Marilynne Eichinger will be signing books at booth 64 at the Portland Book Festival on November 9th. Marilynne Eichinger, entrepreneur, and director of hands-on science museums graduated Magna Cum Laude in Anthropology from Boston University and with an MA in psychology from Michigan State University. She founded Impression Five Science Museum in Michigan served as as president of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry(OMSI) in Portland. She left OMSI to found the Museum Tour Gift Catalog in order to bring interactive learning into homes nationwide. Her first book, Lives of Museum Junkies, is the The Story of America’s Hands-on Education Movement. Over the Peanut Fence was inspired by a 20 year old youth she and her partner invited into their home.

A powerful glimpse into the trauma and abuse that forces young people to run to the streets. “The author’s account is lucidly written, both intellectually thorough and emotionally affecting. In addition, this isn’t a work of ax-grinding political partisanship––Eichinger prefers cool-headed analysis to grandstanding. Further, at the heart of her “part memoir and part storybook” is a profound reflection on the ailing condition of American society, withering from the widespread disintegration of the family and the grim plague of ‘lovelessness.”‘ An astute and moving assessment of an urgent societal problem.”– Kirkus Reviews- Find out more.