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2026-09-17T10:25:59+00:00 Zend_Feed_Writer https://amhersthistoric.org/ Amherst Historic https://amhersthistoric.org 2023-12-05T23:18:35+00:00 2023-12-10T22:37:24+00:00 https://amhersthistoric.org/items/show/61 Olivia Haynes Art dealer, poet, and children’s book author Richard Michelson shows you that it is never too late to try something new, you have no idea where it might take you! Rich grew up in East New York,  Brooklyn, and at 19 he got a job traveling around the Midwest selling fine-art reproductions. Before that, Rich had never stepped foot in a museum or an art gallery! A few years later, after a fateful ping pong match (Clip 1 below), Rich ended up with enough money to open his first art gallery in 1976, and in 1979 Rich ended up in Amherst and opened up R. Michelson Galleries (Clip 2). It was in Amherst, after taking on his first artist, illustrator Barry Moser, that Rich was introduced to the world of illustrated books. Richard says he didn’t grow up reading many books and thought picture books did not have a place in his life. (Clip 3) It was through representing Moser that Richard met prolific children’s book illustrators such as Eric Carle and Jane Yolen, and he decided to learn more and delve deeper into the art form. Through his research, he realized that his love of art and his love of poetry could be combined in a children’s book! (Clip 4) In 1993, Richard published his first children’s book, Did You Say Ghosts? And he’s been publishing children’s books, alongside his poetry for adults, ever since! Many of his books delve into social justice issues and explore the richness of Jewish heritage. Richard had a rather secular upbringing with very little Jewish education, but a transformative moment unfolded as Richard witnessed his wife, Jennifer, and his close friend and fellow writer Julius Lester convert to Judaism. At around the same time that Richard’s children approached the age of Bar and Bat Mitzvah, Aaron Lansky opened the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, making Richard realize he wanted to learn more about his own Jewish heritage and ancestors. Driven by a newfound desire for connection and understanding, Richard’s books allowed him to explore and learn more about himself, his family, and Judaism. After visiting the Yiddish Book Center with his children he wrote, Too Young For Yiddish, as well as other books exploring Judaism (Clip 5). So far, he has published 19 children’s books and he does not plan on stopping anytime soon! The greatest lesson we can learn from Richard Michelson is to just be curious! Imagine what can happen if you just remain open and curious! What new friendships might you make? What new places might you explore? What new lessons might you learn? (Clip 6)  For more (including 6 sound clips), view the original article. 2023-12-05T02:52:41+00:00 2023-12-11T19:19:31+00:00 https://amhersthistoric.org/items/show/60 Katlyn Durand We’ve reached the end of the Children’s Book Authors and Illustrators Tour of Amherst, but not the end of our adventures together. There is one last thing we’d like you to try! While all of these children’s book authors are grownups, that doesn’t mean you have to be a grownup to create your own story. In fact, children’s book author Tony DiTerlizzi began writing and drawing stories when he was around your age. Remember, his pocket field guide to insects became one of the inspirations for The Spiderwick Chronicles! Angela DiTerlizzi also wrote a book called Have You Seen This Book? about a boy who writes his own words and draws his own drawings and sticks his own stickers in his favorite book. In fact, he changes the book so much, he creates a new story! So, here’s what we want you to do. Remember all of the bugs and plants and things you spied with your little eye as you explored the museums, and the book center, and the park, and the library? Did you write them down? We want you to go home, gather any art supplies you can find, and create your own story using all of the things you spied with your little eye. Do you think you can try that? We know you can. Now you’re a children’s book author too! For more, view the original article. 2023-12-05T01:50:26+00:00 2023-12-11T04:19:56+00:00 https://amhersthistoric.org/items/show/59 Digital History Course 2023 Welcome to the Jones Library, the biggest public library in Amherst! The library is over 100 years old! Here you can find books from all the authors on this tour in the children’s section. There is a special area called “The Kids Room” that is specifically for the use of children and their caregivers. If you want to delve into the history of Amherst, check out the Special Collections where you can experience the past by looking at real, historical documents! If you want to stretch your legs a bit, feel free to take a stroll around the library to look at the many photographs, paintings, and sculptures scattered throughout, which are part of our Fine Arts Collection!  