The holidays are fast approaching and will be here before we can turn around. Pull out your holiday books and decide what you want to read to the students and what you can put on a display. I pull out the books that I am planning to read aloud weeks before so they can’t get their hands on them and I know they will be ready for my lesson.
Here are a few that I love to share with the kids.
If your kids watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, read this book to them about how the balloons of the parade began. This is the true story of the man behind the balloons – a puppeteer named Tony Sarg. I didn’t know that the reason the puppet/balloons began was because Macy’s put live animals in the parade which frightened the children. So they asked Tony to think of something spectacular. As we all know, he certainly did. Read Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet.
Emily Arnold McCully writes a great story and has taken an incident from history and embellished it. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid along with some other outlaws hosted a Thanksgiving banquet at Browns’ Hole, Utah. McCully has taken Ann Bassett’s account of this banquet and has added two fictional guests to the table. All ages will enjoy this exciting story about the Wild West and outlaws. Read An Outlaw Thanksgiving by Emily Arnold McCully.
Cranberry Thanksgiving written by Wende and Harry Devlin is a story about a little girl named Maggie and her grandmother who has a secret recipe for cranberry bread. Maggie invites the scruffy, uncouth neighbor, Mr. Whiskers, for Thanksgiving dinner even though Grandmother does not like him or trust him. Grandmother has invited a handsome stranger from the town who is quite dapper. Of course, the handsome stranger ends up being the one who is trying to steal the secret recipe and Mr. Whiskers saves the day. I plan to make some cranberry bread from the recipe in the back of the book and have small pieces for the students to taste when I read this one. If your kids like this story, read Cranberry Christmas. Mr. Whiskers’ sister is coming to visit and to take him back with her because she thinks he can’t take care of himself properly. Also, a mean neighbor, Cyrus Grape won’t let anyone skate on his pond and all the children are unhappy about it. Things work out so that Mr. Whiskers doesn’t have to move away and the children get to skate on the pond after all. Included is a recipe for cranberry cookies, too.
If you like books where you can share a treat, you’ll love The Legend of the Candy Cane by Lori Walburg. We have used this book a couple of times in our school assembly near Christmas and at the end all the kids get a miniature candy cane. The candy cane can be turned curved end down to make a ‘J’ for Jesus, the curved end up to make a staff to remind us that the shepherds were the first to learn of Jesus’ birth, and red stripe to remind us that ‘by His stripes we are healed’. The illustrations by James Bernardin are lovely paintings that add richness to the story.
The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey by Susan Wojciechowski and illustrated by P. J. Lynch is another beautiful book . A widow commissions a gruf and gloomy wood carver to replace a crèche which had been lost. She requests that her son be allowed to watch the carver as he works. The wood carver lives a hermit-like life and doesn’t want to be friendly, but as the days and weeks progress, he slowly puts his personal sorrow aside and lets the friendliness of the child and his mother bring warmth to his cold heart. There is a movie made from this book that is really special, too.
Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving or Christmas story that you would like to share with other teachers through this post? Send me the information and I’ll be glad to pass this along.
Have a great week.
Audrey
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