Over the River and Through the Wood

The New England Boy's Song

About Thanksgiving Day

Written by Lydia Maria Child

Illustrated by Matt Tavares

Candlewick, 2011

$16.99, ages 4 and up, 32 pages

A family's eagerness to get to grandfather's house is felt in every verse and slide of their sleigh, in this handsome, cozy edition of a beloved Thanksgiving song.

Acclaimed Matt Tavares illustrates Lydia Maria Child's 1844 poem, "A Boy's Thanksgiving," which became the song, "Over the River and Through the Wood," and in the most regardful way, keeping to the simplicity of her words and the time.

The boy remains the center of the family's New England outing, leaping onto the sleigh to grip the reigns before his family steps inside. As he holds them high in his mittened hands, the boy imagines flying through a spray of snow.

After his family climbs in, the boy slips over onto the bench, and his father, sitting next to him, leans forward and raps the reigns. His mother, in a bonnet, long gold coat and billowy scarf, scoops his little sister onto her knee so she can see store fronts as they pass.

The boy's face is gleeful and eager, and his left arm, as if spring-loaded, shoots in front of his father to point to freshly made toys in a store window. The father isn't jolted in the least. If anything his jaunty countenance only grows as he soaks in his boy's joy.

But as the poem goes, nothing delays them today; only family is in their sights. "We would not stop / For doll or top, / For it is Thanksgiving day," the boy seems to sing out with not a grumble or sigh.

The Gingerbread Pirates

By Kristin Kladstrup and illustrated by Matt Tavares

Candlewick Press, 2009

$16.99, ages 4-8

A gingerbread pirate slips away from the sleeping boy who baked him to find his missing crew and fend off a giant red cannibal in this delightful holiday story by Kladstrup and Tavares.

It's Christmas Eve and the boy and his mother have just mixed up a batch of gingerbread pirates to leave out for Santa, but the boy can't part with his favorite, Captain Cookie, so he takes him up to bed. As the boy looks over at the cookie on his side table, he wishes it had a pirate ship and drifts off to sleep imagining they are both listening for Santa's reindeer.

Captain Cookie, however, isn't sleepy and climbs down from the table and a spiraling mountain of stairs in search of his pirate crew. At the bottom. he retrieves his half-eaten cutlass from a nibbling mouse who wishes him Merry Christmas, but Captain Cookie has never heard of Christmas and is astonished when he sees a huge tree with stars in the next room.

By the mantle, he spots two of his crew, Wavy and Dots, each named for their frosting patterns, climbing down to him, but as they reach the hearth, a black cloud of soot envelops the three, signaling the arrival of a pirate-eating monster. With no time to waste, Captain Cookie and his two mates race to the kitchen to free the rest of the crew from Mom's cookie jar before the big red man can devour them.

But without a ship's rope and pulley, the captain and his mates can't hoist off the lid of the glass prison. How will they ever fend off a creature so hungry for cookies?

Kladstrup, author of the novel The Book of Story Beginnings, gives new life to the story of the gingerbread boy in this enchanting book. No sooner had I read it to my 5-year-old, I was pledged to make a ship's worth of gingerbread pirates. (I suggested we make them for Christmas, but he's thinking right now. "Please, please, Mom?" ...Oh must I, me hearty?)