It seems fitting to firstly thank Dimitry for his cute brief video inspired by The Thanksgiving Dinner Platter! Randa Handler sets her First Read children’s book in 1941, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt has just made Thanksgiving a national holiday in the United States. Takari ‘s family is coming from near and far to celebrate together. While helping her mother prepare Thanksgiving dinner eight-year-old Takari breaks a platter that belonged to her Japanese grandmother. The platter had been an important part of her father’s family heritage, used traditionally by Takari’s grandmother to serve chestnut rice on the Japanese day of thanksgiving. Angry, her mother shoos her away, telling her to go visit her best friend, Little Sparrow, whose family is Native American. He is making a special cornbread just like the one served at the first Thanksgiving dinner eaten by the pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians at Plymouth Plantation. In the process, Takari learns about the history of the holiday and that a similar day of gratitude, when people give thanks for their blessings, exists in many countries including in her father’s homeland, Japan.

Boy Who Spoke to God

www.amazon.com/author/randahandler

In Randa Handler’s #folktale, Boy Who Spoke to God, four tribes; #Greeks, #Chinese, #Native American Mayans and #African Zulus are unable to agree on their ideas about God and religious celebrations. They live together harmoniously most of the year, combining aspects of each of their cultures to make their kingdom strong and prosperous, suddenly become divisive when religious holidays approach. During such times, they cannot agree on the timing or manner of religious traditions, and they each have their own god who looks and dresses as they do. When Niko, a young Greek boy, has several dreams of God, each tribe interprets the various details of his dreams according to its own view of God, further emphasizing the tribes’ differences in beliefs. Subsequently Niko is shunned for having created even more disharmony and for lying to the tribes, or so they think, as no one believes he dreamed of God. To clear up all the confusion and arrive at the truth, Niko begs God to manifest in one final dream. This time God shows him that the tribes’ beliefs are actually different expressions of the same god. Niko concludes that God is like colorless and formless iridescent light and the beliefs of all tribes about their gods are correct as these gods are like colors of the rainbow that derive from white light. In Randa Handler’s fun animal tale, If I Were King, one rainy day in the jungle, unlikely friends—Zebra, Lion, Leopard, Giraffe, Monkey, Elephant and Chameleon—gather to lament how similar their daily activities are. Zebra’s imagination and fun-loving nature convinces the other animals to escape their mundane lives by pretending they are king. Playing this game teaches them about their many differences and, more importantly, their own likes and dislikes. Zebra, upon discovering this information, realizes that it’s okay not to always want to play with other zebras as long as she listens to her inner voice and yields when it warns her of dangers and cautions her to maintain clear boundaries. Immediately she learns that Lion can stop being her friend when he’s angry or hungry. In Randa Handler’s Flag Day Camping, Takari & Little Sparrow series, Book 1: Takari, a Japanese American eight year old girl and her best friend, Little Sparrow, a Native American boy go camping, embrace each other’s differences while learning about Flag Day, flag folding and why we need to follow rules even though we’re free.