MUSEUMS
What museums are there to visit in Lowell? You can get free passes for most of these museums at the Pollard Library. These are some of our major museums:
What museums are there to visit in Lowell? You can get free passes for most of these museums at the Pollard Library. These are some of our major museums:
- Tsongas Industrial History Museum at the Boott Mills, 115 John Street. Website is https://www.uml.edu/tsongas/
- Patrick J. Mogan Cultural Center, 40 French Street. Website is: https://www.nps.gov/lowe/learn/historyculture/mogan-cultural-center.htm (This includes exhibits on the Mill Girls and Immigrants to Lowell.)
- University of Massachusetts Center for Lowell History, 40 French Street. Website is: https://libguides.uml.edu/c.php?g=492497&p=3799180
- Boott Cotton Mills Museum, 115 John Street. Website is: http://www.likelowell.com/arts-culture-1/2017/8/31/boott-cotton-mills-museum-at-lowell-national-historical-park
- American Textile History Museum,
- Whistler House Museum of Art, 243 Worthen Street. Website is: http://whistlerhouse.org/index.php/en/
- New England Quilt Museum, 18 Shattuck Street. Website is: https://www.neqm.org/
- National Streetcar Museum, 25 Shattuck Street. Website is: https://trolleymuseum.org/national-streetcar-museum-lowell/
WALKING TOURS
- This website includes virtual Lowell walking tours.
- Jack Kerouac tours in Lowell: https://lowellcelebrateskerouac.org/tours/.
- Tours through the Lowell National Historical Park: https://www.nps.gov/lowe/planyourvisit/guidedtours.htm.
- Lowell Cemetery walking tours: https://www.lowellcemetery.com/explore-visit/walking-tours/.
- Lowell Riverwalk: https://npplan.com/parks-by-state/massachusetts-national-parks/lowell-national-historical-park-park-at-a-glance/lowell-national-historical-park-urban-hiking-trails/lowell-national-historical-park-riverwalk-ramble/.
- Boston walking tours: https://www.bostonbyfoot.org/.
- WalkBoston maps of greater Boston walking tours (this has lots of different types of self-guided tours of differing values): https://walkboston.org/resources/maps/.
- Minuteman National Park Walking Tour: https://www.nps.gov/mima/planyourvisit/the-battle-road-trail.htm.
- Concord MA walking tours: https://concordmuseum.org/gateway-to-concord/self-guided-tours/.
SUMMER READING RECOMMENDATIONS*
ALL BOOKS LISTED BELOW ARE AVAILABLE AT THE POLLARD MEMORIAL LIBRARY
This list is a work in progress. Check back from time to time to see what we've added.
ALL BOOKS LISTED BELOW ARE AVAILABLE AT THE POLLARD MEMORIAL LIBRARY
This list is a work in progress. Check back from time to time to see what we've added.
*RECOMMENDATIONS FROM MULTIPLE SOURCES
YOUNG ADULT HISTORICAL FICTION
The Deep Blue Between, Ayesha Harruna Attah. 2022. Summary from the Pollard: In 1890s West Africa, when a brutal raid leaves their home in ruins, twin sisters Hassana and Husseina are kidnapped, sold into slavery, and separated, remaining connected through shared dreams of water, but will their fates ever draw them back together?
The Empire of the Sun, J.G. Ballard. 1984. Summary from the Pollard: The classic, award-winning novel, made famous by Steven Spielberg's film, tells of a young boy's struggle to survive World War II in China. Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him. Shanghai, 1941 -- a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world. Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint.
Saving Savannah, Tonya Bolden. 2020. Summary from the Pollard: Savannah Riddle feels suffocated by her life as the daughter of an upper class African American family in Washington, D.C., until she meets a working-class girl named Nella who introduces her to the suffragette and socialist movements and to her politically active cousin Lloyd.
Code Talker: A Novel about the Navajo Marines of World War Two, Joseph Bruchac. 2006. Summary from the Pollard: After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is a useless language, Ned Begay and other Navajo men are recruited by the Marines to become Code Talkers, sending messages during World War II in their native tongue.
We Are Not Free, Traci Chee. 2020. Summary from the Pollard: For fourteen-year-old budding artist Minoru Ito, her two brothers, her friends, and the other members of the Japanese-American community in southern California, the three months since Pearl Harbor was attacked have become a waking nightmare: attacked, spat on, and abused with no way to retaliate--and now things are about to get worse, their lives forever changed by the mass incarcerations in the relocation camps.
These Shallow Graves, Jennifer Donnelly. 2016. Summary from the Pollard: A young woman in nineteenth-century New York City must struggle against gender and class boundaries when her father is found dead of a supposed suicide, and she believes there is more than meets the eye, so in order to uncover the truth she will have to decide how much she is willing to risk and lose.
The Black Kids, Christina Hammonds Reed. 2020. Summary from the Pollard: With the Rodney King riots closing in on high school senior Ashley and her family, the privileged bubble she has enjoyed, protecting her from the difficult realities most black people face, begins to crumble.
Butterfly Yellow, Thanhha Lai. 2019. Summary from the Pollard: A Vietnam War refugee in Texas partners with a city boy with rodeo dreams to track down the younger brother she was separated from six years before, when he was evacuated by American troops during the waning days of the Vietnam War.
