This Is the Feast
Grade 2–5—The epic tale of the Pilgrims' first year at the Plymouth settlement is told in verse. Beginning with theMayflower's journey across the ocean and concluding with the three-day harvest celebration and feast, the struggles and successes of the year are described. Each good turn of events is commemorated with a "Thanks be to God…" appropriate to the Pilgrims' religious motives. The difficult journey and early loss of lives are mentioned along with the discovery of the cleared Patuxet fields and baskets of corn. Squanto, "this wise, clever man," is given credit for helping the Pilgrims by teaching them the skills they needed to survive. It's during the "Feast the Pilgrims prepared" that some long-standing inaccuracies are most apparent. How the Indians participated in and contributed to the Thanksgiving celebration is reduced to the statement that they "shared in the singing and dancing." This omission flaws an otherwise mostly balanced retelling of one of our country's earliest stories. Richly colored and detailed illustrations match the proportions of the events; however, the mentions of "death and disease" and "days of despair" are not reflected in the pictures. Only one apparently ill man is shown amid a room full of robust women and children preparing a meal of roasted fowl and fresh produce. Kate Waters'sGiving Thanks: The 1621 Harvest Feast(Scholastic, 2001) and Joseph Bruchac'sSquanto's Journey: The Story of the First Thanksgiving(Harcourt, 2000) are better. Larger collections may have room for Shore's title, too.—Carol S. Surges, McKinley Elementary School, Wauwatosa, WICopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.