Molly’s Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen, 1983.
Molly has been unhappy since her family moved to the smaller town of Winter Hill, New Jersey so that her father could get a better job. In New York City, there were other Jewish girls like her, and she didn’t feel so strange and out-of-place. The Winter Hollow girls don’t understand her at all and don’t like her. Molly’s family fled Russia to escape persecution, and they’ve only been living in America for about a year. Molly still has a Yiddish accent and doesn’t quite speak proper English yet. Molly is constantly teased about the way she talks and her unfamiliarity with American habits.
One girl in particular, Elizabeth, makes up rhymes to make fun of Molly, even following her home from school like a creepy stalker, to continue singing them at her. The other girls follow Elizabeth’s lead because they kind of admire her and because she is always giving them candy.
Then, one day, the girls’ teacher begins teaching them about Thanksgiving. Of course, Elizabeth makes a big deal about the fact that Molly has never heard about Thanksgiving before. But, Molly finds the story about the pilgrims interesting. The teacher says that for their Thanksgiving activity, instead of making paper turkeys like they usually do, the children are going to make clothespin dolls to look like American Indians and pilgrims, so they can create a scene like the first Thanksgiving.
When Molly gets home and explains the assignment to her mother, she has to tell her mother what a “pilgrim” is. She explains it by saying that they were people who came from across the ocean in search of religious freedom. Her mother understands that and offers to help Molly with the doll.
However, when Molly sees what her mother has done with the doll, she is worried. The doll is beautiful, but her mother has dressed the doll in the clothes of a Russian refugee, like Molly’s family, not in the traditional Puritan garb of the pilgrims. At first, Molly is sure that she’ll be teased more than ever at school when she shows up with a doll wearing the wrong clothes and that people will think that she’s stupid for not understanding how pilgrims dressed.
But, Molly’s mother is correct in pointing out that their family are modern pilgrims, coming to America for the same reasons that the original pilgrims did. Molly does get some teasing from Elizabeth (that’s not a surprise, since it’s Elizabeth, after all), but when the teacher asks Molly about the meaning of her doll, it leads everyone to a better understanding, both of the holiday and where Molly and her family fit in with their new country and its history.
Molly’s teacher points out that the holiday of Thanksgiving wasn’t entirely an original idea that the pilgrims invented all by themselves but that they took their inspiration from a much older Jewish tradition from the Old Testament. Human beings do not exist in a vacuum, and we all regularly take ideas that we’re exposed to and build on them in our own lives. Although Puritans were generally known for their belief in religious “purity” (hence, their name) and noted for their intolerance to different religions and beliefs, they also strongly believed in education, which frequently involves taking past ideas and knowledge and applying them toward new situations. Their Thanksgiving celebration was just an example of that, an older idea that they used for their own purpose, adapted to the lives of the people who adopted the tradition. It was their celebration, but not their sole intellectual property.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
There is also a sequel to this book called Make a Wish, Molly, in which Molly learns about birthday parties in the United States.
My Reaction and Additional Information
The book doesn’t mention it, but the word “pilgrim” itself is also much older than the early Puritan colonists in America. Before the development of the America colonies, it referred to any religious traveler on their way to a holy place, and many people still use it in that sense. A person on a pilgrimage could be just about anyone from anywhere going to anywhere else as long as the journey has spiritual significance. The Puritan colonists used that term for themselves to emphasize the reasons why they were seeking new homes in a new land. For them, it was a kind of pilgrimage to a place where they could start again. Molly’s family came to America in search of religious freedom, just as the Puritans did. Their journeys weren’t quite the same, but they shared a common purpose and ended up in the same place (more or less).
By showing the links between Molly and her family and the pilgrims, Molly’s mother and her teacher help the other students to understand that Molly really does fit in, that her being there makes sense, and that she has a place in their class and in their celebration of Thanksgiving.
This story was also made into a short film. I remember seeing it in school when I was a kid in the early 1990s. I checked on YouTube, and there are trailers posted for this film. One thing that I hadn’t remembered from when I was a kid was that the time period of the book was earlier than the film. In the film, the characters are shown to be contemporary with the time the film was made, but the style of dress of the girls in the book’s pictures and the things that Molly’s mother says about why the family left Russia indicate that the book probably takes place during the late 19th century or early 20th century, possibly around the same time as the events in the famous play/movie Fiddler on the Roof.
As a side note, if you’re wondering why the girl is named Molly, which doesn’t sound particularly Russian, Molly is typically a nickname for Mary and other, similar-sounding, related names. Molly’s mother also calls her Malkeleh, which may be her original name or perhaps another variant, if her original name was Malka, as another reviewer suggests.
In spite of the warning on that last site I linked to about reading a book with your child that may be covered in class, I say to go ahead and read it anyway. It’s hard to say what books may or may not be used in classes by individual teachers, and if your child’s teacher doesn’t happen to use this one, it’s still a good story. Perhaps just warn your child not to say something that would spoil the ending for their classmates who haven’t read it yet.
#3 Color War! by Marilyn Kaye, 1989.
The girls ask Miss Wade about the doll, and she says that she knows the one they mean, but she no longer has it. Her mother’s uncle was the captain of a ship and used to bring her presents from around the world. The doll, called Lady Vanderbilt, was very fancy, and Miss Wade describers her costume to the girls. However, she says that the doll disappeared after she rented her house out to a family one summer while she was traveling. She never found out what happened to the doll, but she assumed that the children of the family probably found her and either took her or broke her. Miss Wade said that she didn’t think that the doll was worth making a fuss about, so she never asked the family about it. The girls note that Miss Wade doesn’t seem to know anything about a precious jewel in the doll, but they decide not to say anything about it since Miss Wade doesn’t have the doll anymore.
