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
