Amy Rosenthal

On March 3, 2017, at the age of 51, she announced that she was terminally ill with ovarian cancer, by way of a New York Times "Modern Love" essay. The essay was in the form of a dating profile for her husband Jason, to help him remarry after her death. She died ten days later at her home in Chicago.

Her follow-up, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal, was published by Dutton Penguin Random House on August 9, 2016. It is the first book to include an interactive text-messaging component.

Rosenthal was a frequent contributor to TED. In 2011, 2012, and 2015, she was brought on as an "experiential designer", creating ideas and experiences implemented at the annual TEDActive conference. Additionally, she has given talks at TEDxSanDiego 2011 and at TEDxSMU 2012; she gave her first and most well-known TED talk, 'Notes on Life', at TEDxWaterloo (Canada) in 2010.

Amy Krouse Rosenthal wrote for both adults and children. Rosenthal had several books on the New York Times bestseller list: I Wish You More, Uni the Unicorn, Plant a Kiss, Exclamation Mark, Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons, and Duck! Rabbit!. Duck! Rabbit! was read at the White House during the 2010 Easter Egg Roll. She was selected as the 2015 author for 'The Global Read Aloud', an eight-week program for classrooms around the world to engage with each other by reading the same books.

She held 'Beckoning of Lovely' events at the bean in Chicago's Millennium Park on August 8, 2008, September 9, 2009, October 10, 2010, and November 11, 2011.

Rosenthal's masterpiece, unfolding over the past two years, began with a YouTube video called 17 Things I Made. In it, she invited viewers to meet her on August 8, 2008 (8/8/08), at 8:08 p.m. in Millennium Park to make an 18th thing together. That thing was a party. She expected a group of maybe 30, but roughly 400 curious people showed up, surprised to find themselves singing, dancing, blowing bubbles, and giving flowers to strangers. One couple met and fell in love. "I wish there was a word less obvious than 'magical' to describe that night," Rosenthal says. "It was meaningful to everyone in some way."

Her alphabetized memoir Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life (published in 2005) was named one of Amazon's top ten memoirs of the decade.

Amy Krouse Rosenthal (April 29, 1965 – March 13, 2017) was an American author of both adult and children's books, a short film maker, and radio show host. She is best known for her memoir Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, her children's picture books, and the film project The Beckoning of Lovely. She was a prolific writer, publishing more than 30 children's books between 2005 and her death in 2017. She is the only author to have three children's books make the Best Children's Books for Family Literacy list in the same year. She was a contributor to Chicago's NPR affiliate WBEZ, and to the TED conference.