BOOK REVIEW: The Story of Us by Michael Wagner & Beck Feiner

BOOK REVIEW: The Story of Us by Michael Wagner & Beck Feiner

ABC Books
September 2021
Hardcover, $24.99
Reviewed by Steph O’Connell

Record Books / Non-Fiction / Family History

85% Rocking

Every family has their stories …

An heirloom in the making.

Remember the time when Mum …
How about when Dad found the …
This is just like when Grandma used to …

The Story of Us makes it easy and fun to share family stories with your children, to capture them in the book’s pages, and to create a keepsake to treasure forever.

Whether the stories are funny, sad, exciting, scary or even weird, sharing them with your children will give them a stronger sense of their place in the world, and the feeling that they’re part of something big and important – their family.

Stories are the glue that holds us together, and this precious, inspiring book is an heirloom in the making.

 

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Though the description seems to suggest that the book will be geared towards your nuclear families – reminding kids who don’t have both parents, have extra parents, or who were raised by people other than their biological parents, that they’re “different” – the book itself is much more open to inclusivity. 

Instead of prompts like “Remember the time when Mum…” and “How about when Dad found the…” what the book actually delivers are prompts more open to interpretation, such as:

• My favourite place in the world is…
• One of the kindest things I ever saw a person do was…
• My favourite and least favourite parts of school were…
• One of the strangest things that ever happened to me was…
• One of my earliest memories is…

The fact that its so open to interpretation is both a positive and a negative.

Though there are prompts, and at the start of the book it does suggest you should speak to your family and write down their interesting stories, the wording itself makes it unclear whether this is for you to record what they tell you, or think about your own weird or otherwise memorable experiences. 

Some kids might feel confronted by this uncertainty, worrying that they’re not filling the book out as intended. But those who love to write, keep records, like to leave notes for their later selves, and are starting to understand that whole swathes of time existed before they were born and want to know more about it will likely have a blast with it!

This is a gorgeous concept full of energetic illustrations, and a wonderful keepsake to have for when the child who fills out the book grows older and looks back nostalgically at times past, and the family they’ve loved and lost along the way.

 

 

Category: Book Reviews