·The first thing you see is a wall of framed photos. A turkey poses with a football team, a medal round his neck, a ribbon, a trophy shelf, a jersey hung like a museum piece. Then he turns to the reader and starts talking. How to Catch a Turkey by Adam Wallace is narrated a full year after the events it describes, by the bird everyone was chasing, and he clearly thinks things turned out rather well for him. Children who know the series will notice the flip at once: this time the catcher is not telling the story. The catchee is.
Where How to Catch a Turkey Sits in the Series
Sourcebooks launched the How to Catch picture books in 2016 with a leprechaun, and the formula was simple: a holiday creature, a class of children, and a lot of contraptions. Wallace and illustrator Andy Elkerton made the early run together. In publication order it opens with How to Catch a Leprechaun and How to Catch an Elf (both 2016), then How to Catch the Easter Bunny and How to Catch a Monster a year later. The 2018 pair was How to Catch a Mermaid and this book. After them came How to Catch a Unicorn and How to Catch a Dragon in 2019, How to Catch a Yeti, and many more. None of the others is reviewed on the site yet.
What This One Adds
The new ingredient is nerves. Teachers preparing a school Thanksgiving play announce that a real turkey will be on stage, and our narrator bolts “with a case of bad stage fright,” as Wallace’s rhyme puts it. The chase runs from the stage to the science room, the cafeteria, a library laid out like a maze, a classroom, the recess yard and finally the coach’s room, with the principal close behind. It ends somewhere he never meant to go. The resolution, spoiler-free, is that fear turns out to be survivable, and possibly fun. For a child who dreads the class assembly, How to Catch a Turkey by Adam Wallace is a gentler pep talk than it first appears.
The holiday works as a backdrop rather than a subject. The story happens on and around Thanksgiving Day, the play is the reason the bird is at school, and the closing spreads lean on the American tradition of Thanksgiving football. There is no history here, which is worth knowing if you want one book to do everything.
What works
- Elkerton’s art is the engine. The copyright page says the pictures were sketched and then painted digitally with brushes he designed himself, and the result has the glossy depth of an animated film, with tilted camera angles and kids caught mid-shriek.
- The pictures keep a running joke the words never mention. A trail of white dust puffs follows the turkey through every room, and the library spread is drawn from above, so a child can trace his escape route with a finger.
- One setup pays off beautifully. Getting tangled in the coach’s room looks like just another obstacle. It becomes the reason the ending works, and sharp readers will spot the clue in the opening photos.
- The type joins in. Key words such as maze, quick and squawk are set in big coloured display letters, which tells a parent exactly where to raise their voice.
Where It Gives Ground
- The verse limps. Several quatrains need a run-up to scan, and one slides from past to present tense mid-thought (he got tangled, but he won’t get stuck) purely to land a rhyme.
- Not much catching happens. Earlier books in the series are loved for the traps children design. Here the gadgets are props in a chase, and nobody plans anything.
- The middle is a list. Room follows room with the same rhythm, and the emotional turn arrives very late, in a few pages near the end.
Do You Need the Earlier Books?
No. Each book in the series stands alone, with new children, a new creature and no recurring cast. How to Catch a Turkey by Adam Wallace is as good a first taste as any, and the flipped narrator makes it a slightly odd one.
Read These Next After How to Catch a Turkey
If How to Catch a Turkey by Adam Wallace is a hit, try these.
- Grumpy Gnome by Peter Wiholm, another picture book with a reluctant hero and plenty of mishaps.
- We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga by Traci Sorell, for a Cherokee family’s year of gratitude, a good partner for the holiday table.
- Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano, for a different turkey who would rather not be dinner and tries disguises.
- An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving by Louisa May Alcott, a short classic to read aloud to older children the night before the feast.
- Our list of the best children’s books, for year-round picks.
About Adam Wallace and Andy Elkerton
Adam Wallace is an Australian writer based in Melbourne with more than 80 books to his name, including the Fartboy series, and he wrote the early How to Catch titles that made the series a New York Times bestseller. Andy Elkerton is a Scottish illustrator who lives in Oban on the west coast and drew the series from its first book. How to Catch a Turkey by Adam Wallace comes from the middle of their partnership.
- The series began in 2016 with How to Catch a Leprechaun.
- By spring 2026, Publishers Weekly counted 45 titles and more than 22 million copies sold across all formats.
- Elkerton’s audition art for the publisher was a Rube Goldberg-style trap.
- Alice Walstead has since taken over from Wallace as the series’ principal author.
What Stays With You
The rhyme wobbles and the title promises a trap book it never quite delivers. What lingers is the turkey frozen in front of an audience, deciding to try anyway, a small lesson about stage fright dressed in feathers and slapstick. Read How to Catch a Turkey by Adam Wallace on the Wednesday before the feast, then look back at those framed photos on the first page and see who notices what they mean.
