Skip to main content

Sarah Hale: The Mother of Thanksgiving

Every year at this time, I read aloud Laurie Halse Anderson's picturebook, Thank you, Sarah!: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving. 


It is the little known but true story of how Sarah Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book, fought for decades to get the fourth Thursday of November declared as a national day of Thanksgiving. Every year, the majority of students in my preservice reading/methods course are unfamiliar with this story and have even argued that it isn't true. Anderson writes the story in a wonderfully engaging way and provides an extensive list of resources in the back. 

One of my students found a new resource which she shared with me. The Public Radio show, BackStory recently featured Historian Anne Blue Wills who tells the story of Sarah Josepha Hale, a New England magazine editor who campaigned tirelessly to put Thanksgiving on our national calendar. The audio slide show titled: Sarah Hale: The Mother of Thanksgiving provides a narrated photo essay that includes photographs and historical documents that would add much to any discussion of why we have Thanksgiving today.


 Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fun and Inspiration

In this post, I'm sharing a few YouTube videos that have been quite inspiring and some that are just fun. Below is a TED presentation by spoken word poet and teacher, Sarah Kay . You MUST watch it and be inspired! I also watched a documentary titled, Louder Than A Bomb , about the spoken word poetry contest held in Chicago Public Schools. It was also extremely inspiring. Below is the trailer : Finally, does everyone but me know about the book, Goodnight iPad , a parody of the original by Margaret Wise Brown? Hilarious! See the YouTube video below...does it not perfectly capture what goes on in the homes of many of our children today? Reminds me of a colleague who told me she texts her children to tell them to come to dinner. The video below it is in stark contrast, titled: The Joy of Books . Enjoy!
Post a Comment
Read more

NCTE was AMAZING!

I loved NCTE --not the "getting ready to go" part, which I hate, but the actual "being there" part. I learned so much from many great educators and authors. One of the many highlights of the conference for me was the Authors' Blog session, which I chaired. Laurie Halse Anderson, Maureen Johnson, Justine Larbalestier, Barbara O'Connor, and Lisa Yee were all on the panel and let me tell you -- these women are amazing! I didn't have my camera but several of the authors have already blogged about the session--check out Laure Anderson , Barbara O'Connor , Lisa Yee and Justine Larbalestier's blog posts. During the question/answer phase of the presentation, the authors discussed and raise very important issues that I think all teachers should consider. One of the questions I asked was about receiving posts that contained personal information. Children and young adults become very connected to these authors through their books and the authors' blog...
2 comments
Read more