Notes:
Maybe these books appeal to some kids but they don' fit with our unschooling ways -- too much like encyclopedias and the q&a thing gets annoying.

This is part of a fun series about the United States. These books are written as answers to questions, each question in the table of contents, so a child can easily look it up without having to read through the entire book. The illustrations are cute, even though the answers to some of the questions are a little grim.

This book served the purpose of helping some fourth graders learn more about the history behind the first Thanksgiving, but there was little to hold their interest.

It's a little bit boring

Informative and funny book for grades 2-5. My kids enjoyed it and learned quite a bit.

This book answer many frequently asked questions about the Mayflower. It had a lot of great general information that could spark students interest about a social studies unit. I personal liked the picture of the Mayflower, and how they broke down the parts of the boat. It would be fun for students to create their own Mayflower ship, and write a story about the voyage.

I love this series of books. I'll probably reread this one with my class next month.

Very useful for teaching grade 3 learners about the settlers who sailed on the Mayflower and general conditions at that time.

This book is a book that could be easily spread out to multiple days before Thanksgiving. It can be also a be a pre-writing activity book for students to ask questions, as the book is written with those questions in mind, and tries so answer all of them. I like how the beginning of the book starts with a cutout of the boat, and it explains what that view point means. This book will build a lot of content knowledge and connect with prior background knowledge on the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving. The pictures are drawn in a cartoon fashion, with the emotions being exaggerated to match the text.

Very thoroughly written book about the daily lives of Pilgrims, easy for elementary kids to understand.

This was a surprise favorite from our thanksgiving books. I did not think a straight read through would work well for my not-quite-four year old because the content is long and dense and she doesn’t have much historical background knowledge. Instead, I gave her a brief overview of the mayflower and the pilgrims and then we read the questions together. She decided which questions she wanted answered and we read just those parts. She requested the book many times and we ended up reading most, of not all, of the sections. Note that it does use the term “Indians” rather than “native Americans.”

Good overview of the Pilgrims for young readers. Perfect for autumn.