Salt to the Sea: A Novel, Ruta Sepetys. 2016. Summary from the Pollard: World War II is drawing to a close in East Prussia, and thousands of refugees are on a desperate trek toward freedom. When their paths converge in route to the ship that promises salvation, Joana, Emilia, and Florian find their strength, courage, and trust in one another tested with each step closer toward safety. When tragedy strikes the Wilhelm Gustloff, they must fight for the same thing: survival.
In the Shadow of Blackbirds, Cat Winters. 2013. Summary from the Pollard: In San Diego in 1918, as deadly influenza and World War I take their toll, sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches desperate mourners flock to séances and spirit photographers for comfort and, despite her scientific leanings, must consider if ghosts are real when her first love, killed in battle, returns.
The Book Thief, Markus Zusak. 2006. Summary from the Pollard: Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.
SPECIALTY HISTORICAL COMPENDIUMS: Humor, Trivia, and the like
King George: What Was His Problem? Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You about the American Revolution, Steve Sheinken. 2005. Summary from the Pollard: What do the most famous traitor in history, hundreds of naked soldiers, and a salmon lunch have in common? They're all part of the amazing story of the American Revolution.
HISTORIES AND HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHIES
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, Doris Kearns Goodwin. 2013. Summary from the Pollard: A dynamic history of the muckracking press and the first decade of the Progressive era as told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft--a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912 when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that cripples the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country's history.
YOUNG ADULT HISTORICAL FICTION
The Deep Blue Between, Ayesha Harruna Attah. 2022. Summary from the Pollard: In 1890s West Africa, when a brutal raid leaves their home in ruins, twin sisters Hassana and Husseina are kidnapped, sold into slavery, and separated, remaining connected through shared dreams of water, but will their fates ever draw them back together?
The Empire of the Sun, J.G. Ballard. 1984. Summary from the Pollard: The classic, award-winning novel, made famous by Steven Spielberg's film, tells of a young boy's struggle to survive World War II in China. Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him. Shanghai, 1941 -- a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world. Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint.
Saving Savannah, Tonya Bolden. 2020. Summary from the Pollard: Savannah Riddle feels suffocated by her life as the daughter of an upper class African American family in Washington, D.C., until she meets a working-class girl named Nella who introduces her to the suffragette and socialist movements and to her politically active cousin Lloyd.
Code Talker: A Novel about the Navajo Marines of World War Two, Joseph Bruchac. 2006. Summary from the Pollard: After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is a useless language, Ned Begay and other Navajo men are recruited by the Marines to become Code Talkers, sending messages during World War II in their native tongue.
We Are Not Free, Traci Chee. 2020. Summary from the Pollard: For fourteen-year-old budding artist Minoru Ito, her two brothers, her friends, and the other members of the Japanese-American community in southern California, the three months since Pearl Harbor was attacked have become a waking nightmare: attacked, spat on, and abused with no way to retaliate--and now things are about to get worse, their lives forever changed by the mass incarcerations in the relocation camps.
These Shallow Graves, Jennifer Donnelly. 2016. Summary from the Pollard: A young woman in nineteenth-century New York City must struggle against gender and class boundaries when her father is found dead of a supposed suicide, and she believes there is more than meets the eye, so in order to uncover the truth she will have to decide how much she is willing to risk and lose.
The Black Kids, Christina Hammonds Reed. 2020. Summary from the Pollard: With the Rodney King riots closing in on high school senior Ashley and her family, the privileged bubble she has enjoyed, protecting her from the difficult realities most black people face, begins to crumble.
Butterfly Yellow, Thanhha Lai. 2019. Summary from the Pollard: A Vietnam War refugee in Texas partners with a city boy with rodeo dreams to track down the younger brother she was separated from six years before, when he was evacuated by American troops during the waning days of the Vietnam War.
Salt to the Sea: A Novel, Ruta Sepetys. 2016. Summary from the Pollard: World War II is drawing to a close in East Prussia, and thousands of refugees are on a desperate trek toward freedom. When their paths converge in route to the ship that promises salvation, Joana, Emilia, and Florian find their strength, courage, and trust in one another tested with each step closer toward safety. When tragedy strikes the Wilhelm Gustloff, they must fight for the same thing: survival.
In the Shadow of Blackbirds, Cat Winters. 2013. Summary from the Pollard: In San Diego in 1918, as deadly influenza and World War I take their toll, sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches desperate mourners flock to séances and spirit photographers for comfort and, despite her scientific leanings, must consider if ghosts are real when her first love, killed in battle, returns.
The Book Thief, Markus Zusak. 2006. Summary from the Pollard: Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.
SPECIALTY HISTORICAL COMPENDIUMS: Humor, Trivia, and the like
King George: What Was His Problem? Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You about the American Revolution, Steve Sheinken. 2005. Summary from the Pollard: What do the most famous traitor in history, hundreds of naked soldiers, and a salmon lunch have in common? They're all part of the amazing story of the American Revolution.
HISTORIES AND HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHIES
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, Doris Kearns Goodwin. 2013. Summary from the Pollard: A dynamic history of the muckracking press and the first decade of the Progressive era as told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft--a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912 when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that cripples the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country's history.