1Before a single word appears, the turkey is already in a sweat. On the first endpaper he floats in a purple thought bubble, roasted and garnished on a serving dish with paper frills on his drumsticks; a page later he is asleep on a hay bale under a green blanket, the bad dream still drifting away from his head. Then the text arrives in heavy maroon type: “The kind of trouble where it’s almost Thanksgiving . . . and you’re the main course.” That opening line is the whole engine of Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano, a 2009 picture book in which the holiday is not a backdrop but a deadline, and the hero has a few days to stop looking like the centerpiece.
A Chant Built for Small Voices
The structure is a chain, and it is the reason so many teachers keep this book on the November shelf. Turkey has an idea. He builds a costume. The narration grants that it wasn’t bad, that he looked like a horse, almost. A real animal sees through it at once, delivers a one-word verdict, and Turkey grumbles his two-word reply. Then the animal who caught him becomes the next idea. Horse leads to cow, cow to pig, pig to sheep, sheep to rooster, each link handing the story to the next.
The verdicts are the best writing in Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano. Too short. Too skinny. And too clean. Too brown. Each one is a complete joke in two words, and each one makes a child look back at the picture to check if the cow had a point. By the third round most listeners are saying “almost” before the reader can, and the sulky refrain becomes a group performance. A former early-years teacher wrote this, and it shows in how precisely the repetition is pitched for children who are just learning to predict a page.
Each catch opens with an animal noise and a pun. The puns are for the adult; four-year-olds will laugh at the noises instead.
What Lee Harper Brings to Turkey Trouble
Harper’s art does more than half the work in Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano. The copyright page notes that the pictures were painted in watercolor on heavy hot-press paper, and you can see why he chose it: the surface takes crisp, dry-brushed texture, so the turkey’s feathers look scratchy and real while the faces stay cartoon-broad. The palette is barn brown, straw ochre and autumn orange, with pale, almost blank skies that keep each joke legible.
The costumes are where children will linger. Every disguise is cobbled together from farmyard junk, and the fun is in naming the parts:
- a scrub brush tied on as a mane, with a saddle strapped to his back
- a cardboard box painted with black spots, plus a paintbrush stuck on top
- an upturned bucket worn as a snout while he lounges in the mud
- puffs of fleece and a borrowed cowbell
- a red rubber glove pulled over his head for a comb
Harper also plays with scale. The real cows are painted so close that their bulging eyes and big square teeth burst out of the frame, which makes the bird in his box look tiny and hopeless. And the art bookends the story with thought bubbles, so the closing pages answer that opening nightmare with a very different dream.
The holiday stays in view throughout Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano: pumpkins by the fence, autumn trees, and finally a harvest table with candles, squash and a casserole, the very dinner the bird has been running from.
Where It Gives Ground
- The middle is mechanical. Four rounds follow almost exactly the same sentences, and by the pig some older listeners will be ahead of the book in the wrong way.
- The humans are odd. Farmer Jake and his family have stringy limbs and long, pinched faces; next to the warm, goofy animals they look slightly unsettling.
- One line lands harder than intended. When the farmer shrugs that another animal could take the turkey’s place, sensitive children may fixate on it, and the book never quite resolves it.
- The finale cheats a little. The last disguise is the funniest page in Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano, but where it came from is never explained, and a sharp seven-year-old will ask.
Read These Next
- An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving by Louisa May Alcott, a short read-aloud for older children in which a farm family cooks the holiday dinner without the grown-ups.
- A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting, a gentler take on the same nervous bird, with a warmer ending at the table.
- Click, Clack, Moo by Doreen Cronin, for farm animals who outwit their farmer.
- ‘Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey, for a more anarchic turkey rescue told in rhyme.
- Our list of the best children’s books once the holidays are over.
Where Turkey Goes After This
This opens an eight-book series that takes the same bird and the same disguise-and-escape pattern into other holidays. It is the place to start. In order:
- Turkey Trouble
- Turkey Claus
- Turkey Trick or Treat
- Turkey’s Eggcellent Easter
- Turkey Goes to School
- Turkey’s Valentine Surprise
- Turkey’s Sandtastic Beach Day
- Turkey’s Birthday Bash
None of the sequels is reviewed here yet.
About Wendi Silvano and Lee Harper
Wendi Silvano spent eleven years teaching preschool and elementary classes, with a degree in early childhood education behind her, before she turned to picture books and early readers. Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano was first published by Marshall Cavendish in October 2009, and its success turned a one-off Thanksgiving joke into a long-running character.
- Turkey Claus, the Christmas sequel, was picked by YABC as one of the ten best picture books of 2012.
- Turkey’s Birthday Bash made the Children’s Book Council’s Children’s Favorites list in 2025.
- Lee Harper trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
- His first picture book as illustrator was Woolbur, written by Leslie Helakoski, about a sheep who refuses to be like the rest of the flock.
The Verdict
Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano is not subtle and does not try to be. Its middle stretch repeats itself, its people are drawn with less affection than its animals, and its ending runs on cartoon logic. What it does, it does very well: a chant children own after one reading, four one-word punchlines, and pictures that reward a second look. Whatever that last disguise is, the presidential turkey pardon has nothing on it.
Read it the week before the holiday, then let the smallest person at the table do the gobbling.
