Connecting Stories Together in a Book




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5 thought on “Connecting Stories Together in a Book”

  1. I like that suggestion, Lynn,
    Each ancestor’s story taking place in their own part of the book, as a separate story.
    My book will be in two parts, but with the same ancestor. Part One: His life before immigration, and why he immigrated. Part Two: Immigration and dealing with a new set of problems.
    Thanks for your valued wisdom and advice.
    Have a wonderful Easter weekend.
    Love and blessings, Paula.

  2. Thank you Lynn for addressing my question.

    I like your idea of writing three separate stories with just a small introduction of the next generation within each one. A little glimpse into the life of the son; a hint of what is to come if the reader presses on through the story.

    I also love your idea of writing the individual stories as sequels. Perhaps that’s where I can draw a connection to the theme again; from the end of one story to the beginning of another.

    Thanks again Lynn. Your advice is helpful in sorting some things out in my head! Brenda

  3. Your suggestion is very useful, thanks Lynn.
    I have a further complication that you can perhaps comment on.
    I’m writing about my grandfather: he fought in WW1, married , lost his wife, remarried and went through WW2.
    I’m also writing his wife’s story: she was an artist, she married, she died after giving birth.
    So both have lives before marrying, both undergo the tragedy of her death, and he lives on afterwards in another life.
    Two stories which come together in the middle.
    How can I best connect these stories?

  4. Your suggestion is very useful, thanks Lynn.
    I have a further complication that you can perhaps comment on.
    I’m writing about my grandfather: he fought in WW1, married , lost his wife, remarried and went through WW2.
    I’m also writing his wife’s story: she was an artist, she married, she died after giving birth.
    So both have lives before marrying, both undergo the tragedy of her death, and he lives on afterwards in another life.
    Two stories which come together in the middle.
    How can I best connect these stories?

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Related Post

5 Habits that Will Help You Build Your Family History Book.5 Habits that Will Help You Build Your Family History Book.

We’ve fleshed out the idea for our family history book. We’ve outlined the process with our milestone goals. We’ve identified the tasks we need to carry out our milestone goals in our project planner. Now it’s time to create a daily schedule and incorporate daily habits that are going to support your tasks in getting your book accomplished. It’s time to make this project fit into your daily and weekly schedule. Let’s move it from being a dream to a reality.

We can’t create more hours in the day- we are all stuck with the usual 24 hours- but we can get more out of each hour by making our time count. I’ve listed below 5 practices that you can put in place to help you move your family history book project out of the planner and into your daily calendar.

First, we need a calendar to complete this part. Decide whether you want to use Microsoft Outlook, or Google Calendars or a good old-fashioned analog calendar. I like the Ink & Volt Planner to merge by projects into my daily life. By the way, my newest love is this lovely erasable gel pen to use in my planner.

Once you choose your calendar of choice let’s start pulling your tasks from your Family History Book Project Planner into your daily calendar.

1.Plan Ahead

The first task we make a habit is to plan ahead. Sit down each night and plan out the activities for the next day. You’ll be amazed by how much more you can get done if you always know what you should be doing. Where you’re going next. Create a list of all tasks you wish to get done the next day. Include everything, not just your book-related tasks but taking the dog to the vet, grocery shopping etc. It will help you to balance the time you have for your book project and the time you have for life.

2. Prioritizing the Big 3.

This is key to your daily schedule. Otherwise, you might find yourself wasting away the day on a task that does not advance your book project. Each day name your big 3 priorities, the top three items that must be accomplished to advance your family history book. These tasks should be taken from your project planner that you created.  When you first try planning your day, you may find it hard to decide which are the most important and should move to the top of the list. Sometimes it can feel like everything is crucial. But with practice, it will become easier. It is really about asking yourself, which items on the list will have the most significant positive impact if I get them finished tomorrow. Move them to the top of the list.

 

3. Schedule your tasks on your calendar.

Also, show how time much is required for this job. Write down exactly what times you intend to spend working on your three highest-priority tasks. Making an appointment with yourself and your project task is essential. You’re saying these are important to me. They don’t have to be completed in order of importance only that tomorrow you will finish them. They are a priority and are deserving to be on your calendar. Your schedule doesn’t have to be set in stone – in fact, you will almost certainly end up shifting things around as new tasks come up and old ones lose their urgency. This is why I love my erasable gel pen. Deferring things to the next day because sh*t happens is ok. But don’t make this a habit.

4. End of Day Review

At the end of each day, review your accomplishments. What got deferred, were there any new tasks that were added to the list. Begin planning for tomorrow, identifying your big 3 once again, and scheduling. Make this a daily habit, and you’ll soon find yourself checking off those tasks on your project planner one by one.

5. Weekly Review

At the end of each week, I like Sunday to take a few minutes to review my week. Review your project planner. Identify your big priorities for the upcoming week. Review what you accomplished on your project in the previous week.  This habit is not so much for identifying your gaps but for no other reason than to give you confidence and to keep you motivated. Be proud of everything you’ve accomplished. Review your milestone goals and the tasks, are there any you can mark as completed? Move the next tasks in project planner to your weekly calendar.

 

If you continue to repeat these 5 steps each week and make them a habit, you’ll very quickly find yourself closer to the finish line of completing your dream project of building your family history book.

With a little organization, scheduling and daily habits, you can make your family history book a reality.

