Many of us hope to record our family history. I am no exception, but one of the reasons to do so, in my mind, is to share with my descendants what we know about the world of our ancestors, to provide stories of the family’s past for the younger members to maintain a sense of belonging, a connection with their elders, with their family’s past.
I did not have that intention when my oldest grandchild turned two. I just wanted to reach out, to maintain a family bond across an ocean, another continent. I made a booklet with photographs of his toys playing by themselves, then I went to an online site called Blurb.com, and those together with a few sentences. From there, the story told itself and for a very modest cost, Blurb turned it into a small hardcover book and delivered it across the sea.
Children have access to a lot of books aimed at them and many describe marvelous adventures. But imagine what it must be like for a child to recognize personal items in a book, to perhaps see their own parents, or even themself. Imagine seeing the adventures of a stuffed animal that they know and seeing themself sharing that adventure. With the technologies available, this is not that hard to put together.
Blurb.com and other such sites are very helpful if you allow yourself the patience to learn to use them. I have three grandchildren, and from ages 2 to 6 or 7, they were happy to receive the birthday present of a book featuring familiar spaces and toys, seeing themselves sharing in the strange world of the imagination.
In one of the stories, I told of a stuffed animal who decided to visit my granddaughter. She had played with the stuffy at our place, so it was something she already knew. The story described in images the efforts that the stuffy went to in order to travel from Canada to England. Eventually, the stuffy discovered that she could do anything she wanted in a book, so she told the story of travelling to see her friend, my granddaughter, and the adventures they had together. She described how much fun it was feeding my granddaughter chocolate pudding, or stretching herself out on the page as long as a rope so she could be as tall as my son, the ‘daddy’ in the book.
When my own children were little, I told them bedtime stories, and I described them as having been told to me by a person whose name was a composite of their middle names. This same person became the author of the birthday books for their children, so even the author of the books was a part of a story. In the frontispiece, I declared the book the sole property of the grandchild, with no right to be copied, partially because I liberally borrowed online images to flesh out the pages. Using images that way is fine on a one-off basis with no commercial or broad distribution, and the point of the story is that it is personal, not a market item.
I had great fun doing these, although they took a lot of time to produce. I learned that there was a site called gimp.org that allowed me to edit images. Before the children could read, this was important to keep their interest. My objective was simply to encourage them to establish a personal relationship with books and with stories.
I could do some absurd things with these photos, like describing my grandson falling through a hole in the snow into an underground world where the inhabitants, a bunch of photoshopped ladybugs, were waiting for him to come because he was a human, and as such, he must be the train engineer who was going to solve a problem with their train. Of course, the problem could be solved simply by good listening, and so the human succeeded in solving it. Other stories involved another planet in which the trees were in charge and were very concerned about our world and how our trees are being ignored.
To my surprise, the children did not get bored with the stories. I was also fortunate that their parents encouraged both generations. My elder son observed that if they were too young for the story, they inevitably went back to it months later, as they grew.
When the eldest was soon going to turn ten, I suggested that perhaps I should grow up with him and ask what kind of story he wanted me to tell. When he told me that I should write a book about his family history – where he came from, I realized that he had set a challenge for me. Born in England to a mother from Kenya whose parents’ families were from Goa, a Portuguese-speaking part of the Indian subcontinent, and a father from Canada whose parents’ families had roots in France, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, Turkey, Ukraine and Poland, this would take some serious research, including interviewing as many family members as I could find.
Blurb offered a flat-book format that allowed for large maps, and that helped. The book was a success – you could say it sold out, and it stands together with the original story books on a bookshelf, a permanent record for him and his sister and cousin, with more books added to the shelf every year, elaborating on various branches of the family histories.
The following years, and for as long as they care for me to continue, I can elaborate on aspects of the times of their great-greats. I imagine these more serious stories will outlast the early child adventures and become personal reference books for the grandchildren.
