The Mayflower

Title: The Mayflower
Author: Mark Greenwood
Major Themes: Mayflower, Pilgrims
Synopsis: With paintings and brief text, the story of the Pilgrim’s voyage to America is told for young children.

I love the variety of picture books that are available now which tell stories from history. Some topics are easier to find picture books for than others. Right now we’re learning about the Pilgrims and the Mayflower, and I was able to find several nice picture books on a website I subscribe to. We enjoyed reading The Mayflower a few days ago. We had already read a book for middle-grades about this voyage and the first few years in America, so it was nice to find illustrations to go along with the story for the younger children.

The story is told very briefly for young children. There are a couple of pages which tell why the people who would become known as Pilgrims left England and then Holland, and then the story of the voyage is told. After a few more pages about the hardships of the winter and the coming of Squanto in the spring to help the struggling newcomers to Plymouth, the story is wrapped up with a page about the First Thanksgiving. You won’t learn anything new from this book, but it is a great way to introduce the Pilgrims to little people, or, as we used it, to illustrate the stories in other books.

The pictures are nice paintings. They are not extremely realistic, but neither are they stylized. They do vividly show the crowded conditions on board the Mayflower—we were startled to discover somewhere that the boat was about the size of our house!

No warnings!