Hello. This is a little off topic but I just wanted to pass this along to you. In recent weeks, several people have mentioned that they wished they had listened to the older people in their families concerning the stories and family traditions of earlier times. Some of you have even mentioned that you are now trying to interest the children in your own families in genealogy (children, grandchildren, niece, nephew, etc.) so they don't have the same regrets that you do. As we all know, unless a child finds something at least remotely interesting, it is unlikely that they will retain stories, concepts, etc. for any length of time....if they ever get it at all. I recently found a series of books that some of you might be interested in. They are called American Kids in History by David C. King. The three of the series that I have are "Civil War Days," "Pioneer Days," and "Wild West Days." There are also other books like "Colonial Days" and "Victorian Days." Basically each book takes a fictional family and uses crafts, cooking, prose, making homemade toys, and other activities to show how they lived and interacted with each other and their environment. I'm not talking out of the top of my hat here, I homeschool my kids and I have reviewed a lot of children's materials and these books are good. It makes history interesting because it adds hands on type activities and stories that the child can relate to, as well as making it more personal by having the activities revolve around a fictional, but very believable, family. The books are also attractively bound (paperback) and interestingly llustrated with easy instructions for the crafts. I don't mean this to be a commercial or sponsorship of these books, but I wanted to pass the information along to those of you who are interested. After using these books, my kids are interested in finding out about our own ancestors and can more easily relate to them because they have an understanding of how the lived. It also gives them a kick to think that gre at great....grandfather so and so must have done this as a boy and he wore those kinds of clothes and great great....grandmother didn't get to wear pants (she had to wear long skirts with umpteen petticoats even in the hottest weather).....and now when they think about how Aunt and Uncle so and so left the rest of the family and moved west they understand how truly difficult a choice that must have been. Just a thought, Kathy in FL [email protected]