Happy Thanksgiving!

This week's storytime was all about Thanksgiving...what else? We had a lively crowd of twelve, with a number of older kids, since schools here in San Diego give the students this entire week off. We made a craft afterwards - paper turkeys with traced hand tail feathers and the kids enjoyed a mini-feast of stuffing, cookies and spiced cider. The atmosphere was warm and everyone was talking and laughing as they traced and cut and glued. I do love my job!

 Most of the books that I read today, were books that I read, and posted about here, last year. They remain some of my favorite Thanksgiving books. A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting with its beautiful illustrations and surprise ending, delighted as always. A couple of the older kids remembered it from last year and played along to not reveal the ending. Probably because I was raised in an immigrant household, Duck for Turkey Day by Jacqueline Jules, resonates with me. A young Vietnamese-American girl agonizes over the fact that her family does not eat turkey on Thanksgiving.

We did read two different books:

Thanksgiving Is Here! by Diane Goode
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I had high hopes for this book as a story time read when I pulled it off the shelf.  Colorful pictures and swoopy text looked interesting and everything that is Thanksgiving is here.  There were sound words that usually add fun to a read aloud, but I never did quite find the rhythm of the text and only some of the text seems to rhyme.  The kids liked this, but reacted to the other four books that I read in more enthusiastically.
                                                           and

Gobble-Gobble Crash, A Barnyard Counting Bash: A Barnyard Counting Bash by Julie Stiegemeyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is not exactly a Thanksgiving title, but, since it stars a flock of wild turkeys this is a natural read for this time of year.  The kids loved helping count all the barn yard animals, loved helping me say, "Gobble, Gobble, Crash!" and loved spotting the hidden turkeys later in the story.  The illustrations are filled with fun, documenting the chaos that happens when a flock of wild turkeys invade a sleeping barnyard on a quiet moon-filled night.  When the farmer wakes and threatens to put an end to the fun-and the invaders - the animals work together to protect their new turkey friends.  Fun and engaging with many opportunities to encourage a storytime audience to interact with the book.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I also hope that you all have something to be thankful for this year.  I am very, very Thankful for my wonderful storytime kids and colleagues at the Marine Corps Base.  I am grateful that I can do something for the families of these brave men and women who allow me to sleep in peace every night.

I am also very grateful for my wonderful public library job.  That I am able to share the gift of literacy and a love of reading with so many wonderful patrons is just a gift beyond measure.  That I am able to do this with a great team of coworkers in the library where I took my own kids to story time...well, it is a priceless gift to me.  The fact that I have a full-time job in this shaky economy is something short of a miracle.  I have so much to be thankful for this year!  I hope you all do too.