Thanksgiving Picture Books

If this isn't your first visit to my blog, you know I love my holiday picture books. There are far fewer books about Thanksgiving than the other fall and winter holidays, but I have found a few that my students and I love to read year after year. 

My colleague, Anna, introduced this one to me a few years ago, and I've happily added it to my collection. 

Turk and Runt live on Wishbone Farm with their parents. The farm animals look forward to fall when visitors flock to the farm to get apples, pumpkins, and turkeys. Runt appears to be the only turkey who is aware of the reasons those visitors are selecting turkeys and, as the author reminds us several times, "no one ever listened to Runt."

Their parents are so proud of Turk for being "the biggest, strongest, most graceful bird" on the farm that they insist he show off his dance and football moves to the visitors. Runt, however, ruins each chance Turk gets to be chosen by a visitor and no one understands why he would do that to his wonderful, amazing brother.

But the reasons become clear when Runt becomes the object of a little old lady's attention, and the family finally believes Runt and bands together to save him from a Thanksgiving table fate.

My students love my nerdy Runt voice, and giggle at all of his asides. You will too - add this to your holiday picture book collection.

Author Lisa Wheeler's website

Interview with Lisa Wheeler

Laurie Halse Anderson is one of my many favorite authors. She is best-known for her YA fiction that tackles tough topics like sexual violence and eating disorders in an open, honest manner using a touch of humor and the sensitivity she would like each of us to extend to those struggling with these issues.

She has also written a popular book series for younger readers - Vet Volunteers, as well as some wonderful historical picture and chapter books like the one I read to my class today.

Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving informs readers about the 38 year battle of Sarah Hale to get Thanksgiving declared a national holiday. The illustrations by Matt Faulkner are detailed and had my students begging for me to wait "just one more second" to turn the page.

There is much in this book to generate great discussions. My students had questions about the Civil War, the power of the pen, slavery, and we repeated over and over a favorite quote: "Never underestimate dainty little ladies," which has been added to our "Wit & Wisdom From Our Favorite Authors" wall.

Sarah Hale is a fascinating woman and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about her many accomplishments and campaigns.

I had the privilege of hearing Laurie Halse Anderson speak at the BYU Symposium on Books for Young Readers back in 2010. She is an engaging and passionate speaker, talented writer (listen to her talk about her bumpy start with reading and writing in the Reading Rockets interview below) and a powerful advocate for intellectual freedom and the victims of sexual assault.

Author Laurie Halse Anderson's website
Interview with Laurie Halse Anderson by Reading Rockets
Illustrator Matt Faulkner's website

This book is new to my collection this year. It's funny, silly, and clever. Thanksgiving day is fast approaching, and the people of Squawk Valley don't have a main course. So they cook up a plot to entice a turkey to enter their midst as a model for the arts and crafts fair.

Pete applies for the job and poses for the artists creating turkeys from soap, rope, oatmeal, potatoes, and anything else they can get their hands on. They plan to invite Pete to judge their entries and then pop him in the oven. But Pete is too smart for them and disappears after he announces the winners. He is able to camouflage himself among all of the entries and escape with his modeling fee - the oatmeal turkey.

Delightful, rhyming text and bright, bold illustrations make this picture book an engaging read for all ages.

Fiona's Luck

St. Patrick's Day is just a few days away and I find myself wanting to add to my collection of St. Paddy's tales, so I went to my go-to site, Amazon.com and started searching.

Luckily for me, I found this golden nugget, Fiona's Luck, written by Teresa Bateman, illustrated by Kelly Murphy. The story and the illustrations are equally delightful and readers will be enchanted from the very first sentence: "Once, luck was as free to be had in Ireland as sunlight, and just as plentiful."

Bateman uses rich, rhythmic prose to craft a tale of the cunning Fiona, who realizes that the disappearance of all luck from Ireland must be "the work of the leprechauns" and turns the tables on the king of the leprechauns in order to restore luck to Ireland.

The leprechaun king is determined to win their bargain, but Fiona, whose shrewd ruse gains her access to the world of the leprechauns, exactly as she expects, circumvents him at every turn and triumphs in the end. Luck is restored to Ireland and still roams free today.

Well-formed phrases such as "one midsummer's eve," "in a trice," "glorious cavern," and "steeped in luck," not only enrich a young reader's vocabulary, but strengthen inferential and context clues skills as well.

Murphy's illustrations are anchored in greens with muted golden undertones - a constant reminder that the tale is set on the Emerald Isle.

