Thomas Jefferson's Feast

This book (and many others like it) have been a great find for my family. I am homeschooling a second-grader and these books have been the key to getting him interested in reading, and have become the foundation of our reading curriculum this year. Since we are studying American history, they are relevant, fun, and are about topics to which he can relate. His interest in both reading and history has increased, and he can't wait to get to the next book. At this point level 3 readers are easy for him, level 4 readers are just hard enough to be a challenge (but not too much) and level 5 readers will be tackled in the spring. Thomas Jefferson's Feast is great because you get to know the everyday T.J. and things that he liked. We found out that he was responsible for introducing things to this continent that we really love such as tomatoes and macaroni and cheese. My son loved the story. This book is great paired up with "A Prairie Dog for the President" about the Lewis and Clark expedition.

All of the books in this series take one personality trait of a famous person and talk about it. The trait they chose for Jefferson was that he liked to eat. The fact that the "feast" happened over several parties as opposed to one meal is not an important enough piece of "fiction" to justify saying that the book is bad. The book does not talk about Slavery. That is covered in the book about Harriett Tubman, which is also a very good book. This is a Step Into Reading book, not a complete history of Thomas Jefferson book. Although the reading level is 2nd - 4th grade, the content is PreK - 1st.

This is a wonderful children's book about our third president (US). It provides a fun story about how he loved to read and write and eat! He brought foods back from France that weren't popular here and made them famous. Jefferson got people to finally try love apples or tomatos, thought to be poisonous here in the US, but eaten often in France.