Acton Museum’s Family Trees celebrating its 30th year
Families can explore picture book-inspired trees, sit and read together, and participate in a scavenger hunt.
“Joy, creativity, and connection.”
Family Trees: A Celebration of Children’s Literature, a Acton Museum tradition for 30 years, is bringing people together to experience all three, says Allison Shilling, director of engagement and deputy director of the museum.
Dozens of trees installed by local volunteers and organizations, each featuring elaborate handmade decorations inspired by a picture book, are on display until January 4.
Families can explore the “story trees,” sit and read together, and participate in a scavenger hunt throughout the museum. Family Trees has become “a remarkably intergenerational event,” says Susan Foster Jones, director of education and visitor experience.
Participating artists and authors from Acton and area towns include Meaghan Elyse and Josh Funk. Elyse, an interdisciplinary artist who works with design, biophilic sculpture, painting, and performance, has created the library’s installation for the book “Thank You, Old Oak,” written by Britt Crow-Miller and illustrated by Amy Schimler-Safford.
Elyse has created a fallen oak using welded steel, around which Schimler-Safford’s illustrations of woodland creatures, printed on fabric, will appear to live and grow.
Kids can walk underneath and around the oak’s roots “and discover all of the wonderful elements that make up her ecosystem,” Elyse says.
Space for dreaming
Elyse was born in London and divides her time between Acton and New York. She strives to build connections between people and nature by incorporating natural elements into her architectural design.
Elyse’s family has lived in town since she was 9. Her mother so loved Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” that she gave Elyse the name Meg — after Meg March, the oldest of the four March sisters in the novel.
The artist hopes that “in this time of devastating ecological and spiritual loss,” her work offers viewers “spaces for interaction, for rest, for dreaming, for mourning, for healing.” Her pieces will be part of a pop-up exhibition, Vibrant Matter, at the future Guitar Museum in West Acton on the last three weekends in November.
Funk says he “writes books for adults to read to children so that children fall in love with reading.” He grew up in Newton and lived in Acton for many years while his wife taught at Nashoba Brooks in the 2010s. The family moved to Weston during the pandemic. Funk’s work has been included several times in Family Trees, and this season the featured book is “Gnomes and Ungnomes: Poems of Hidden Creatures,” an anthology to which he contributed a piece.
A ‘Whodonut’ mystery
Funk says he has “always enjoyed being silly,” and as a child he created rhyming poems about his favorite sports stars, such as Roger Clemens and Larry Bird. He continued to write, penning editorials for his high school newspaper and composing songs in college.
A software engineer, Funk studied computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He made writing his avocation some 15 years ago, when he was reading to his young offspring and realized he wanted to try writing children’s stories.
Funk’s books have sold more than half a million copies worldwide and have been translated into several languages, with the author managing to find writing time while working 40-hour weeks at his “day job,” he says. His latest is “Whodonut? A Holiday Mystery,” the seventh installment in the “Lady Pancake & Sir French Toast” series. It involves a sleuth in the form of a doughnut named Agatha Crispy.
Caldecott Honor-winning author and illustrator Christopher Denise is honorary chair of Family Trees, and other participants from the region include Caldecott Honor winner Aaron Becker; The New York Times bestselling author and illustrator Scott Magoon; American Library Association Notable Children’s Book author Carrie Finison; author and Lexington High School student Sabrina Bhattacharjya; and Massachusetts Book Award honoree Susan Richmond.
The event’s lead sponsor is Barefoot Books in West Acton.
A party to celebrate Family Trees’ 30th birthday on December 14 will provide opportunities for visitors to meet the authors and illustrators — and even some characters from the featured books.
The event, a fundraiser for the museum’s education initiatives, runs until January 4. Admission for members is free. Non-member admission is $20 for adults, $15 for seniors and students, $10 for youth 6-17, $5 for children 3-4, and free for children 2 and under. For more information, visit concordmuseum.org.