Fiona is an strong, clever, intelligent female character who correctly surmises, "Luck's all well and good, but myself? I'd rather depend on my wits."

Follow the rainbow to find this pot of gold in your local library or at your favorite online book dealer.

St. Patrick's Day - Part 3

My last St. Patrick's Day installment...for this year :)  These three gems come to us from 3 well-known children's authors: Teresa Bateman, Eve Bunting and Patricia Polacco.

Let's start with Harp O' Gold, written by Teresa Bateman, illustrated by Jill Weber.  Tom is a wandering minstrel who envisioned for himself a life of leisure, sharing his musical talents with the rich and famous.  His music is beautiful and his audiences love it, but he and his wooden harp entertain the common folk and his livelihood depends on them sharing their food and offering him a place to stay for the night.  Tom is confident that if he had a finer looking harp, his life would change.

He gets the chance to find out when a leprechaun trades him a fine, gold harp for his battered wooden one.  Despite the fact that the strings make his fingers sore and the harp produces a hollow, tinny, soulless sound, but his new audiences - the rich and famous - applaud him loudly.  He finds that it isn't all he hoped it would be - the nobles and their friends don't really care about music, they just like showing off the golden harp and having another underling to boss around.

The king hears about the golden harp and the musician who plays it and Tom soon finds himself living in the king's castle, entertaining the king on demand.

He realizes after a few days that he is actually a prisoner in the palace, so he disguises himself and flees to the forest to find the leprechaun and regain his harp and his freedom.

Tom finds the leprechaun and gets his worn, wooden harp back.  As he begins to play,  "the sound resonated and filled an empty place in his heart."  Tom is content to play for those who appreciate his beautiful music as much as he loves playing it.

Bright, colorful pictures created with acrylics and acrylic-based watercolors add to the happy feeling of this tale.  The story is written simply, but includes rich vocabulary for young ones.  The message is clear - be careful what you wish for ;)

St. Patrick's Day in the Morning, written by Eve Bunting, illustrated by Jan Brett is a sweet tale of little Jamie who is not old enough to participate in the village parade to the top of Acorn Hill.  He wakes up early and sees the rest of the family's parade clothing laid out and decides to don a piece of each family member's clothing and hike Acorn Hill alone because, "what do they know?"

He and his dog, Nell, walk through the town, stopping to visit with townspeople along the way.  He makes it to the top of Acorn Hill and heads back down as the sun peeks over the hill.

He returns home and curls up in the rocking chair and falls fast asleep.  His family wakens to find him sleeping soundly and as his brother comments that he must be sad that he is too little to walk in the parade, Jamie smiles to himself and thinks, "what did he know?"

Jan Brett's 4-color illustrations (green, yellow, white, and black) are charming and prove yet again, that Jan Brett knows how to draw the wonder of childhood.  She shows the town's preparations for the holiday with a light touch, keeping the focus on Jamie's determination.

Eve Bunting deftly tells the tale a young boy's determination to prove he's not too little to do something he really wants to do. While the holiday is the underlying theme, it doesn't dominate the story, but is acknowledged mostly through the illustration.

A fine tale, indeed, for a St. Patrick's day morning.

Last, but definitely not least, is Patricia Polacco's Fiona's Lace.  Polacco's stories are treasures - heartfelt, homey, rich and touching - she writes about the things that are important to her and her love for the characters is palpable on every page.  Published last August, it is her latest book and well worth a trip to the library.

Fiona and her little sister love to hear the story of how their mother made the most beautiful lace in all of Ireland.  Her father wanted to court her, but none of her workmates would tell him where she lived.  One day, he discovers that bits of lace are tied to tree branches, fence posts, and other landmarks and he follows them all the way to Annie's home.  They marry and now their daughter's are learning to make Irish lace while Annie's hands are suffering from arthritis.

The little family leaves Ireland when the closing of the mill makes it difficult for anyone to survive in their village.  They sign a contract to work for a wealthy family in Chicago until their passage is paid off, so they pack the belongings they are able to take with them and the long journey begins, with Fiona making lace the entire time.

When they arrive, they discover they are not living in quarters at the home of the wealthy family, but in a tenement filled with other immigrants who have to work 2 or 3 jobs to survive because they don't receive their first paycheck from the wealthy family until they have paid back their passage.  While their parents work day and night, Fiona continues to make lace and a local dressmaker is so impressed, he offers to pay "a pretty penny" for as much as she can make.

