short poem for each letter is a sidebar with facts that are too tedious to read out loud. But I learned Sarah Hale petitioned for 15 years to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, colonists called pumpkins pumpions, and why Miles Standish had a poem written about him. P. noticed the Wampanoag man wasn’t wearing a shirt and was curious about the man writing with a quill instead of a pen.
An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving written by Louisa May Alcott and illustrated by James Bernardin
Laura Ingalls Wilder meets Charles Dickens in this tale. The three-year-old in your house might find the reference to catnip stuffing hilarious. Heavy on the narrative, you might need a glass of water to sustain you as you read through to the apple slump recipe on the last page.
Give Thanks to the Lord written by Karma Wilson and illustrated by Amy June Bates
Although you’ll have to remind yourself you’re not reading a greeting card (“The day is lovely, cool, and bright,/our house is filled with noisy cheer,/ a perfect day for giving thanks,/ as we all gather here”), you’ll look at the pictures and remember your cousin sticking black olives on all ten fingers, your dad eating pumpkin pie on the couch, your aunt sneaking a taste of whipped cream off the pie.
Beauty and the Beaks: A Turkey’s Cautionary Tale by Mary Jane and Herm Auch
Poultry puns abound. A turkey wanders into The Chic Hen beauty salon and asks, “Wattle I do?” Eggsactly. Illustrated with pictures of chicken puppets dressed in homemade high heels, this is the one P. has picked up the most often to look at on her own.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
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4 comments:
The cautionary tale is definitely the most interesting of this batch, despite the intrusive puns.
I'd like to point out that Ms. Ingalls Wilder stole my cobbler recipe and called it slump. But seriously, who wants to eat something called "slump"?
I'd have to agree it's interesting but I'm a little creeped out by the photos (and imagining the effort that went into creating said photos). Since my cobbler usually appears slumpy anyway I'm all in favor of trying it out.
I can only hope that P. never has to hear anything about turkey pardoning.
We just won't let her watch those episodes of the West Wing. Apparently you can go to the White House Website to vote for the turkeys' names (past picks include Biscuit and Gravy).
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