Book Review: This Is the Feast, Day 3

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, one of the reasons that I liked Diane Shore's This Is the Feast so much is because the details in the book fit with the historical accounts that my children and I have read about the Mayflower. Whatever we are studying at home, we love to combine picture books with nonfiction accounts and chapter books. I think that it's tempting to give up picture books completely when one's children reach a certain age, often 6 or 7, and start delving solely into chapter books. It is exciting, after all, to leave behind Curious George and head into Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

But I've found that my children still love picture books just as much at 11 as they did at 4. This makes sense, really. A novel that I read at 14 took on a completely different meaning at 22 and then reshaped itself into something else again at 40. Picture books are the same way: what they see at age five is at a completely different level than what they see at age 10. So this year we've been pulling the picture books off the shelf and reading them, and I'm happy to add This Is the Feast to our November reads.

Here are some other resources that we used when we studied the Pilgrims and the Mayflower journey last year. Read together with This Is the Feast, your kids can have a much broader perspective of this time period!

If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 (Ann McGovern)
American Adventures #1: The Mayflower Adventure (Colleen Reece)
Dear America: A Journey to the New World (The Diary of Remember Patience Whipple)
American Family Paper Dolls: Pilgrim Period (Tom Tierney)
Colonial Kids: An Activity Guide to Life in the New World (Laurie Carlson)—all kinds of great crafts and activities

And if you haven't read a picture book lately with your older elementary child, take a break from the chapter books and revisit some old friends!