Summary

A girl and boy twin go visit their grandmother for Thanksgiving. But this grandmother is extra special and owns a magic hat – that helps her time travel. The twins, and their grandmother, travel back in time to the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Plantation. There, they meet history.

Review

Usually – usually – I am able to remember to put holiday books on hold just ahead of the rush. You know, so that I can read to my children holiday appropriate books during the holiday season. Usually.

Except this year.

And that’s how I picked up this book. It was the last Thanksgiving book left that didn’t center around cartoons. I can’t handle Disney + holiday season in a book. Or PBS + holiday season. It just doesn’t work for me.

But this book, it did work for me. It was thrilling, it didn’t make me sigh. But I liked it.

The twins travel to Plymouth Plantation – making sure to get dressed appropriately first! You can’t look like a modern around those Puritans! Immediately, the twins and Grandma jump into “the planters” life. They stay with a family and help out with the chores. The kids fetching water and collecting food, while Grandma helped to cook. The story focuses on life at the time, and not on Thanksgiving, per se. That is, we see that Grandma, when she’s cooking breakfast, isn’t actually making bacon, eggs, and pancakes. She’s reheating last night’s leftovers over the fire. Just the usual tasty fare: “goose broth, and goat’s milk cheese, and porridge made from Indian corn.”

While the text of the story is the children relating to the reader their experience, it is supplemented with speech bubbles in the (lovely) illustrations.

The speech bubbles were better than the usual speech bubble-in-picture-book-illustrations that I have come across. Still, I’m not a fan of them. I find them too distracting. I wish the author’s would just work those bits into the storyline.

I’ll definitely read the book again, though. And I think I’ll be sure to borrow it again next year. Hopefully before Thanksgiving!

What You Need to Know

• Role Models/Authority Figures – Pilgrims acting like pilgrims, and responsibly. Grandma is an adult and acts like an adult. So do the twins parents.
  
• Violence –  None
• Language – None
• Sexual Content – None
  
• Consumerism – None
  
• Drinking/Smoking/Drugs – None
  
• Religion – In the picture bubbles there is mention that the children attend church with the pilgrims. In a storeroom. But “but the building isn’t important. It is the people who are the church.” Which is, of course, exactly what the Pilgrims think. But not us Catholics.
  
• Other –
  
• Neat stuff –