a cranberry thanksgiving brings us new england charm plus cute turkey crafts!

Hi there!  Thanksgiving is around the corner, and we are drumming up the best seasonal picks we can find.  CONFESSION #1: I love a holiday, any holiday.  I go all out with decorations, themed books, food, whatever I can.  CONFESSION #2: The Starbucks around the corner is already playing Christmas carols, and the city has started hanging wreaths with red velvet bows on all of our light posts.  While I love, love the Christmas season, and while I love decorating our house for the holiday, let's hold our horses and revel in the season that is late fall and Thanksgiving.  I refuse to put up icicle lights while the leaves on my front yard trees are still yellow and orange!  While my beloved angel figurines and jingle bells cool their heels in storage containers for another month, let's find some good Thanksgiving reads!  Today's pick is Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin. 

This is the story of a young girl named Maggie who lives with her grandmother by a cranberry bog on the edge of a small and charming New England town.  While Grandmother prepares a marvelous feast for Thanksgiving, Maggie does her chores.  Both of them have chosen guests to invite to dinner.  Grandmother chooses Mr. Horace, a well-groomed, well-mannered man with a fancy coat and styled hair.  Maggie chooses her friend, Mr. Whiskers, a rough-around-the-edges sea captain.  Grandmother gets upset with Maggie for inviting him because he smells like fish and talks loudly.  By the end of the meal, Grandmother's opinion of Mr. Whiskers is changed, and readers learn not to judge a person based on how they look or how much money they have.   This book is part of a series.  If you enjoy this one, check out the rest of the Cranberry series including stories for Halloween, Christmas, and Valentines Day.  Each book comes with a recipe on the back that relates to the story.  On the back cover of the Thanksgiving book is the recipe for Grandmother's cranberry bread.  I have to be honest here.  I do a lot of baking, so I consider myself pretty capable in the kitchen.  I baked the cranberry bread recipe on the back, and well, it wasn't so great.  I hate to say something negative about this book because I loved the story, but I also hate the wasted time and money of a recipe or craft idea that isn't worth it.  If you want a great cranberry recipe, maybe skip the one provided by Cranberry and try something else. 

There are so many fun turkey crafts for your thanksgiving table, and we have found a ton of them on our Pinterest board.  Click here to get to our Thanksgiving Books and Crafts board for over 100 Thanksgiving books and crafts with turkeys.  

happy thanksgiving! more good seasonal reads

To wrap up our Thanksgiving story time picks, today we are sharing two more picture books that bring history, great pictures, fascinating text, and plenty of reasons to be thankful to the table - If You Sailed on The Mayflower in 1620  by Ann McGovern and Anna DiVito and 1621: A New Look At Thanksgiving by National Geographic.  

If You Sailed is part of a series of history picture books that if you aren't familiar with yet, go check them out!  Other titles include If You Lived in Colonial Times, If You Grew Up with George Washington, and If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon. What makes this series valuable is the way they place the young reader in the shoes of children who lived throughout history.  In this selection from the series, we see not only the specifics of the Mayflower ship and who exactly sailed to the new world, but we also learn fascinating details about the lives of the Pilgrim children.  For example, two troublemaker brothers named the Billington boys were constantly getting into trouble throughout the Mayflower voyage, and one of their pranks almost burned down the whole ship!  Another fun fact is that things like chairs, eating utensils, and bowls were precious in the first Pilgrim homes, so most kids ate their dinner standing up and eating food from one plate using their hands.  (Don't kids do that now? Oh, it's just my lovely children? Okay, moving on) recommended ages: 6+

In 1621, the information is wonderfully detailed and informative, but the star of the show is the collection of photographs that are so historically accurate that they make the reader feel like the photographer had a time machine!  The faces of the Pilgrims and Indians are sincere and work to remind us that these were real events and real people.  Below I have included a recipe from the book for a Native American dish that may have been served on that first Thanksgiving feast.  

a thanksgiving feast with new england charm: cranberry thanksgiving by wende and harry devlin

Hi there!  Thanksgiving is around the corner, and we are drumming up the best seasonal picks we can find.  CONFESSION #1: I love a holiday, any holiday.  I go all out with decorations, themed books, food, whatever I can.  CONFESSION #2: The Starbucks around the corner is already playing Christmas carols, and the city has started hanging wreaths with red velvet bows on all of our light posts.  While I love, love the Christmas season, and while I love decorating our house for the holiday, let's hold our horses and revel in the season that is late fall and Thanksgiving.  I refuse to put up icicle lights while the leaves on my front yard trees are still yellow and orange!  While my beloved angel figurines and jingle bells cool their heels in storage containers for another month, let's find some good Thanksgiving reads!  Today's pick is Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin.  

This is the story of a young girl named Maggie who lives with her grandmother by a cranberry bog on the edge of a small and charming New England town.  While Grandmother prepares a marvelous feast for Thanksgiving, Maggie does her chores.  Both of them have chosen guests to invite to dinner.  Grandmother chooses Mr. Horace, a well-groomed, well-mannered man with a fancy coat and styled hair.  Maggie chooses her friend, Mr. Whiskers, a rough-around-the-edges sea captain.  Grandmother gets upset with Maggie for inviting him because he smells like fish and talks loudly.  By the end of the meal, Grandmother's opinion of Mr. Whiskers is changed, and readers learn not to judge a person based on how they look or how much money they have.   

This book is part of a series.  If you enjoy this one, check out the rest of the Cranberry series including stories for Halloween, Christmas, and Valentines Day.  Each book comes with a recipe on the back that relates to the story.  On the back cover of the Thanksgiving book is the recipe for Grandmother's cranberry bread.  I have to be honest here.  I do a lot of baking, so I consider myself pretty capable in the kitchen.  I baked the cranberry bread recipe on the back, and well, it wasn't so great.  I hate to say something negative about this book because I loved the story, but I also hate the wasted time and money of a recipe or craft idea that isn't worth it.  If you want a great cranberry recipe, maybe skip the one provided by Cranberry and try something else.  I always have great success with Nigella's recipe for white chocolate and cranberry cookies.  They are delish! Here's a link to her recipe. http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/cranberry-and-white-chocolate-cookies-1723