ISBN 0385073127 - With Thanksgiving right around the corner, it seemed like a good time to go through some of the books on the shelves here that are related to the holiday. The Plymouth Thanksgiving turned out to be a surprise for a couple of reasons.
Not allowed to worship as they'd like, a group of people known as Pilgrims leave England to settle in Holland. While there, they hear about a New Land and think that it might be a good place to settle, so they return to England to prepare for their journey. The group faces danger at sea and, once they find land, various threats before they find a suitable place to settle. Soon, they make friends among the Indians and one of them, named Squanto, is left behind with the Pilgrims. He teaches them much about their new home and, when a plentiful harvest time comes, the Pilgrims have a celebration and invite the Indians to join them.
Author/illustrator Leonard Weisgard did an okay job, in 1967, when the book was first published. Weisgard says that "In England over 300 years ago there lived some people called Pilgrims". This is a weird inaccuracy, since it was their pilgrimage to America that earned them the name of "pilgrims" and so they clearly wouldn't have been called pilgrims while they were in England. Weisgard mentions them sailing "From England out of Plymouth Harbor westward toward the New World..." and landing, eventually, at Plymouth Harbor, which strikes me a detail worth explaining (two different harbors, in two different countries, with the same name). Last, for a book that is mostly accurate, if vague, the fact that the author writes "Chief Massasoit... were all to come... to share a Thanksgiving feast." is absurd, since the holiday wasn't a holiday and it certainly wasn't called Thanksgiving until many years later. These types of errors wouldn't mean much in a childrens' book, except that this one claims to be a non-fiction title.
The story is based largely upon the diary of William Bradford and includes the Mayflower's Passenger List in the front; both of these details lend it some credibility. In 1967, the U.S. hadn't yet been infested by political correctness, so the Indians are called Indians; the pilgrims steal from "two abandoned Indian dwellings" and then they have the nerve to "praise the Lord" that there was enough there for them to steal to plant the next spring - nevermind that the owners of those things might take exception to their burglary. The text layout in this book is a bit strange, with short lines of varying length, and that layout impedes the smooth reading of it at times. The illustrations seem to fit the author's style quite well. All in all, Thanksgiving is a weird holiday - a secular holiday about thanking god? - that makes for some awkward stories - sure, we were friends with the Indians, before we stole their land and committed genocide against them! - and this book tells a fairly generic childrens' version. A similar, more modern version is ISBN: 0679802185 The First Thanksgiving (Step-Into-Reading, Step 3).
- AnnaLovesBooks
Not allowed to worship as they'd like, a group of people known as Pilgrims leave England to settle in Holland. While there, they hear about a New Land and think that it might be a good place to settle, so they return to England to prepare for their journey. The group faces danger at sea and, once they find land, various threats before they find a suitable place to settle. Soon, they make friends among the Indians and one of them, named Squanto, is left behind with the Pilgrims. He teaches them much about their new home and, when a plentiful harvest time comes, the Pilgrims have a celebration and invite the Indians to join them.
Author/illustrator Leonard Weisgard did an okay job, in 1967, when the book was first published. Weisgard says that "In England over 300 years ago there lived some people called Pilgrims". This is a weird inaccuracy, since it was their pilgrimage to America that earned them the name of "pilgrims" and so they clearly wouldn't have been called pilgrims while they were in England. Weisgard mentions them sailing "From England out of Plymouth Harbor westward toward the New World..." and landing, eventually, at Plymouth Harbor, which strikes me a detail worth explaining (two different harbors, in two different countries, with the same name). Last, for a book that is mostly accurate, if vague, the fact that the author writes "Chief Massasoit... were all to come... to share a Thanksgiving feast." is absurd, since the holiday wasn't a holiday and it certainly wasn't called Thanksgiving until many years later. These types of errors wouldn't mean much in a childrens' book, except that this one claims to be a non-fiction title.
The story is based largely upon the diary of William Bradford and includes the Mayflower's Passenger List in the front; both of these details lend it some credibility. In 1967, the U.S. hadn't yet been infested by political correctness, so the Indians are called Indians; the pilgrims steal from "two abandoned Indian dwellings" and then they have the nerve to "praise the Lord" that there was enough there for them to steal to plant the next spring - nevermind that the owners of those things might take exception to their burglary. The text layout in this book is a bit strange, with short lines of varying length, and that layout impedes the smooth reading of it at times. The illustrations seem to fit the author's style quite well. All in all, Thanksgiving is a weird holiday - a secular holiday about thanking god? - that makes for some awkward stories - sure, we were friends with the Indians, before we stole their land and committed genocide against them! - and this book tells a fairly generic childrens' version. A similar, more modern version is ISBN: 0679802185 The First Thanksgiving (Step-Into-Reading, Step 3).
- AnnaLovesBooks
