The Grannie Annie Family Story Celebration — www.TheGrannieAnnie.org

Related Resources

Fascinating Articles About the Importance and Benefits of Sharing Your Family Stories

Robyn Fivush, Ph.D., is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Developmental Psychology at Emory University and the director of the Family Narratives Lab. The articles in her Psychology Today blog, The Stories of Our Lives: How the stories we tell about ourselves and others shape who we are, will reinforce your sense that all generations benefit from sharing family stories. Objective data and fascinating details carry us well beyond that generality, however. Here are titles of some of her articles: "Family Disputes About Memories," "Collective Stories in Families Teach Us About Ourselves," "The 'Do You Know?' 20 Questions About Family Stories," "The Importance of Family Dinnertime," "Talking About the Past With Your Child Builds Resilience," and "Why We Love Watching the Olympics."

StoryCorps

The mission of StoryCorps is to honor and celebrate one another's lives through listening. It is an independent nonprofit project that focuses on audio recording of interviews with loved ones, and is open to people of all ages. The StoryCorps website is rich, including sample recordings, a question generator, and many tips that will inspire and support you as you prepare to collect family stories.

The StoryCorps Education Toolkit highlights StoryCorps' annual National Day of Listening. This resource will be of special interest to educators, and includes a suggested list of questions for interviews conducted by students.

Tips for Teaching Writing . . . and for Writing Itself

Grannie Annie associate director Fran Hamilton believes that understanding the writing process provides the key to successful writing — and to successful writing instruction. In this article she describes how to break the writing process into manageable parts and focus on one step at a time. This approach can be helpful in writing Grannie Annie stories — or anything else.

Author Patricia Polacco

Award-winning author Patricia Polacco has turned many of her family stories into beautiful picture books. Read what she has to say about the importance of family stories and intergenerational relationships, enjoy her books, and get ideas for how you might develop and share your own stories.