 

Part 1: Identifying Your Dream

Part 2: Fleshing out the 8 Milestone Goals

Part 3: Making an Action Plan and Project Timeline

 

Sharing Family History in a Children’s BookSharing Family History in a Children’s Book

It goes without saying all the benefits of reading to your children and grandchildren. The more you read to your children the more you set them up to succeed. They develop language skills, exercise their brains and enhance their concentration through reading. Reading encourages their thirst for knowledge, it teaches them about different topics and promotes imagination and creativity. If that wasn’t enough reading books with children helps them to develop empathy. When a child can put himself into the story, it helps them to build understanding. They identify with the character, and they feel what the child is feeling. Children begin to understand and relate to the emotions expressed in the story.

 

The characters in children’s books are often remembered for a lifetime because they are fundamental moments in a child’s development. Did you know that children who know stories about relatives who came before them show higher levels of emotional well-being, this according to a research report at Emory University.  Family stories provide a sense of identity and help children understand who they are in the world.

 

Now allow their favourite hero to be a great-grandfather or great-great grandmother and your children will grow to appreciate their family story and develop what the professionals call an ‘intergenerational self.” The intergenerational self as interpreted by Emory University is defined as understanding one’s place in a familial history. They determined “the development of an intergenerational self, becomes a significant factor as children approach adolescence.

 

So, it occurred to me that instead of trying to force family history upon our relatives it might be easier to introduce it a little more subtlety when they are young through children’s books.

Having I just finished my first family history children’s book early this year I thought I would share with you some information to help you consider if you have a children’s book lurking in your research.

 

Children’s books are divided into 3 categories:

Pictures Books

0 to 3 years – board books, novelty books

3 to 5 years – picture books, ABC books

5 to 7 years – picture books, reading primers, colour storybooks

 

Middle Grade

8-12 years old

 

Young Adult

12 and up

 

Getting Acquainted with Children’s Books

Before you decide to write a children’s book, I urge you to get acquainted with children’s books, especially if you been away from children’s book for a while.

 

  1. Consult children’s section of the library/bookstore
  2. Notice the books your children/grandchildren or friend’s children are reading and enjoying
  3. Read reviews of children’s books

 

Classic Children’s Themes

 

Next, you want to familiarize yourself with children’s themes. Most children’s book will address one of the topics listed below. Understanding these themes, it will make it easier to help find stories within your research. Now, there certainly are other themes, but these are the major ones and are a great place to start.

 

  • Courage – adventure, overcoming fears, immigration and migration are great examples in a family history.
  • Friendship – sharing and helping each other
  • Loss – loss parent or grandparent – through toy or something they value such as a pet.
  • Growing up – accepting change, learning a lesson from life that allows you to mature.
  • Belonging – stories about belonging to a group, not fitting in, helpful way of promoting tolerance and understanding.
  • Anger – reassurance to children that they are not alone in their feelings.
  • Jealousy – related to the theme of anger, a great example is the arrival of a new baby.
  • Love – affirming love for someone and feeling love in return is the cornerstone of a happy childhood

 

Consider the themes listed about match them with events in your family history research. Think about your own childhood  – list memories from your childhood, including favourite food, sweets, clothes, board games, toys trips, adults, holidays or particular incidents. Consider the journey of a family history artifact.

 

To find further inspiration for writing a children’s book consider reading what others have written.

Examples of Family History Children’s Books

 

Seven Brave Women  by Betsy Hearne, 1997 for age 4-8 years old

This book is about the author’s unique female ancestors, including her grandmother who was a harpist-architectural-historian who passed on many of the stories in the book. The first page says that history books often marks time by the wars that men fought. Then each spread tells about an ancestor in the author’s family who made history by not fighting in wars. We read about a Mennonite woman who immigrated to Philadelphia, a hardworking homemaker, a horse-riding painter, a missionary doctor, a single mother working as a secretary, and a storyteller. The storyteller is the author’s mother. Seven brave women who left their imprints on the past and on her. Beginning with the great-great-great-grandmother who came to America on a wooden sailboat, these women were devout and determined and tireless and beloved.

 

My Mother’s Pearls by Catherine Myler Fruisen, 1995 Preschool-Grade 3

My Mother’s Pearls is geared toward little girls. It taps into their love for jewelry, beautiful dresses, and getting ready with mom. Going back in time through seven generations, the young narrator shares short anecdotes from her grandmothers and great-grandmothers who once wore (or played dress up with) the pearls. Little girl relates the story of her mother’s heirloom pearls, handed down each generation from mother to daughter on her wedding day. Readers glimpse a day in 1968 when the unnamed protagonist’s grandmother wore the pearls; a day in 1938, when her great-grandmother wore them; and so on, all the way back to 1788, when the young girl’s 6th great grandmother first received the necklace as a wedding gift from her husband.

 

Fancy Nancy: My Family History by Jane O’Connor, 2010

Nancy introduces readers to the fancy term “ancestors.” She wishes she had famous ancestors like her classmates. Instead, she learns about her great-grandpa who was plain and hardworking. She exaggerates his life in her school report but has a change of heart when she realizes she has something in common with her great grandpa.

 

Maman’s Special Job, by Lynn Palermo and illustrated by Josiane Vlitos, 2018, age 5-8.

Maman’s Special Job is the true story taken from the family history of genealogist and writer Lynn Palermo. This story tells the account of a rural midwife as told through the eyes of her young son, Bert. Growing up in a French-Canadian family, Bert observes his mother’s job and how it affects his daily life. Ultimately, he learns what her kindness and sacrifice mean to their community.