Roots for Kids: Finding your Family Stories

With her travelling museum of artefacts, Susan Provost Beller, has, for many years, visited schools and libraries, sharing stories and sparking a love of family history among her young listeners. Here she shares a distillation of her inspiration, in book-form, to impart the skills every genealogist needs, touching on: how to ask questions, construct a timeline, create a family group sheet, organise information, but most important of all, how to collect your family stories. ‘All you need to do is begin with a story and keep adding the stories of all the people who came before. Suddenly you have a genealogy’. I think that this advice is suitable for all of us, regardless of age. By getting to the nub of the issue, to make it clear and simple for a child to comprehend, it feels as though Susan Provost Beller has hit the nail on the head for a very do-able way to build our family histories, and engage family members of all ages. The first task in the book is go and ask each family member to choose their favourite family object, and say what they love about it and why – to tell a story of it, and to collate all the stories into a ‘book’. I won’t give away the rest, but be assured it has ideas to appeal to family history enthusiasts of all ages. I also found it a really moving read, and so valuable too, to keep on passing on the love of genealogy and our ancestors’ stories to the future generations. • Published by the Genealogical Publishing Company in paperback, RRP US$18.50 ISBN: 9780806321073 HT