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Climbing Your Family Tree: Online And Off-Line Genealogy For Kids
Tim Robinson is a published author and an illustrator of children’s books. Some of his published credits include: Climbing Your Family Tree: Online And Off-Line Genealogy For Kids, Math Wizardry For Kids and Fraction Jugglers: A Math Gamebook For Kids.
Alex Haley contributed to Climbing Your Family Tree: Online And Off-Line Genealogy For Kids by writing the following introduction: Introduction To The First Edition By Alex Haley
“How I wish I could have read this book when I was a child. If I had, I would have been so much more aware that my grandparents were a source of riches beyond belief. I would have known that the stories they told—stories about themselves, their parents and their grandparents—were gifts more precious than the greatest of treasures.
If I’d been aware of these things as a child, I would have known to listen much more closely to my family and to keep a notebook of what they said. I would have known what further questions to ask—questions seeking anything and everything they knew about our history.
And I knew they would have loved telling me.
Because both of my parents were teachers, they saw to it that most of my presents were books. It tingles me today to think that if I had been given this book, I would have plied my elders about every aspect of their lives. Where did they live? What work did they do? What clothing did they wear? What games did they play as Children? Tell me, I could have asked, what was it like when your family went to church?
I could have kept notebooks from early on. I could have sketched and written descriptions of what my elders told me about how they dressed, or their games, or the horses and mules and wagons and buggies that were their transportation. And of the cotton and tobacco farms where they worked.
It strikes me as significant that two of the most popular books of modern times were written by authors who had once been grandchildren in southern families, sitting and listening as their elders frequently, proudly, told family stories.
One of these grandchildren was a little girl from Atlanta, Georgia, whose name was Margaret Mitchell. For years, Margaret heard the family stories and was taken as a child to visit Civil War sites on the outskirts of Atlanta. She would grow up to write a book that, along with its later motion picture, would fascinate the whole world. The book and the film were, of course, Gone With the Wind.
The second book was my own Roots, which was born on the front porch of a gray-frame home in the very small town of Henning, Tennessee. After the death of my grandfather the year that I was five, my deeply grieving grandma Cynthia Palmer wrote asking her five sisters to come and visit the next summer. And they all did.
A pattern quickly developed: After supper in the evenings. they would gather on the front porch in their rocking chairs. Dipping snuff, which they skeeted out over the honeysuckle vines and the blinking fireflies, they talked night after night about their own childhoods as the children of former slave parents Tom and Irene Murray. Their daddy was a strong, stern blacksmith. And they talked most of all about his daddy their grandfather, my great-grandfather, a most colorful slave gamecock fighter whose name was George Lea and whom everybody called by his nickname of ‘Chicken George.’
They recalled his mother, who lived in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and was called Miss Kizzy. And then her parents—the Big House cook Miss Bell and the master’s buggy driver, an African, who said that his African name was Kinte.
I sat listening night after night, until the ancestral family stories became fixed in my memory. It would be 40 years later that I would remember and decide to try to research the skeletal story I’d heard. The eventual result was the book and its television miniseries, Roots.
And now I’m astonished to think how much more I could have learned fro those dear old ladies on the front porch if only I’d known to ask them questions, as I would have—if only I had read this book.” ~ Alex Haley 1991.
(The above introduction is presented to our audience under the Creative Commons License. Climbing Your Family Tree: Online And Off-Line Genealogy For Kids is © 1991, 2002 by Ira Wolfman and the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation. All Rights Reserved.)
Climbing Your Family Tree: Online And Off-Line Genealogy For Kids • Reviews “Kids are invited to become sleuths into family history with Climbing Your Family Tree: Online And Off-Line Genealogy For Kids, a lively title, packed with tips on how to become an ancestor detective. From conducting interviews with family members to tracking down naturalization records, birth certificates, and regional history, Climbing Your Family Tree will appeal to all young readers who become fascinated with the fine art of genealogy.” - Oregon, WI. “Climbing Your Family Tree is a complete guide for the ancestor detector, both off- and online. It explains how to conduct and interview; how to track down ships’ manifests, naturalization records, birth and marriage certificates; how to decipher old-fashioned handwriting and interpret names; and other tools to help with your family tree.” - Pickman Museum Shop. “An interactive book for parents and children which guides you through the steps of exploring your past. Also called The Official Ellis Island Handbook, this book is the revised, updated and retitled version of Do People Grow on Family Trees?” - Children Genealogy. “Filled with comprehensive information on using the Internet, Climbing Your Family Tree shows children how to dig up family documents, ships’ manifests, naturalization papers, and birth, marriage, and death certificates. Readers learn how to create oral histories, detail a family tree, and make a scrapbook of family lore.” - Creative Learning Press. “In this revised, updated edition of Do People Grow on Family Trees? (Workman, 1991), Wolfman enthusiastically and thoroughly covers all aspects of genealogy, from forms, heirlooms, interviews, and names to immigration, documents, adoption, and Internet resources. Numerous examples; helpful, amusing sidebars and illustrations; and clear instructions are found throughout the volume. Each of the eleven chapters begins with a summary and ends with a handy ‘To-Do List.’” - School Library Journal. Experience Even More • Visit The Alex Haley Museum • Alex Haley Memorial • Haley Heritage Square • Alex Haley Farm
 Darren@nypoet.com | |||||||||
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