Do you have a library card yet? If you are under 12, ask your parents to help you get one so you can check out any books you like. You can also get free passes to area museums, check out a tablet, and even borrow a telescope or musical instrument! No matter what you’re interested in, the Jones Library has got you covered! MEET THE AUTHORS David Hyde Costello often works with children at public libraries. In fact, he has an ongoing relationship with Palmer Public Library where he’s made several videos about how he creates stories through words, images, and movement! David draws, writes, uses puppets and even makes music! Creativity– in whatever form– is really important! Hear David talk about creativity and storytelling here. Diane deGroat learned what types of books children are interested in by visiting with school-aged kids at public schools and public libraries. It changed the course of her writing career! What types of stories do you like to hear? Or what types of stories do you like to create? Read more about Diane here. I SPY I spy with my little eye a room filled with stories! What kind of stories can you find hiding there?  I spy with my little eye a painting! What paintings or drawings do you like the most? Check out the Burnett Gallery for more! For more, view the original article. 2023-12-05T01:46:00+00:00 2023-12-12T02:27:31+00:00 https://amhersthistoric.org/items/show/58 Digital History Course 2023 Welcome to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. This museum, though named after the author of books such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, features art from many children’s books. Inside you can explore the exhibitions and read books by local authors. Maybe you’ll see art from someone on this tour. The museum, like this tour, has something to offer people of all ages. Visit the craft room for a fun child-friendly activity, and check out their events page for adult-friendly programming Authors featured at this stop on the tour have many books for early readers. Their work focuses on colorful illustrations, animals, rhymes, and families. What was your favorite book when you were very little? MEET THE AUTHORS Eric Carle was a writer and illustrator of children’s literature who had many best-selling books published. His most popular and know work is The Very Hungary Caterpillar first published in 1969. Eric Carle has sold some 50 million copies and his writings have been translated into more than 60 languages. In 2002 Carle and his wife Barbara “Bobbie” Morrison, an early childhood educator, helped to open and establish the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts. The museum collects and features the work of children’s book illustrators from not only the United States but from around the world. Like many authors featured at this museum, P.D. Eastman’s books are for early readers. You might recognize his most famous title Go, Dog. Go! His books might remind you of another classic children's author, Dr. Seuss. That's because they were good friends and often worked together. Megan Dowd Lambert is an award winning children's book author who worked at the Eric Carle museum for a long time. She helped organize their reading library, which features many of the authors and illustrators on this tour! Check out the audio clip (below) to hear her talk about working at the museum. I SPY I spy with my little eye something colorful with wheels! I spy with my little eye a bug that is very very hungry! For more (including 1 sound clip), view the original article. 2023-12-05T01:45:18+00:00 2023-12-10T22:37:24+00:00 https://amhersthistoric.org/items/show/57 Purple Rathburn Shelley Rotner was born in 1951 in New York City. After high school, she attended Syracuse University a private research university in Syracuse, New York and later did postgraduate study at Columbia University and Bank Street College of Education in New York City, a graduate-only teacher training college. Ms. Rotner is the author and photo-illustrator of over thirty books, including the Hello Seasons! series with books on spring, summer, autumn, and winter. She has also published books about diversity, such as Shades of People, and books on gender, different types of families, friendships, and adoption. Shelley also has books on numerous other subjects, such as nature, our bodies, farming, nutrition, and how we get our food. Her children's books have been chosen as ALA Notable Books, and she received a Bank Street Best Books of the Year award. Previously she was an elementary school teacher and worked at a museum as an educational specialist. Currently, in addition to writing children’s books, Shelley is also a noted photographer and photojournalist. Her photographic work has been published in Time Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, National Geographic’s World Magazine, Outside Magazine, Boston Globe Travel, Food and Wine Magazine, and the online travel site Gonomad.com. • Website • Bibliography • Publishers Page For more, view the original article. 2023-12-05T01:44:10+00:00 2023-12-11T23:23:30+00:00 https://amhersthistoric.org/items/show/56 Digital History 2023 Welcome to Groff Park! It’s a great place to have a picnic, play a game, or read a book under a tree. No matter what season it is, there are tons of fun things to do here! In the summer, you can cool down and play in the splash pad, look at the colorful leaves in the fall, make snow angels in the winter, and search for signs of new life in the spring. If you’re looking to explore further, you can even take a walk on the Emily Dickinson trail. Many of the authors on this tour write about themes of adventure, nature, play, fantasy, exploration, and fun. At this stop, take some time to use your imagination to transform the park into a setting from one of your favorite books. Is it a pirate ship? A medieval castle? A planet from the future? It could even be full of fairies, superheroes, or dragons. The possibilities are endless! MEET THE AUTHORS Angela