Happy Thanksgiving from Florida!

When we think of Thanksgiving we think of Plymouth Rock Pilgrims joining the Wampanoag tribe for a harvest feast in the fall of 1621. But 56 years before this celebration, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés arrived in present day St. Augustine, and he wanted to show his gratitude to God for a safe journey and a new land. The explorer planned a Thanksgiving feast that was enjoyed by the Spanish, with the local tribe of Timucuas as guests. This September 8th will mark the 445th anniversary of this event.

You will learn about this and other Florida history facts in Robyn Gioia’s, America's REAL First Thanksgiving. The contents of this 44 page book include.
1. The World in 1565
2. Uncharted Lands
3. Spain in the 1560s
4. Florida in the 1560's
5. The Timucua, St. Augustine's Native Americans
6. The Founding of St. Augustine, 1565
7. Day of Thanksgiving
8. St. Augustine Today

Also included are a cocido recipe, a timeline and a glossary. This is a must-have book for any child studying Florida history.

Ages 9-12
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Activity: On September 8, celebrate the first Thanksgiving with a big pot of cocido, a traditional Spanish stew. You’ll find the recipe at Spain Recipes.com.

When Will This Cruel War End?

How would it feel to have your brother, your father and your boyfriend away at war? What would it be like having bands of the enemy army roaming through your property and taking your food supplies? How would you deal with being sequestered to the upper level of your home while enduring the noise and inconvenience of enemy officers using your home’s main floor as their headquarters?

The fictitious Emma addresses all this and more in When Will This Cruel War Be Over?: The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson, Gordonsville, Virginia, 1864. She reflects at times on her old life with it’s new pretty dresses and fine carriage rides but mostly writes about her current state of affairs, including what she is reading, news about the neighbors, who is sick, how difficult her cousin is being, her visits to the stable, the demise of her home and the arrival of letters from her boyfriend and her father. On Wednesday, November 23, 1864 part of her entry states, “At times I feel like I am a thousand years old—that is what this cruel war has done to me.”

What an excellent choice for entertaining reading that offers insight into the Civil War through confederate eyes. This is one of the many titles offered in the Dear America series. I reviewed another one, Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie: The Oregon Trail Diary of Hattie Campbell, here.

Ages 9 and up
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Activity: Tea and biscuits with apple butter may have been a typical breakfast for Emma. Use this recipe to make your own apple butter.

A 5,000 Year Old Epic

These stories about a part god/part man king named Gilgamesh are reminiscent of ancient Greek mythology, but they are more ancient. In fact, they were originally written on clay tablets some 5,000 years ago. Ludmila Zeman has taken these older than dirt Mesopotamian tales and created a kid-friendly, beautifully illustrated trilogy. Besides the lessons in friendship, loyalty, leadership, love and good versus evil, readers will also be exposed to what life in the long ago city of Uruk, situated in present day Iraq, was like. Titles in this series include Gilgamesh the King, The Revenge of Ishtar and The Last Quest of Gilgamesh.

Ages 9-12
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Activity: Can you put a story on a clay tablet that someone else can decipher? We started by making our own Mesopotamian Mud (home made play dough). Here is the recipe we used:

1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup salt
1 1/2 cups water
1 tb oil
1/2 tb cream of tartar
Food Coloring:
Red: 30 drops
Green: 20 drops
Yellow: 15 drops

Stir ingredients together then cook over medium heat. Stir until liquid ingredients become solid.

Here is Shannon's cuneiform. She wrote about two friends finding a bird's nest containing eggs. I read it without even stumbling!

To see and find out more about cuneiforms check out these sites:
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Berkeley, California
Horn Museum, Berrien Springs, Michigan
Kelsey Museum of Archeology, Ann Arbor, Michigan
New York Public Library, New York, New York
USC Archaeological Collection, Los Angeles, California
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland

The Origins of Vampires

Inspiration is a miraculous thing. Where does it come from? What inspired the creation of Snow White, Star Wars or Count Dracula? I’m not sure, but according to Vlad the Impaler: The Real Count Dracula, the later was inspired by a Romanian prince with a very unpleasant personality. Although there had been tales of vampires for hundreds of years, it was an Irishman named Bram Stoker who borrowed Vlad Dracula’s name, his castle in the Carpathian Mountains and a bit of his bloody reputation to create the novel titled Dracula in 1897.

Born in 1431, Vlad was named after his father, Vlad Dracul. Dracul was the Romanian word for “dragon.” Vlad Sr. took that as his last name after joining the Order of Dragons. This was a group of 23 royal leaders who vowed to protect the Holy Roman Empire from the advancing Turks. Vlad’s young offspring became known as Vlad Dracula, meaning “little dragon.”

Unlike Count Dracula, Vlad Dracula was not known for sucking blood out of people. But he did seem to thrive on killing people. His preferred method, as you can surmise from the title of the book, was impalement. He held a grudge against the upper crust, so he impaled them. The Germans didn’t hand over his half brother so he impaled them. One woman didn’t sew her husband’s clothes to Vlad’s satisfaction so he impaled her. He displayed the impaled. He dined among the impaled. He reveled in the impaled. One monk reported that he dipped his bread in his impaled victim’s blood before eating it. Yuck! Just to mix things up a bit, he also burned live people to death, hacked people to death and worked people to death. It is estimated that Vlad killed 40,000 all told.

If your child is fascinated by the morbid, than this book is for him/her. And on the positive side they will gain a sense of what life was like in this tumultuous part of the world in the 15th Century. It includes sidebars on Black Death, Constantinople and three empires: Holy Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman, as well as a timeline and glossary. It is a “feels good in your hands” sized book and it's part of Scholastic’s Wicked History series. Other titles in this series include: Genghis Khan: 13th Century Mongolian Tyrant, Ivan the Terrible: Tsar of Death, Mary Tudor: Courageous Queen or Bloody Mary?, Henry VIII: Royal Beheader and Hannibal: Rome's Worst Nightmare.

Ages 12 and up
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Activity: Sink your teeth into a pastry that shares it’s geographic origins with Dracula (though this luscious snack is now associated with Hungary). Rest assured, good things have come out of Transylvania! Here is the recipe for Chimney Cakes. I found it at a National Geographic Travel blog.

A Year in the Life of a Peasant

If you ever think to yourself, "I wonder what life was like for the Medieval peasant?" then I highly recommend that you pick up a copy of Till Year's Good End by W. Nikola-Lisa. Each spread is devoted to the work accomplished in a given month, starting with January. I adore this book. The illustrations are wonderful. Obviously their creator, Christopher Manson, was inspired by medieval woodcuts. As you turn the book's pages you realize that he has captured the essence of the changing seasons. The first person verses for each month are pleasing to read...

MARCH: I till the earth first sign of spring. And sow good seed while blackbirds sing.

Just enough additional explanations are included. Your child will gain insight into the tenant farmer arrangement and realize just how long the peasant chore list was: collect firewood, repair bridges, clear roads and ditches, maintain buildings, repair nets, make harnesses, sharpen knives and axes, fit handles on scythes and sickles, make reed mats and baskets, carve wooden spoons, platters and bowls, spin flax and wool into thread, make clothes, make candles, make ropes, mend fences, feed the livestock, plow, plant, prune, build wattle-and-daub buildings with thatched roofs, sheer the sheep, tend the beehives, mow and bundle the hay, weed, harvest the crops, mine the salt, grind the flour, bake the bread, clean the privy, slaughter the livestock, smoke the meat, pick the fruit and make the wine.

Sure makes a "clean your room" request seem easily surmountable.

Ages 6-9

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Activity: Use this 15th Century recipe to make some gingerbread.