00004647

973.1

Ms. George’s nicely illustrated book suffers from the same problems most books on this subject demonstrate – a desire to avoid truth-telling; more precisely, in the case of her use of quotation marks to crouch uncomfortable and biased, yet commonly used, language (see “savages”), she is inconsistent in doing so. She wants us to know she abhors “savages,” but is perfectly fine dropping New World without quotation marks – so, suggesting that there was something “new” about a continent on which indigenous peoples already lived: that false truth is acceptable? That’s okay: she subtly lays the groundwork for her inconsistency by using the word, “Indian,” sans quotation marks, early on.

The struggle to straddle the fine line between faking enlightenment and perpetuating falsehoods should not be so hard, even in 1993 when this book was published. Cultural stereotypes are based upon a fastidiously-crafted infrastructure of deceits and denigrations. This material, in the hands of a more enlightened instructor, might pass muster with a kiddie version of an addendum. In many ways, in 2018, this book can be used an excellent example which shows how even a noble effort to rehabilitate the misperception of native peoples as savages falls short of full enlightenment when the author/editor fails to see the bias created by other, dehumanizing words.

And it’s a pity, too: the pictures are nice. ( )

A different take on the classic telling. Starts out with the origins of the rock the Pilgrims landed at. It says Plymouth rock probably came from somewhere off the coast of Africa. There are no footnotes that support this claim.

I chose this book at the library because I was impressed with [a:Thomas Locker's|15338|Thomas Locker|https://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-e89fc14c32a41c0eb4298dfafe929b65.png] oil paintings which illustrate it. It seems like a more complete and maybe more realistic telling of the history of Thanksgiving than some of the other books we have been looking at. The text is a bit long for a five year old, but one could spread out the reading over two nights. But 7 - 9 year old may be a better target audience for this book. The book is nicely tied together with a depiction of Plymouth Rock.