Family Tree

3.82

110 ratings by Goodreads

ISBN 10: 0613068149 ISBN 13: 9780613068147

Publisher: Bt Bound

Eleven-year-old Tyler Stoudt starts sixth grade off on the wrong foot. She has Ms. Custer, the toughest teacher in school, who has announced that the schoolwork for the year will revolve around one project: a family tree. Tyler doesn't have a family tree--she has only Papa. As Papa said, her family tree was "chop down and burnt up. " But Tyler decides to do her best on the family tree project. Does she have grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles? Tyler wants to know, but she is afraid of what she might find out.

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About the Author:

Katherine Ayres is the author of Family Tree, which has been named to several state award lists, and North by Night: A Story of the Underground Railroad. She is a founding member of the Playwright’s Lab at the Pittsburgh Public Theater. She teaches writing at Chatham College, where she also coordinates the Master of Arts program in children’s and adolescent writing.
From the Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A poignant first novel about a girl's discovery of her father's Amish upbringing and her own family's past. When Tyler, who lives alone with her widowed father, is assigned to make a family tree, discoveries abound: Her father, Jakob Stoudt, was raised Amish, and shunned for marrying an ``English'' woman, Sarah Tyler; Sarah's father rejected Jakob as ``different.'' When Sarah, pregnant, died in a car crash and the baby was born prematurely, Jakob let the Tylers believe the child was dead, too, fearing they would take her. As each discovery leads to another, Tyler is torn between sympathy for her father's pain, and anger at being cut off from the rest of her family. In sure, deft strokes, each character emerges: Tyler's tough, wise teacher; her good-hearted, tormented father; her protective friend, Casey; and Tyler herself. Tyler learns of her father's culture mostly by reading her mother's compassionate books and journals about the Amish; she also glimpses the romance that brought her father and mother together. As the world of Tyler's family opens to her, the writing is consistently graceful; the unfolding story will enthrall readers. (Fiction. 8-12) -- Copyright �1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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