Under the Hawthorn Tree: Famine Exhibit at Ulster Park

0:00It's April 5th. This is Europe News Today, your AI-powered source for European news. Ireland's classic kids book, Under the Hawthorne Tree, just got a fresh immersive twist at the Ulster American Folk Park in County, Tyrone. Written by Marita Conlon, McKenna, back in 1990, it follows three siblings, Ily, Michael, and Peggy, surviving the Irish famine. The exhibit pulls you right in with soundscapes, hands-on displays, smells, and rare artifacts from museum collections. Standout is a massive, handcrafted Hawthorne tree by Willa Weaver Bob Johnston, decked with copper birds, and it doubles as a cosy reading nook stopped, with the book in English and Irish. The author showed up for the opening with her family and school kids, saying she never dreamed her story would hit a museum like this. Curator Vitoria Malar, kept everything through the children's eyes, from potato-blight tools to blankets and wildlife they met on the road, hitting. Home the famine's raw edge.

1:00This marks the park's first big exhibit in four years, and ties into its 50th anniversary this July. National museums, N.I. Chief Catherine Thompson notes how the famine fueled mass immigration to the states, making it perfect timing around the 200. 50th anniversary of America's Declaration of Independence. Museums like this keep tough histories alive and accessible, blending education with real fields for families and tourists alike, head to the folk park, on general admission to walk the siblings' path yourself.