Pilgrims

Magic Tree House Fact Tracker #13

by Mary Pope Osborne, Natalie Pope Boyce, Sal Murdocca (Illustrator)

Learn the true story of Thanksgiving with the #1 bestselling chapter book series of all time, Magic Tree House! Track the facts with Jack and Annie in this nonfiction companion to Magic Tree House #27: Thanksgiving on Thursday !

When Jack and Annie got back from their adventure in Magic Tree House #27: Thanksgiving on Thursday , they had lots of questions. What was it like to sail on the Mayflower? Why did the Pilgrims choose Plymouth? How did they survive in their new home? What did they really eat at the first Thanksgiving? Find out the answers to these questions and more as Jack and Annie track the facts.

Filled with up-to-date information, photos, illustrations, and fun tidbits from Jack and Annie, the Magic Tree House Fact Trackers are the perfect way for kids to find out more about the topics they discovered in their favorite Magic Tree House adventures. And teachers can use Fact Trackers alongside their Magic Tree House fiction companions to meet common core text pairing needs.

Did you know that there's a Magic Tree House book for every kid?

Magic Tree Adventures with Jack and Annie, perfect for readers who are just beginning chapter books
Merlin More challenging adventures for the experienced reader
Super A longer and more dangerous adventure
Fact Nonfiction companions to your favorite Magic Tree House adventures

Have more fun with Jack and Annie at MagicTreeHouse.com!

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Childrens, Thanksgiving, American History, Historical, Chapter Books

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Mary Pope Osborne is an American author of children's books and audiobook narrator. She is best known as the author of the Magic Tree House series, which as of 2017 sold more than 134 million copies worldwide. Both the series and Osborne have won awards, including for Osborne's charitable efforts at promoting children's literacy. One of four children, Osborne moved around in her childhood before attending the University of North Carolina. Following college, Osborne traveled before moving to New York City. She somewhat spontaneously began to write, and her first book was published in 1982. She went on to write a variety of other children's and young adult books before starting the Magic Tree House series in 1992. Osborne's sister Natalie Pope Boyce has written several compendium books to the Magic Tree House series, sometimes with Osborne's husband Will Osborne.

Reviews

[Cheryl]

Cute format, but not the best.

This book seemed pretty biased towards the pilgrims. You would think this would make sense since this IS about pilgrims, but when it comes to a non fiction book, there's a duty to explain all sides to history - whether it's a kid's book or not.

The treatment of Native Americans and the treatment of women and children was pretty bad, and this book just barely skimmed over that surface. This was an awful time and an awful lot of hard work, and this book did not do a good job of making that clear.

[Rod Brown]

A little dive into the historical facts behind the Magic Tree House book, Thanksgiving on Thursday. My wife and I bought a bunch of these for our daughter at one point since she liked Jack and Annie so much, but the books never really got read to any degree. There are lots of pictures to break it up, but the heart of it is still fairly bland text that is not centered on Jack and Annie, who just appear as floating heads spouting trivia or asides.


FOR REFERENCE:

Contents: Dear Readers -- 1. Pilgrims Set Sail -- 2. The New World -- 3. The Wampanoag -- 4. Hard Times -- 5. A Big Old Feast -- 6. Plymouth Grows -- 7. The Future -- Doing More Research -- Index

[Alex]

I rated this book 3.5 🌟. I enjoyed this book because it told me about pilgrims😆. I did not like this book because it was kind of short😞. The rest of the book was good😎😶😐.

[Crain Taylor]

This Magic Tree House "Fact Tracker" Research Guide is an awesome resource for elementary age students. It tells the story of the Pilgrims from the boarding of the Mayflower in 1620, to 1661, when the Mayflower sailed back to England (with no pilgrims on board). It focuses on the lifestyle of the Pilgrims, but tells a lot about the Native Americans they interacted with and their lifestyles as well. I like this book because it gives a lot of information that students of any age can learn from (I even learned a lot from it!). It delivers the information in a way that is accessible to young readers, and that is entertaining to read. I really like how the book includes definitions for words that young readers may not be familiar with.

This book would be a great independent or shared reading for an elementary classroom that is studying Pilgrims and/or Native Americans. It could also be used when studying the non-fiction/informational text genre. This book would be a great resource for learning and practicing research as well as the back of the book has tips for students who want to do additional research. Although Magic Tree House books are typically more appropriate for younger grades, this Research Guide is great and very useful for the upper grades as well.

[Marya]

Once again, Mary Pop Osborne has taken on a politically charged topic and managed to find the right balance between truth and simplicity. She covers the traditional short-hand Thanksgiving narrative that gets put on Hallmark cards and school displays with plenty of historical facts. But unlike the narrative I was introduced to as a child, Pope makes sure the ugly parts are there too. When Squanto is introduced, he's introduced as a Native American who can speak English...because he had been kidnapped by an English captain and sold into slavery in Spain. He's hanging with the Pilgrims because by the time he was able to return to his homeland, he found that everyone in his village was dead. It's incredibly sad, but also stated so simply that it would be almost impossible for the younger reader to miss. Well done!

[Kate]

This is the first nonfiction companion we've read in the magic Treehouse series and I was impressed. It covers a lot of material. The writing is accessible. It doesn't gloss over the uglier facts, but is age appropriate. It also treats the readers as scholars pointing out errors in historical representations of the first Thanksgiving and listing additional ways to study the topic. We'll be looking into more of these.

