I love reading holiday books to my children to help them prepare and get excited. I just started creating this list of children’s Thanksgiving books. The books on this list focus on the holiday featuring traditions and a little history. A few are about giving thanks and having gratitude. A lot of popular Thanksgiving picture books have a character like a turkey or a pilgrim but have nothing else to do with the holiday. I didn’t include those. Over time, this list will continue to grow as I find more books that pass my criteria and we enjoy.

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The Night Before Thanksgiving

The books in this series always follow the same rhyme pattern as The Night Before Christmas. This cute book features pies, the parade, relatives arriving, cousins playing, and all the traditional foods.

Thanksgiving Is . . .

This book covers a brief history of historical harvest celebrations. Then it discusses pilgrims in easy-to-understand language plus a few facts about the first Thanksgiving. Finally, it covers how we celebrate now.

Let’s Celebrate Thanksgiving

Jokes are scattered throughout the historical facts in this book. It’s definitely one of the more detailed of the books and there is a lot of text. The book explains who the pilgrims were and the voyage over from Europe. It dispels popular beliefs about pilgrims such as wearing black and white clothing.

Thank You, Thanksgiving

A little girl is thankful for things like the park and pie with whipped cream. It’s a very basic book about gratitude.

The 12 Days of Thanksgiving

Similar to the other books in this series, this book follows the tune of the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. For each day, a different component of Thanksgiving is written about such as leaves, turkeys, apples, cousins giggling, etc.

Thanks for Thanksgiving

I love the illustrations in this Thanksgiving book. It’s an easy read with a sentence per page. The sentences describe something they are thankful for and there are rhymes throughout the book. For example, they are thankful for fall, play dates, umbrellas, etc. It is the perfect book to read before starting the thankful turkey craft with your kids.

Peyton Picks the Perfect Pie

I’m torn on this one. This book focuses a lot on being picky when it comes to food. I don’t necessarily want to emphasize being picky before a holiday. On the other hand, the book does a good job of the parents not interferring with what the child chooses to eat and she does end up trying a couple of new foods and liking them.

In the story, the main character’s parents are hosting Thanksgiving. Each guest brings a different kind of pie. The types of pies (lemon chess pie, ruffled milk pie, millionaire pie, etc) are discussed but only the recipe for apple pie is included in the back. The book does a great job of showing a Thanksgiving in which family and friends attend.

LLama Llama Gives Thanks

We love the Llama Llama books. This Thanksgiving story is a very basic board book with only a few words on each page. The rhyming phrases include fall leaves, pumpkin pie, giving thanks, and more.

Keepunumuk

This book is from the Native American point of view. Native Americans see ships arriving and people who are coming to settle and stay. The newcomers are hungry and don’t know how to grow food in this new land.

The Native Americans show the settlers how to plant squash and beans. The settlers prepare a feast for themselves and the Native Americans that lasts three days. It’s now called Thanksgiving and Native Americans call it a day of mourning. The book lists food most likely eaten at the feast such as lobster, pumpkins, deer, etc.

Giving Thanks

This book starts with gratitude and how to say the word in different languages. Then the history of how Thanksgiving became a national holiday in our country is explained. Also, the history behind why presidents pardon turkeys is given. 

Over the years new traditions have been added to Thanksgiving such as football and parades. This book does not go into the history of pilgrims and Native Americans.

This book has a good amount of detail and I would save it for more school-aged children.

I Am Thankful

In November fall colors appear and family and friends gather for Thanksgiving. We share food and kindness to show we care. People make pies and cards, visit pumpkin patches, and watch football. This book is very simple and cute.

Happy Thanksgiving, Biscuit!

A lovable book in the Biscuit series but it does have flaps that lift that might not hold up with babies/young toddlers.

This book focuses on how we celebrate Thanksgiving. Decorations are put up, we make pumpkin pie and share with family and friends. It emphasizes remembering everything we are thankful for.

Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks

An easy, cute book with about one sentence per page. It features eating turkey and pie but it mostly focuses on giving thanks for all the things that make us happy.

Looking for more book recommendations? Check out my Children’s Books About Fall post.