DiTerlizzi is no stranger to exploring the outdoors and all of the plants and animals that live there. Take, for example, her book Some Bugs, that tells kids to “Grab your magnifying glass! Find your field guide! And come hop, hide, swim, and glide through a buggy backyard world!” Groff Park is the perfect place to find the kinds of bugs that Angela writes about: bugs that bite, stink, flutter, crawl, click, sing, and buzz. Parks and outdoor spaces are also a great place to try new things, especially things that are really hard to learn like riding a bike, flying a kite, saying a tongue twister, and skateboarding. Angela wrote a book called The Magical Yet about this very topic! The story follows children who try to do all of these things and more, but can’t seem to get the hang of them. Instead of giving up, however, a character named the Magical Yet gives these children the courage and motivation to keep dreaming, keep trying, never give up! If we keep trying, we’ll get the hang of them eventually. What new things do you want to try and explore in Groff Park? Read more about Angela here. Tony DiTerlizzi loves Groff Park! He has taken his daughter Sophia there many times over the years. In fact, outdoor spaces like Groff Park are one of the reasons Tony is a children’s book author today. Growing up around nature inspired Tony to draw and write stories about the insects and birds that he saw in his backyard. One of his earliest books was a pocket field guide to insects he collected in his backyard, and it was this very pocket field guide that became the inspiration for Arthur Spiderwick’s field guide in his book series The Spiderwick Chronicles! (See Clip 1 below to hear Tony talk about his lifelong love for the natural world.) The outdoors also inspires what Tony calls “world-building.” When Tony creates stories, he isn’t only creating characters; he is also dreaming up the world the characters live in. This can be seen in both The Spiderwick Chronicles, a story filled with fairies and goblins and trolls, as well as The Wondla Trilogy, a futuristic alien fantasy. “I think when we think of certain children’s book stories we think of the characters that we love. But the really rich stories, the setting and the world, is just as exciting, if not more exciting, than the characters themselves,” says Tony. “We all love Harry Potter, but we all want to go to Hogwarts.” (See Clip 2 below to hear Tony talk more about his process for creating characters and worlds.) Read more about Tony here. Corinne Demas and Artemis Roehrig are no strangers to Groff Park! This mother/daughter duo has lots of experience exploring all of the different natural (and man made) environments looking for insects and animal tracks all year round. Take a moment to stop, look, and listen to the nature all around you. Or maybe use your imagination to transform the playground or splash pad into new scenery using your imagination! Check out their page for some ideas from these authors about how to have fun at this stop. I SPY I spy with my little eye tiny insects. What kind of bugs do you see? I spy with my little eye something tall that pours water. What do you think it is? For more (including 3 sound clips), view the original article. 2023-12-05T01:42:23+00:00 2023-12-12T03:23:06+00:00 https://amhersthistoric.org/items/show/55 Digital History Course 2023 Welcome to the Beneski Museum of Natural History. The Beneski Museum of Natural History (BMNH) is located in the Beneski Earth Sciences Building on the Amherst College campus. This building holds collections that can help us learn about the world around us. Inside you can see dinosaur fossils, minerals, and maybe even a rock from space. The BMNH is known for its giant collection of fossils, specializing in ancient mammals including many dinosaurs. The museum contains the Edward Hitchcock Ichnology Collection, one of the largest known collections of dinosaur tracks. Edward Hitchcock was an American geologist and the third President of Amherst College from 1845 to 1854. Throughout his life, he collected over 20,000 fossil footprints, becoming one of the first people to study and offer evidence of prehistoric animals. Most of Hitchcock's collection of footprints and tracks were obtained locally up and down the Connecticut River Valley. The Beneski Museum of Natural History also contains the bones of a mammoth, mastodon, and a giant deer skeleton of an Irish Elk (Megaloceros giganteus), a creature who once roamed the Connecticut River Valley during the Ice Age. There are some touchable displays for children and a beltway of display drawers on the museum's north wall that families can explore. If you have questions or need help, there are student docents who act as guides and can help with any questions that may arise. This museum offers a fun afternoon for kids to explore and learn! MEET THE AUTHORS: Aaron Becker loved learning about space as a child. The Apollo moon missions fascinated him and he often drew pictures of other worlds, leading him to a career in film illustration before becoming an author. He also likes to connect to the natural world on this planet, enjoying hikes and mountain bike rides around the valley. Dr. Britt Crow-Miller teaches classes in the Departments of Environmental Conservation and Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the founder of City Wild, a nonprofit organization for youth ages 11 through 18 based in Western Massachusetts. Along with illustrator Bruno Valasse, Britt recently completed a science book for elementary and middle school-aged kids called World of Rot to be published by Storey Publishing in the autumn of 2024. I Spy I spy with my little eye old bones from another time period! What kind of animal do they belong to? For more, view the original article. 