What We're Reading: Thanksgiving Week

We've been taking a bit of a history jaunt the past week, veering away from the very interesting-looking chapter on "The Bottom of the World" in our history spine to give homage to the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. I was fortunate to find several good books at the library:

The story of the first Thankgiving told from the prospective of Squanto, who is incredibly important, but usually sidelined. I think I always thought as a child that he somehow just magically knew how to speak English! I appreciating reading the context of what has going on with the Native American nations as the first English settlers were arriving.

This story chronicles s child's perspective of making the journey across the Atlantic on the Mayflower

After reading so many more accurate historical descriptions, this one stood out as a more romanticized picture of the pilgrims. It was interesting to contrast it with the other more grim representations. The artwork really is lovely though, and makes for a nice picture study. 

And to counterbalance the romanticized view, a depressing one! 

I will warn you at least, lots of people die bluntly in this book. But there are lots of engaging illustrations and the author certainly does not shy away from presenting the suffering that the pilgrims faced. My sensitive daughter looked a bit ill. But its true that its difficult to appreciate how relieved they were at the time of the first Thanksgiving without understand the difficulty they had already undergone.

I found this a really interesting modern tie in - what would a modern day pilgrim look like? Who today is looking for religious or political freedom? How might the beginnings of our own country change they way that we should respond to such people?

I'm thankful my library has done such a nice job curating their book selections. :)

Hopefully we will get to some art projects and such...