Book Review: We Gather Together

Title: We Gather Together: Celebrating the Harvest Season
Author: Wendy Pfeffer
Illustrator: Linda Bleck
Age Suitability: 4 to 8

I wanted a book that would be suitable to mark the beginning of autumn and the harvest without being too new agey, and that is exactly what I got.

We Gather Together begins by talking about preparations for winter, followed by an explanation of the autumn equinox, and a brief history of the origins crop-growing. This is followed by a section on different harvest festivals around the world, ranging from the Jewish Sukkot to Thanksgiving. At the end is a section with equinox facts and a few activities. The illustrations are bright and clear, and the text a good length to read in one session. The scientific activities would work well for a school aged child.

All in all a nice book, and one I can see us using regularly in September once Little Cherub is a year or two older. The only slight downside from my perspective is that some of the content is a bit American oriented ... which is fair enough, as the book is American, but we have blackberries and hedgehogs rather than cranberries and chipmunks, for example, so can't identify with some of the text the way an American reader would.