Starting with a vague hope that one day I would have time to record family stories for posterity, thanks to modern technology, I have found myself doing so and delivering them to the safety of the future.
I did not have that intention when my oldest grandchild turned two. I just wanted to reach out, to maintain a family bond across an ocean, another continent. I made a booklet with photographs of his toys playing by themselves, then I went to an online site called Blurb.com, and those together with a few sentences. From there, the story told itself and for a very modest cost, Blurb turned it into a small hardcover book and delivered it across the sea.
Children have access to a lot of books aimed at them and many describe marvelous adventures. But imagine what it must be like for a child to recognize personal items in a book, to perhaps see their own parents, or even themself. Imagine seeing the adventures of a stuffed animal that they know and seeing themself sharing that adventure. With the technologies available, this is not that hard to put together.
Blurb.com and other such sites are very helpful if you allow yourself the patience to learn to use them. I have three grandchildren, and from ages 2 to 6 or 7, they were happy to receive the birthday present of a book featuring familiar spaces and toys, seeing themselves sharing in the strange world of the imagination.
In one of the stories, I told of a stuffed animal who decided to visit my granddaughter. She had played with the stuffy at our place, so it was something she already knew. The story described in images the efforts that the stuffy went to in order to travel from Canada to England. Eventually, the stuffy discovered that she could do anything she wanted in a book, so she told the story of travelling to see her friend, my granddaughter, and the adventures they had together. She described how much fun it was feeding my granddaughter chocolate pudding, or stretching herself out on the page as long as a rope so she could be as tall as my son, the ‘daddy’ in the book.
When my own children were little, I told them bedtime stories, and I described them as having been told to me by a person whose name was a composite of their middle names. This same person became the author of the birthday books for their children, so even the author of the books was a part of a story. In the frontispiece, I declared the book the sole property of the grandchild, with no right to be copied, partially because I liberally borrowed online images to flesh out the pages. Using images that way is fine on a one-off basis with no commercial or broad distribution, and the point of the story is that it is personal, not a market item.
I had great fun doing these, although they took a lot of time to produce. I learned that there was a site called gimp.org that allowed me to edit images. Before the children could read, this was important to keep their interest. My objective was simply to encourage them to establish a personal relationship with books and with stories.
I could do some absurd things with these photos, like describing my grandson falling through a hole in the snow into an underground world where the inhabitants, a bunch of photoshopped ladybugs, were waiting for him to come because he was a human, and as such, he must be the train engineer who was going to solve a problem with their train. Of course, the problem could be solved simply by good listening, and so the human succeeded in solving it. Other stories involved another planet in which the trees were in charge and were very concerned about our world and how our trees are being ignored.
To my surprise, the children did not get bored with the stories. I was also fortunate that their parents encouraged both generations. My elder son observed that if they were too young for the story, they inevitably went back to it months later, as they grew.
When the eldest was soon going to turn ten, I suggested that perhaps I should grow up with him and ask what kind of story he wanted me to tell. When he told me that I should write a book about his family history – where he came from, I realized that he had set a challenge for me. Born in England to a mother from Kenya whose parents’ families were from Goa, a Portuguese-speaking part of the Indian subcontinent, and a father from Canada whose parents’ families had roots in France, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, Turkey, Ukraine and Poland, this would take some serious research, including interviewing as many family members as I could find.
Blurb offered a flat-book format that allowed for large maps, and that helped. The book was a success – you could say it sold out, and it stands together with the original story books on a bookshelf, a permanent record for him and his sister and cousin, with more books added to the shelf every year, elaborating on various branches of the family histories.
The following years, and for as long as they care for me to continue, I can elaborate on aspects of the times of their great-greats. I imagine these more serious stories will outlast the early child adventures and become personal reference books for the grandchildren.
Starting with a vague hope that one day I would have time to record family stories for posterity, thanks to modern technology, I have found myself doing so and delivering them to the safety of the future.