Know of a book that deals with continuity and change through 1-2 family generations?

March 9, 2008 4:56 PM

Lotsa book recommendations please. Know of any good children's books (2nd grade level) that deal with family history? I'm also looking for books that compare and/or contrast daily life today with how a child's parent or grandparent lived.

I'm teaching a social studies unit to second graders and I'd like to read them some books and bring some for them to read.

Are there books such about a grandparent or parent telling their kid about what life was like in the good old days? Or how the family came to live here (immigration, internal migration, etc.)? Or where the family name came from? What about a parent or grandparent sitting down with the child and going through old family keepsakes and photos to tell the family story?

If you can give the title and a short description that would be great.

posted by HotPatatta to education (7 comments total)

Extra points for multicultural titles.
posted by HotPatatta at 4:59 PM on March 9

Just thought of this. If you know of a book that might be good for a child who is in foster care or was adopted, that'd be great. (Are the Jaime Lee Curtis adoption storybooks any good?)
posted by HotPatatta at 5:19 PM on March 9

When I was little, I loved Cynthia Rylant's When I Was Young in the Mountains. It's a simple story of living in simple, hard times, with happiness. It was easy to imagine my grandparents living that way.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:19 PM on March 9

In reply to second comment: another favorite of my grade school days was The Great Gilly Hopkins, by Katherine Paterson. It's about a foster child, with a lot of humor and a bittersweet ending. It's a chapter book, though, so it wouldn't be for every second grader.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:23 PM on March 9

Not exactly what you are asking for but the Molly series from American Girl takes place during WWII - the generation of these children's grandparents or great grandparents.
posted by metahawk at 5:36 PM on March 9

THe Great Brain is about life in the late 1800's in Utah. Very entertaining.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 7:32 PM on March 9

For adoptees, "I Love You Like Crazy Cakes" is a picture book, but may still be effective for second graders as a narrative about adopting a child from a foreign country.

"My Mei Mei" is another great one, from the point of view of an adopted girl whose parents adopt another child. It has some nice detail about the travels involved; my kids really liked it because they have friends who were adopted from China and it helped them make some sense of that.
posted by padraigin at 9:53 PM on March 9