After my mother read my post about Three Cups of Tea, she told me that her grandmother had gotten her education by sitting down with her children each night and having them teach her what they’d learned in school that day. I’m guessing I’m not the only person with a story like this in her family, but these stories are passing from living memory. My own grandparents have now all passed away; soon there will be no one left who actually knew and remembered that woman who learned to read from her own children.
 
Family stories are important in how they shape its members. My family narrative—like many, I’ll guess—is filled with not just these kinds of simple and direct stories, but with a lot of mystery and conjecture. I think many times stories about families are intentionally covered up or changed in the hopes of giving its remaining members a more peaceful or wholesome life. But we are creatures always searching for purpose and meaning, always trying to solve mysteries. The question is rarely “What should we leave behind?” but “How do we preserve the past?”
 
One of the most useful tools in the arsenal of family literacy is the family story itself. On one level, this is the story about whether or not the family values reading. Children learn not just by what they are taught, but by the many non-verbal clues that make up their lives. They learn from observing their peers and parents. They learn from the make-up of their environment. In fact, most of the learning that goes on in anyone’s life is what occurs when they are not actually in a classroom setting.
 
While there are many resources for memory-keeping books where members can fill in the blanks with their own words, images, or thoughts, one of my favorite books for approaching family stories is Telling Your Own Stories by Donald Davis. This pocket-sized paperback is filled with prompts to help people recall simple moments in family life, like “Can you remember a pet you once had that you don’t have anymore?” or “Do you remember a time when you got in trouble for something you had already been told not to do?” or “Can you remember a time when you tried to cook something and it didn’t turn out?”

These simple prompts are appropriate for ages five and up. They can certainly be used to inspire recollection and writing, but most importantly they give families—particularly parents and children—a way to be able to talk to one another, providing inspiration for answers to the ever-present question of “What was it like when you were my age?”
 
My own family has a story about my aunt bringing home my uncle—they were not yet married—to meet our family. My aunt baked a pumpkin pie for the occasion, but realized later that she had forgotten to add the sugar to the pie. Not wanting to offend her or her family, my uncle had eaten the entire piece of pie without saying anything. This is a story told every time we gather to eat together. It is also the story about how my uncle came to be part of our family.
 
Donald Davis, a storyteller by trade, offers the following instruction at the beginning of Telling Your Own Stories:

“When we try to remember we often search from the present backwards chronologically. The problem with this is that we don’t yet know how recent events are going to come out. This means that they are too raw for us to be able to either laugh or cry about them. Instead, with these prompts, try for earliest memories and then come forward. Our whole life is our library where personal memories are the books we are looking for.” (p11)