Before the family can save enough money to buy their own hone, the Great Chicago Fire sweeps through the town and Fiona and her sister must run to safety.  With mother and father away at their second jobs, the girls fear they will never see them again.  The story of their parents' courtship pops into Fiona's mind and she quickly begins to tie bits of her lace onto everything she can find to mark their path.  They run until "they tasted blood in the backs of their throats" and hide in a basement through the night, hoping that their parents are alive and will be able to find them.

It is everything you would expect from a Patricia Polacco book.  Need I say more?

If you're looking for a fun, easy prep St. Paddy's math activity, head on over to my TPT store! I've got Lucky Charms math packs for bother upper and lower elementary classes.

St. Patrick's Day, Part 1

When I was a little girl, on the night before St. Patrick's Day, my dad would remind me (in his best Irish accent) that the leprechauns would be visiting that night.  Not just any leprechauns, mind you, but O'Shaunessey, O'Toole and O'Day.  They would tiptoe into my room and leave a small gift on my bed and I relished this tradition.  With my own children, I colored all of our food and drink green on St. Patrick's Day.  I can still picture Michael's little face, peeking into the pan as I prepared Cream of Wheat for breakfast.  I would add the grain to the milk, wave my spoon over the pan and say the magic words, "Bibbidi bobbidi boo!" and stir.  The Cream of Wheat would turn green and he would be delighted.  Sigh.

Despite the fact that every single holiday is now blown completely out of proportion - who ever thought that teachers would be making leprechaun traps with their students, making green eggs and ham, teaching math with Lucky Charms, and sprinkling glitter and stamping tiny footprints all over their classrooms - I love reading holiday books with my students.  It brings a playful element to the classroom that is too often missing as we spend our days preparing them for test after test after test, and they spark some interesting conversations.

Today I want to introduce the first four books in my St. Patrick's Day series:

St. Patrick's Day - written and illustrated by Gail Gibbons
Gibbons specializes in nonfiction for children and she has it down!  This book gives simple, factual information about the origins of St. Patrick's Day and the different ways in which it is celebrated.  The last few pages contain brief synopses of the various legends about Saint Patrick.  Her illustrations are bright and clean, perfect for young readers.  If I could add one thing to this book, it would be pronunciations for the Irish words.

The Leprechaun Under the Bed - written by Teresa Bateman, illustrated by Paul Meisel
Loner leprechaun Brian O'Shea likes peace and quiet, so he is understandably distressed when Sean McDonald builds a home right on top of his comfortable burrow.  Over time, the two develop an unlikely friendship that benefits both of them.  I enjoyed the fact that the main character doesn't become a greedy tyrant once he figures out a leprechaun is living under his bed.  He considers it to be luck he can't afford to lose, so he begins to feed the leprechaun and the mischief comes from outside the walls of their home and that's a nice twist.  Click here to read an interview with author Teresa Bateman.

That's What Leprechauns Do - written by Eve Bunting, illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully
A group of leprechauns see a storm coming and set off to move their pot of gold to the end of the rainbow.  They can't resist playing some tricks along the way, of course, but they get the pot of gold in place just in time.  Sadly, no one comes to find it and the leprechauns rebury the pot and head home.  The plot is weak - in fact, the strongest part of the text is the About Leprechauns page at the end of the book.  The illustrations of the leprechauns, however, are darling and I can imagine a child staring at them for quite a while, imagining what it would be like to encounter one.  Click here to watch an interview with Eve Bunting (born in Ireland, BTW).

Too Many Leprechauns or How that Pot o' Gold Got to the End of the Rainbow - written by Stephen Krensky, illustrated by Dan Andreason
Irish scallawag Finn O'Finnegan returns home from a walkabout to find that his village is a mess.  Nothing is getting done and everyone is exhausted because the leprechauns have invaded the village to cobble fairy shoes and the tap-tap-tapping of their tiny hammers keeps everyone awake.  Finn came home specifically to be spoiled by his mother, so he is highly motivated to fix this situation.  He cleverly tricks the leprechauns into bringing all their gold to the village square and then hides it.  The leprechauns agree to leave Dingle forever if he will return their gold.  They strike a bargain and when Finn restores the gold to the rightful owners, he introduces the leprechauns to the idea of keeping their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Clever story, rich illustrations, worth your time to find it at the library or online.

More St. Paddy's books coming soon!

If you're looking for a fun, easy prep St. Paddy's math activity, head on over to my TPT store! I've got Lucky Charms math packs for bother upper and lower elementary classes.