The Pilgrims, also known as the Pilgrim Fathers, were the English settlers who came to North America on the Mayflower and established the Plymouth Colony in what is today Plymouth, Massachusetts, named after the final departure port of Plymouth, Devon. Their leadership came from the religious congregations of Brownists, or Separatist Puritans, who had fled religious persecution in England for the tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands.
A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. With the narrative told primarily through text, they are distinct from comics, which do so primarily through sequential images. The images in picture books can be produced in a range of media, such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolor, and pencil. Picture books often serve as pedagogical resources, aiding with children's language development or understanding of the world.
The Randolph Caldecott Medal, frequently shortened to just the Caldecott, annually recognizes the preceding year's "most distinguished American picture book for children". It is awarded to the illustrator by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). The Caldecott and Newbery Medals are considered the most prestigious American children's book awards. Beside the Caldecott Medal, the committee awards a variable number of citations to runners-up they deem worthy, called the Caldecott Honor or Caldecott Honor Books.
Plymouth Colony was, from 1620 to 1691, the first permanent English colony in New England and the second permanent English colony in North America, after the Jamestown Colony. It was first settled by the passengers on the Mayflower, at a location that had previously been surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement served as the capital of the colony and developed as the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. At its height, Plymouth Colony occupied most of the southeastern portion of Massachusetts. Many of the people and events surrounding Plymouth Colony have become part of American folklore, including the American tradition of Thanksgiving and the monument of Plymouth Rock.
William Bradford was an English Puritan separatist originally from the West Riding of Yorkshire in Northern England. He moved to Leiden in Holland in order to escape persecution from King James I of England, and then emigrated to the Plymouth Colony on the Mayflower in 1620. He was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact and went on to serve as Governor of the Plymouth Colony intermittently for about 30 years between 1621 and 1657. He served as a commissioner of the United Colonies of New England on multiple occasions and served twice as president. His journal Of Plymouth Plantation covered the years from 1620 to 1646 in Plymouth.
Tisquantum, more commonly known as Squanto Sam, was a member of the Patuxet tribe best known for being an early liaison between the Native American population in Southern New England and the Mayflower Pilgrims who made their settlement at the site of Tisquantum's former summer village. The Patuxet tribe had lived on the western coast of Cape Cod Bay, but they were wiped out by an epidemic infection, likely brought by previous European explorers.
Taro Yashima was a Japanese-American artist and children's book author. He immigrated to the United States in 1939 and assisted the U.S. war effort.
Marcia Joan Brown was an American writer and illustrator of more than 30 children's books. She has won three annual Caldecott Medals from the American Library Association, and three Caldecott Medal honors as an illustrator, recognizing the year's best U.S. picture book illustration, and the ALA's Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal in 1992 for her career contribution to children's literature. Many of her titles have been published in translation, including Afrikaans, German, Japanese, Spanish and Xhosa-Bantu editions. Brown is known as one of the most honored illustrators in children's literature.
Katherine Milhous (1894–1977) was an American artist, illustrator, and writer. She is known best as the author and illustrator of The Egg Tree, which won the 1951 Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration. Born into a Quaker family active in the printing industry in Philadelphia, Milhous is also known for her graphic designs for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Her work has been exhibited at the 1939 New York World's Fair and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Maud Fuller Petersham and Miska Petersham were American writers and illustrators who helped set the direction for illustrated children's books that followed. The Petershams worked closely with such pioneering children's book editors Louise Seaman Bechtel and May Massee, and with such innovative printers as Charles Stringer and William Glaser. They worked as a seamless partnership for more than five decades. Both prolific and versatile, they produced illustrations for more than 120 trade and textbooks, anthologies, and picture books. Of the 50 books they both wrote and illustrated, many were recognized with important awards or critical acclaim. They are known for technical excellence, exuberant color, and the introduction of international folk and modernist themes.
Noah's Ark is a children's picture book written and illustrated by Peter Spier, first published by Doubleday in 1977. The text includes Spier's translation of "The Flood" by Jacobus Revius, a 17th-century poem telling the Bible story of Noah's Ark. According to Kirkus Reviews, the poem comprises sixty three-syllable lines such as "Pair by pair". "Without revising or even enlarging on the old story, Spier fills it in, delightfully." In a retrospective essay about the Caldecott Medal-winning books from 1976 to 1985, Barbara Bader described the book as "at once elaborate and feeble" and Revius' poem as "neither particularly suited to children nor eloquent in itself."
Alice Dalgliesh was a naturalized American writer and publisher who wrote more than 40 fiction and non-fiction books, mainly for children. She has been called "a pioneer in the field of children's historical fiction". Three of her books were runners-up for the annual Newbery Medal, the partly autobiographical The Silver Pencil, The Bears on Hemlock Mountain, and The Courage of Sarah Noble, which was also named to the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list.
Helen Sewell was an American illustrator and writer of children's books. She was a runner-up for the 1955 Caldecott Medal as illustrator of The Thanksgiving Story by Alice Dalgliesh and she illustrated several novels that were runners-up for the Newbery Medal.
Mayflower was an English ship that transported a group of English families, known today as the Pilgrims, from England to the New World in 1620. After a grueling 10 weeks at sea, Mayflower, with 102 passengers and a crew of about 30, reached America, dropping anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on November 21 [O.S. November 11], 1620.
The New England Colonies of British America included Connecticut Colony, the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony, and the Province of New Hampshire, as well as a few smaller short-lived colonies. The New England colonies were part of the Thirteen Colonies and eventually became five of the six states in New England, with Plymouth Colony absorbed into Massachusetts and Maine separating from it. Captain John Smith's 1616 work A Description of New England first applied the term "New England" to the coastal lands from Long Island Sound to Newfoundland.
The Patuxet were a Native American band of the Wampanoag tribal confederation. They lived primarily in and around modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, and were among the first Native Americans encountered by European settlers in the region in the early 17th century. Most of the population subsequently died of epidemic infectious diseases. The last of the Patuxet – an individual named Tisquantum, who played an important role in the survival of the Pilgrim colony at Plymouth – died in 1622.
Olivia is a fictional pig character in a series of children's picture books written and illustrated by Ian Falconer, the first entry of which was published in 2000. An American-British-Irish computer animated television series of the same name inspired by the character premiered in 2009.
The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh is the story of a young girl who travels with her father into Connecticut during the early 18th century, and her experiences with the native Schaghticoke. It was published in 1954 and received a Newbery Honor Award.
Hildegard Woodward was the author and illustrator of many children's books, two of which were awarded a Caldecott Honor. Woodward's art was not restricted to children's books; her portfolio includes numerous works of fiction and humor for adults. Although most noted for her watercolor illustrations, she painted in oil and was a children's portrait artist.
Saints & Strangers is an American drama television two-part miniseries. It tells the story of the Mayflower voyage and chronicles the Pilgrims' first year in America and the first Thanksgiving in 1621. The program aired on the National Geographic Channel and premiered on November 22, 2015.
