Free Thanksgiving on Thursday by Mary Pope Osborne

Teachers and librarians love
Magic Tree House ® books, too!
    Thank you for opening faraway places and times to my class through your books. They have given me the chance to bring in additional books, materials, and videos to share with the class.
—J. Cameron
    It excites me to see how involved [my fourth-grade reading class] is in your books … I would do anything to get my students more involved, and this has done it.
—C. Rutz
    I discovered your books last year … WOW! Our students have gone crazy over them. I can’t order enough copies! … Thanks for contributing so much to children’s literature!
—C. Kendziora
    I first came across your Magic Tree House series when my son brought one home … I have since introduced this great series to my class. They have absolutely fallen in love with these books! … My students are now asking me for more independent reading time to read them. Your stories have inspired even my most struggling readers.
—M. Payne
    I love how I can go beyond the [Magic Tree House] books and use them as springboards for other learning.
—R. Gale
    We have enjoyed your books all year long. We check your Web site to find new information. We pull our map down to find the areas where the adventures take place. My class always chimes in at key parts of the story. It feels good to hear my students ask for a book and cheer when a new book comes out.
—J. Korinek
    Our students have “Magic Tree House fever.” I can’t keep your books on the library shelf.
—J. Rafferty
    Your books truly invite children into the pleasure of reading. Thanks for such terrific work.
—S. Smith
    The children in the fourth grade even hide the [Magic Tree House] books in the library so that they will be able to find them when they are ready to check them out.
—K. Mortensen
    My Magic Tree House books are never on the bookshelf because they are always being read by my students. Thank you for creating such a wonderful series.
—K. Mahoney

Dear Readers,
    When I did research for Thanksgiving on Thursday , I learned something I hadn’t known before. I learned that what we generally think of as the first Thanksgiving—the 1621 feast with the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people of Plymouth Bay—was not a day set aside to give thanks. It was a three-day festival to celebrate a good harvest. During that time, the Pilgrims and Wampanoag shared many meals. Even so, we traditionally think of this harvest festival as the first Thanksgiving. More than two hundred years later, in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln designated the last Thursday in November as America’s national day of Thanksgiving.
    I love doing the research for Magic Tree House books because I always learn something new. I hope you’ll learn lots of new things, too, when you visit the “first Thanksgiving” with Jack and Annie.
    Â Â Â Â 
All my best,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 



Text copyright © 2002 by Mary Pope Osborne
Illustrations copyright © 2002 by Sal Murdocca
    All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
    www.randomhouse.com/magictreehouse
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Osborne, Mary Pope.
Thanksgiving on Thursday / by Mary Pope Osborne; illustrated by Sal Murdocca. — 1st ed. p. cm.—(Magic tree house; #27) “A stepping stone book.”
SUMMARY: Jack and Annie travel in their magic tree house to the year 1621, where they celebrate the first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians in the New Plymouth Colony.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89484-8
[1. Thanksgiving Day—Fiction. 2. Pilgrims (New Plymouth Colony)—Fiction. 3. Plymouth