Mining family stories for compelling fiction #literacy #k12 #elemed #writing

Natalie Kinsey-Warnock descends from a long line of Scottish dairy farmers who settled in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont over 200 years ago. “The Northeast Kingdom is a place apart. We were the last dairy farm in the state to get electricity,” says the 54-yeard old author. In 1966, the bottom floor of her family farmhouse was finally wired for electricity and telephone, but she still remembers carrying a candle upstairs after dark.

“Holidays were 100 people packed in my grandmother’s house. We were all about family stories,” Kinsey-Warnock says. She mines seven generations of family history in her 20-plus picture books and novels. A Laura Ingalls Wilder fan, Kinsey-Warnock feels a kinship with the renowned author because Wilder once said that her family stories were too good to be forgotten. “We’re kindred spirits,” Kinsey-Warnock says, whose books focus on events that occurred in her life or in the lives of her ancestors. Yet, she admits that even in her close-knit clan some stories are lost or forgotten. During school visits, she encourages young readers to unearth amazing stories in their own families by reading old family journals and letters, and studying old photographs. More…