Sarah Gives Thanks: How Thanksgiving Became a National Holiday

By Mike Allegra and David Gardner

2013 Amelia Bloomer List

During the nineteenth century, Sarah Josepha Hale dedicated her life to making Thanksgiving a national holiday, all while raising a family and becoming a groundbreaking writer and women's magazine editor. Sarah Hale's inspiring story, accompanied by luscious watercolor illustrations, tells the tale of one woman who wouldn't take no for an answer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
• Release date: Sep 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9780807572405

Mike Allegra

Mike Allegra is a journalist, playwright, and magazine editor. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and son. On Thanksgiving, he always asks for the drumstick.

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Reviews for Sarah Gives Thanks

[jennybeast · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm so impressed -- a thanksgiving book that doesn't wander into culturally insensitive territory, and instead celebrates the strong willed and talented woman who got it declared a national holiday. Great job, I say! Good illustrations, a solid story and emotional depth. Not what we have come to expect from the run of the mill picture book.

[abigailadams26 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Author Mike Allegra and illustrator David Gardner join forces in this engaging work of picture-book history, tracing how 19th-century author, editor and opinion-maker Sarah Josepha Hale campaigned for three decades to have Thanksgiving made a national holiday. A deeply personal subject for her, Thanksgiving struck Sarah as an opportunity for her fellow citizens to take stock, and to realize, even in the midst of tragedy, that they still had much to be thankful for. Her letter campaign eventually succeeded, and Abraham Lincoln, in the middle of the Civil War, made Thanksgiving the national holiday that Sarah felt it should be...Published in 2012, Sarah Gives Thanks: How Thanksgiving Became a National Holiday covers much of the same ground as Laurie Halse Anderson's Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving, published a decade earlier. That said, the narrative here is engaging, and captures the personal dimension of Hale's struggle, after her husband died and she had five children to raise on her own. It also offers a more truthful depiction of the important role that religion played in Sarah Josepha Hale's life, than the earlier book, opening with a post-funeral prayer, and mentioning that one of the reasons Hale favored Thanksgiving was that it would increase religious feeling in her fellow citizens. The artwork from David Gardner is appealing, and I found that I preferred it to the illustrations of Matt Faulkner, who worked on Thank You Sarah. All in all, a solidly engaging and informative book, recommended to picture-book readers looking for stories about the history of Thanksgiving.