Thanksgiving with Me - Hardcover

Author Bio
Margaret Willey is the author of many young adult novels, including the ALA Best Books The Bigger Book of Lydia and Finding David Delores. She lives in Grand Haven, Michigan.

Illustrator BioLloyd Bloom is the award-winning illustrator of numerous children's books, including Like Jake and Me and Yonder. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

In high contrast to the rollicking relatives in Cynthia Rylant's The Relatives Came (1985), this gentle ballad addresses a young girl's quiet anticipation of Thanksgiving Day as she awaits the arrival of her uncles - her mother's six brothers. Mother and daughter curl up together and wistfully gaze out the window and down the road, savoring fond memories of a bygone childhood in a house by the sea. The two imagine the feast and the good times about to be had. ``Oh the kitchen will quake, the oven will roar, the music will flow from window and door!'' Each farmer uncle is defined by a single characteristic - strong or tall, warbling or near-sighted. The lanky, Abe-Lincolnish uncles arrive at last and the promise of singing and raising the planks is certain to be fulfilled. Umbered hillsides and shredded-wheat haystacks boast a pre-industrial agrarian setting matching the slower pace of this reminiscence, calling to mind such classics as Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House (1943), and offering a glimpse of a pastoral, biscuits-and-gravy life among solid farm folk. (Picture book. 4-7) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.