Join us for a hands-on workshop on how to write a children’s book and create a book “dummy,” led by Lynne Cherry, author of over 30 award-winning children’s books, including bestseller The Great Kapok Tree. This workshop precedes the opening of Lynne’s retrospective exhibit and artist talk later at 5:30 p.m.

4 to 5 p.m. in the Babbitt Room at the Harris Center. Space is limited, and registration is required. Please bring 10 pieces of unlined white paper, pens, pencils, and erasers. For more information, including questions about accessibility, contact Miles Stahmann.

About Lynne Cherry

Lynne Cherry is a children’s book author of 30 award-winning children’s books including New York Times best-sellers The Great Kapok Tree and A River Ran Wild. Her books have been staples in school classrooms for decades. Children often perform plays and musicals of The Great Kapok Tree in which a woodcutter enters the forest but falls to sleep. The book has stunning, vibrant and lovingly rendered illustrations of the lush rainforest with its tree porcupines, anteaters, butterflies, insects and other forest creatures.

A River Ran Wild tells the story of a pristine Nashua river when Native Americans lived along its banks and its pollution during the Industrial revolution and, then, its redemption due to one individual, Marion Stoddart, who led the effort to clean the Nashua which now runs clean again.

Lynne is also the producer and director of 13 award-winning Young Voices for the Planet films that champion youth success stories and inspire young people to take action themselves. As an environmental communicator, she has written extensively about youth empowerment and teaching with solutions rather than gloom and doom.

Lynne received a BFA from Tyler School of Art, a BA from Temple University, an MA in history from Yale University and an honorary doctorate from Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM). She has had many residencies including at Princeton, Cornell, Smithsonian, and Woods Hole’s marine biology institutes. She was artist-in-residence at the Harris Center in 2024. She is currently artist-in-residence at Earth Commons at Georgetown University in Washington DC. Lynne has received numerous awards, a Metcalf Fellowship and the Brandwein Medal.

She also writes for adults. Her chapter in Written in Water appeared in a National Geographic publication. She has written widely on the importance of exposing children to hopeful success stories when teaching about the environment and an article co-written with renowned Social Scientist Albert Bandura of Stanford University appeared in the journal American Psychologist.

You can hear Lynne reading some of her children’s books on NPR’s Living on Earth here.