← The Almanac

This Week · Gratitude · Thanksgiving

Gratitude: if you could thank one person, who?

For littler ones: If you could say a big thank you to just one person, who would it be?

Gratitude — If you could thank one person, who?

This week we're wondering about gratitude — but the narrow kind, not the wide kind. Not everything you're thankful for. Just one person. With Thanksgiving coming, it's a good one to carry around the table, because the answer is rarely the one you'd expect, and everyone at your house will land somewhere different.

This week's stories

American

The First Thanksgiving

The autumn of 1621, when the Wampanoag — who had every reason to keep their distance from the newcomers — taught them what would grow in that ground and shared the harvest that followed.

American

Sarah Hale's Seventeen Letters

A writer who decided the country needed one whole day for saying thank you, and wrote to president after president for seventeen years until Lincoln finally said yes.

Talk about it

  • If you could really thank one person — just one — who comes to mind, and what did they do?
  • Sarah Hale wrote letters for seventeen years before anyone said yes. What do you think kept her writing?
  • Has someone ever helped you when you didn't even ask? Have you ever told them?

A new question every week.

Listen together in the app — short audio stories for kids 4–10, at bedtime, on the drive, in the drop-off line.

Join the family

Get the stories that built America in your inbox

New stories, the weekly Almanac, and family read-aloud picks. No spam — unsubscribe anytime.