[Angela]

I actually learned a lot about pilgrims. I learned what the children pilgrims did, I learned what they did, and what they wore. It was a great book. I hope to read another book just like that. It was really exciting. I really enjoyed reading it. And I also learned what it meant to them having them leave their homes. I give this book four stars. It really was a amazing story about the pilgrims.

[Sebin]

In this book, Annie and Jack are given the opportunity to travel back in time where they meet Indians and Pilgrims as well as gain an understanding of the difficult life during that period. I would use this book to incorporate literature with social studies as well as the holiday, Thanksgiving!

[Daniel]

milking is a nice way to get butter.

[Juliej]

This was a great book for my 3rd grader. Not too much information, not too juvenile. Just right.

[BigBrother]

The pilgrims research guide was very good. the book was about the pilgrims from the year 1620-1691. One of the most interesting thing that i learned was how they built houses.

[Autumn Rushing]

This one was ok

[Brandie Williams]

This was a great simplified introduction to the pilgrim story and the New England settlements. I really enjoyed reading about it and found the inclusion of the Native American components of the story adequate and refreshing. I wish there had been more detailed timeline to really ground the reader in when specific things were happening. This will be perfect for my rising 2nd grader to read independently as a primer for learning about early American history in our homeschool next year. It was very interesting nonfiction.. presented in an engaging way forming readers

[Jenny Clark]

Again, a quick overview of pilgrims- why they came to America, what they faced the first year, and some of their names. It does have a good list of books, museums, websites and dvds to use to get more information as well. This is the fact tracker for Thanksgiving on Thursday

[Tara]

I think this book does a good job of dealing with the complicated relationship that the pilgrims had with the Native Americans. I also like how it dispels some of the myths surrounding Thanksgiving. It’s very interesting.

[Alissa Faust]

This was a great book! There were many illustrations as well as photos of famous paintings. There is also a section at the back to help you do further research through books, videos, or the internet.

[Colin]

A Fact Tracker about the Pilgrims (with some space also given for the Wampanoag) and the Plymouth Colony, accompanying the Magic Tree House # 27, "Thanksgiving on Thursday." Having lived for 6 years in Plymouth, I can say this is not a bad introduction for kids.

[Claire Holmes]

proof that you can teach kids about people stealing indigenous land and intentionally/accidentally killing each other without ruining their childhoods. love to see it. love the way research skills are taught at the start/end. way to go mary.

[Vivienne]

A good book to read during the Thanksgiving holidays. It inspired my 11-year old granddaughter to write a play for our Thanksgiving Day gathering.

[Laurel Pate]

Love the determination and grit, more than half of them died but the ones that survived didn't want to go back to England. Absolutely!!!

[Calvin]

I learned about Squanto, the Native American, who helped the pilgrims plant crops and that was part of the first thanksgiving.

[Jen]

We read this along with Thanksgiving on Thursday for a one week unit study and really enjoyed both. I like the format of these books, informative but easy to read.

[Jannett Soto]

Ready

[Jan Beltis]

I learned quite a bit from this little book. I’m glad I read it before giving it to my 8 year old granddaughter. I’m anxious for her to read it so we can talk about it.

[T]

This was a very interesting little book. It seems to be a companion book to one of the magic treehouse books. I did learn a number of things about the Pilgrims Of which I was not aware.

[Alex]

I read this solely because I needed some Thanksgiving-themed books, but this was actually really interesting!

[Kim]

My son and I read this over Thanksgiving break. We both enjoyed the book and the many facts and pictures throughout.

[Heather]

Gives the brief history of the pilgrims and Plymouth.

[Peter]

In 2005, Mary Pope Osborne and her sister Natalie Pope Boyce published the Magic Tree House Fact Trackers entitled Pilgrims. This book is a nonfiction research guide to the book entitled Thanksgiving on Thursday by Mary Pope Osborne, which was published in 2002. Osborne’s and Boyce’s book is an introduction to the world of pilgrims of Massachusetts. The book does have one chapter on the Wampanoag people, but I agree with the Goodreads reviewer named Cheryl that the book could have done a better job when dealing with the Wampanoag people and maybe some of the more complex elements of the story of the pilgrims. The book is maybe a little too celebratory about the pilgrims in a way that may date the book (Osborne and Boyce 106-107). The book is for young readers. The book has wonderful black-and-white illustrations. The book has wonderful black-and-white photographs. The illustrator for this book was Sal Murdocca. Similar to the other books in the Magic Tree House Fact Trackers series, the book has a section on how to do more research for young readers. The book has an index and includes photo credits. The book had a historical consultant and an educational consultant. The historical consultant was the research manager at Pilmoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Osborne’s and Boyce’s book on the Pilgrims is an introduction to Pilgrims that is a little dated. I found the Goodreads review by Cheryl helpful in writing this ‘review.’

[Kathy Roderer]

This 120 page easy chapter book is from the Magic Tree House Research Guide series and is intended as a nonfiction companion to the fictional book, Thanksgiving on Thursday. It has seven chapters, including a detailed chapter on the Wampanoag, which gives much background information on this tribe of Native Americans that had been in North America already for thousands of years. Illustrations are black and white drawings. Charts and diagrams are included, for example labeled drawings of the inside of the Mayflower, as well as the inside of a Pilgrim home. Helpful clarifications of technical terms, new vocabulary, and interesting extra facts are given in the margins. An index and bibliography is included in the back of the book. The best part about this book, I think, is that it is written at about mid-third grade level, so the reading level is not difficult, but it contains as much factual information.