The girls tell Miss Wade and their mothers about the doll, but when they try to ask the people in charge of the auction where the doll came from and who bought her, they learn that the woman who was in charge of organizing the toys has already left on vacation. The only clue that the girls have is that the woman who bought the doll left the auction in a red Jaguar.
The peddler did some odd jobs for the Preble family on their farm that winter, while the weather was too bad for him to travel. They named the doll 
Then, Phoebe’s father, who is the captain of a whaling ship, convinces his family to join him on a voyage. Life aboard ship turns out to be both exciting and perilous. One day, the ship catches fire, and the Preble family and all the crew abandon it. Hitty, once again, is unfortunately left behind. Although Hitty sees Phoebe gesture back at the ship and knows that Phoebe wants to return for her, it is too late for that.
Then, Thankful gets sick, and her parents decide that it might be time to send her home to the United States to stay with her grandparents. Thankful takes Hitty with her when she goes home to Philadelphia. Because Thankful’s early life was spent entirely in India, she has been unaccustomed to spending time with American girls her age, and she doesn’t know how to behave around the American children she meets when she first arrives in Philadelphia. When the some of these (still 19th century) American girls first meet Thankful and Hitty, they think that Thankful is strange and make fun of her for her unusual habits and the way she dresses, telling her that her doll is ugly, too. Hitty has to admit that she isn’t as fancy as the other girls’ dolls. Thankful is so embarrassed by what the other girls say that she decides to hide Hitty in a sofa. After that, the sofa is taken up to an attic for storage, so Hitty remains hidden for a number of years.
During her time in the attic, Hitty resents Thankful for abandoning her, in spite of all the charitable talk of her missionary parents. However, when Thankful is grown, Hitty is finally found by one of Thankful’s younger cousins, Clarissa Pryce, who really appreciates her. She doesn’t know how Hitty came to be in the attic, but thanks to the name still embroidered on Hitty’s petticoat, knows what to call her. Clarissa is a quiet, conscientious girl in a family of Quakers. She dresses Hitty as a Quaker girl, and Hitty lives with her for many happy years, learning to write as Clarissa goes through her schooling.
While living with these ladies, Hitty learns that Miss Annette’s fiancé died young, fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War, and she still feels bitterly toward the North because of it. From her time with Clarissa, Hitty knows that many people in the North could say the same about the South, but of course, she can’t actually say so out loud. The ladies make new clothes for Hitty, dressing her as a bride, with her clothes made from an heirloom handkerchief, and put her on display at the Cotton Exposition (aka the 
It is at this point that Hitty learns something astonishing: not only is she now about a hundred years old, but she has actually managed to make it back to her home state of Maine. To her further astonishment, she even returns to the Preble house where she originally lived, which is now the summer home of an elderly woman. Hitty knows that it’s far too late for her to have any hope of seeing Phoebe Preble again, and she never learns what exactly happened to Phoebe in her later life (which I thought was kind of a shame, bu it fits with the story of a doll, drifting from one owner to the next, unable to control her destiny or ask any questions of the people around her). The elderly lady collects antiques, and Hitty becomes a part of her collection, although the lady has no idea that this is Hitty’s original home.
Mystery of the Silent Friends by Robin Gottlieb, 1964.
For a time, it seems like there’s no risk of the automatons being sold because no one seems particularly interested in buying them. Then, suddenly, two different men come to the shop and ask to buy the dolls. Weirdly, each of them tells the same story to Nina’s father: that their name is George Ballantine the Third, that their family once owned the automatons, that the dolls are actually part of a set of three, that they own the third doll (a girl doll that plays the spinet), and that they want to purchase the other two in order to reunite the set. Nina’s father is bewildered by these two men with identical stories and identical names and refuses to sell the automatons because of his daughter’s attachment to them and because he doesn’t know which of the two men to believe and doesn’t trust either of them.
At first, they all expect that Red Ballantine won’t be able to show them the third doll and will give up trying to buy the other two, but to their astonishment, he takes them to the same apartment where Brown Ballantine said that he lived and shows them the exact same doll they saw before. Instead of clearing things up, the identities of the two men seem to get all the more confusing. However, Muffin notices something strange about the tune that the doll plays on the spinet that gives them a clue as to why the three dolls are so important. Later, someone breaks into the antique store and uncovers a hidden secret about Henri as well.
This is the second book in the 
Then, Felicity’s father declares that because of the tax on tea, he will no longer carry it in his shop. It leaves Felicity feeling conflicted about Miss Manderly’s lessons, which include the proper way to serve tea. She has started enjoying the lessons and doesn’t want to lose Elizabeth’s friendship, but she wants to support her father, too. Then, Annabelle criticizes Felicity for what her father said at one of the lessons, prompting Felicity to storm out angrily. She is doubly angry and hurt that Elizabeth didn’t try to defend her, making her doubt Elizabeth’s friendship.
#5 The Case of the Cool-Itch Kid by Patricia Reilly Giff, 1989.
Meg’s Uncle Hal takes her and her best friend, Kerry, with him on vacation to Merrybones, Maine. He has a cabin there, and it’s a good place to go fishing or exploring in the woods. However, Uncle Hal isn’t just there to relax this time. His friend, Emily Hawthorne, has asked for his help because she’s received some mysterious, disturbing messages.
She has returned to Merrybones to teach in the local school, but people in this town look at her as an outsider because she has spent so many years away. Now, she has received threatening messages written in rhyme and signed with a star with the number 13 inside. Her pet black cat, Melissa, has also mysteriously disappeared, and Emily is worried about her.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 