2023-12-05T01:39:35+00:00 2023-12-10T22:37:24+00:00 https://amhersthistoric.org/items/show/54 Katlyn Durand Angela DiTerlizzi is a natural at writing children’s books. In fact, you might be surprised to hear that she did not start her career as a children’s book author! Before she became a writer, Angela channeled her artistry into doing make-up for television personalities, musicians, and even a former U.S. president. Fortunately for us, Angela loves trying new things. In the 1990s, Angela lived in Brooklyn as a makeup artist with her husband, children’s book author and illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi. In 2002, Angela and Tony moved to Amherst. Angela published her first book, Say What?, in 2013 with illustrator Joey Chou. Say What? was one of ten books featured in that year’s Cheerios “Spoonfuls of Stories” program, a project that gives away millions of bilingual children’s books for free. Angela’s second book, Some Bugs, illustrated by Brendan Wenzel, came out one year later and was one of Buzzfeed’s Best Picture Books of 2014. Even Eric Carle - the author who wrote about that very hungry caterpillar we all know and love - said the book was “A delightful combination of pictures and words that will captivate readers.” Some Bugs encourages children to explore the big world of bugs that live right outside our doors! Exploration and trying new things is a big theme in Angela’s work. In 2020, Angela published a book called The Magical Yet with illustrator Lorena Alvarez that inspires kids to keep trying new things, even when it’s really hard. During the pandemic, Angela co-wrote a book with Tony called A Very Cranky Book, about a book that does not want to be read. The story tackles feeling cranky, how to handle feeling cranky, and reminds children that even when they’re cranky, they’re still loved. Angela lives in Amherst with Tony and their daughter Sophia. You can visit Angela’s website here. For more, view the original article. 2023-12-05T01:33:13+00:00 2023-12-11T03:13:57+00:00 https://amhersthistoric.org/items/show/53 Purple Rathburn Dr. Britt Crow-Miller teaches classes in the Departments of Environmental Conservation and Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Before arriving at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Britt Crow-Miller worked in the science field in China and on the West Coast of the United States. Dr. Crow-Miller was raised in New York and now lives in Amherst with her three young children. Along with illustrator Bruno Valasse, Britt recently completed a science book for elementary and middle school-aged kids called World of Rot. It looks at different fungi, bacteria, worms, and insects that help break down naturally discarded material, such as leaves, into smaller particles that create a new compound. A compound is something made in nature that is a mixture of multiple things. Examples of compounds include sugars, proteins, and vitamins. She has an interest in everything from beekeeping to hiking. Walking is her favored form of transportation. She is the founder of City Wild, a nonprofit organization for youth ages 11 through 18 based in Western Massachusetts whose mission is to inspire curiosity about nature through fun activities, firsthand exploration, and learning for both kids and their families. • Britt Crow-Miller's Website • Britt Crow-Miller's 'X' account (formerly Twitter) • Britt Crow-Miller's Instagram account • CityWild Website For more, view the original article. 2023-12-05T01:26:50+00:00 2023-12-10T22:37:24+00:00 https://amhersthistoric.org/items/show/52 Abby Thomsen Philip Dey (P.D.) Eastman knew the Pioneer Valley well. Born in Amherst in 1909, he grew up here with his family, attending both Williston Academy in Easthampton and Amherst College* (one of the stops on this tour). He walked down these streets, looked at the same mountains you can see from Amherst College, and he may even have read books at the newly opened (1919) Jones Library.  After a long career in film, P.D. Eastman moved back to the East Coast and decided to write books for children, like his friend Dr. Seuss. You might know some of his books, like Go, Dog. Go! and Are You My Mother? Most of his books have animal characters. What is your favorite animal? Like other authors on this tour, P.D. Eastman made movies before he wrote books. He moved to Los Angeles in 1936 to work for Disney, making some of their earliest cartoons. He even made cartoons for the United States Army during World War II with one of his good friends, Dr. Suess. After the war, he continued making cartoons with political significance, including one supporting integration for the United Auto Workers Union. This film, The Brotherhood of Man, got him in trouble with the government,** but he stood up for what was right. NOTES: *Collins, Chloe. “Biographical Information.” Are you my Mother?, 2015. https://areyoumymotherbook.weebly.com/biographical-information.html. **Nel, Philip. “Children’s Literature Goes to War: Dr. Seuss, P. D. Eastman, Munro Leaf, and the Private SNAFU Films (1943–46).” The Journal of Popular Culture 40, no. 3 (2007): 468–87. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2007.00404.x. For more, view the original article.