Cranberry Thanksgiving

One of our favorite children’s books is called Cranberry Thanksgiving.  It is the story of an old New England fisherman that is invited to a little girl’s house for Thanksgiving.  The little girl, Maggie, lives with her grandmother.  Neither family has much money, but they are willing to share what they have with their neighbors.

Each year both Maggie and grandmother are allowed to invite one person for Thanksgiving dinner.  Maggie invites the old fisherman, Mr. Whiskers, and her grandmother invites a new man from town who smells “of lavender.”  The story centers around the grandmother’s recipe for cranberry bread.  She thinks that everyone, including Mr. Whiskers, is trying to steal her secret recipe.  An interesting interchange happens in the story.  I won’t spoil the story for you by telling you how the interchange plays out.

I encourage you to get Cranberry Thanksgiving either from your library or here and read it with your children.  Make sure you go ahead and make the cranberry bread recipe that is at the end of the book.  It is delicious and your children will enjoy making it after reading the book.  My children are older now and they still remember making the bread and comment that “we should make that bread again sometime.”  I don’t think I’m allowed to post it here because of copyright infringement.

Since Cranberry Thanksgiving is set in New England where cranberries are grown and harvested, you might also enjoy going to the Ocean Spray Cranberry website.  You can see a picture of a real cranberry bog there, get recipes using cranberries “the wonderberry”, read about how and why cranberries are so good for us.  There is even a whole section for kids complete with the Adventures of Wade and Wonderberry, recipes and crafts, about cranberries, games they can play online, and even a bunch of information that they can print off and take to school.  Teachers will like this site because it has all you need to teach about the history and science of cranberries.  You could make a whole unit on cranberries from everything that is on this site!

Have fun reading, experimenting and cooking cranberries this Thanksgiving season….