Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney

Alice was a young girl who dreamt of doing wonderful things, just like her grandfather. She wanted to travel the world, then come home and live in a house by the sea. Her grandfather approved, but told her "You must do a third thing. You must do something to make the world more beautiful."

Alice grew up and she did just as she planned. She traveled the world, then came home to a place by the sea. She planted lupines outside her bedroom window. Then one spring, an old back injury began to bother her and she could do nothing but stay in bed for a long time. She was sad that she was unable to plant more lupine seeds. At the same time, she had in the back of her mind her grandfather's instruction to her. She had no idea what she could do to make the world more beautiful.

The next spring arrived, and Miss Rumphius was up again. Much to her surprise, she discovered a patch of lupines growing where she had not planted any seeds. She realized that seeds from the lupines she had planted had drifted on the wind and planted themselves. Suddenly, she knew how she could make the world more beautiful. She bought bags full of lupine seeds, then spent her time walking and scattering the seeds as she went. The seeds grew into lupines, which produced more seeds that flew off, so the lupine fields grew bigger every year.

Barbara Cooney and her twin brother were born in August of 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. Barbara's mother was an amateur painter and allowed Barbara to experiment with her paints. She never taught Barbara anything about painting, just left her alone. The only rule was that the brushes had to stay clean! In fact, the only art lesson Barbara got from her mother was a lesson on how to clean paintbrushes.

Barbara loved art, but chose to attend Smith College to get a liberal arts degree over attending an art school. After graduating from college, she decided she wanted to illustrate books and finally pursued formal art instruction.

WWII halted her illustration career. She joined the Women's Army Corps in 1942, and even enrolled in officer training. However, she was honorably discharged after getting married to Guy Murchie Jr. in 1944 and learned she was expecting a child. She and her husband settled at a small farm in Massachusetts where they welcomed a second child into their family before divorcing in 1947. Barbara started illustrating books again, and married Charles Talbot Porter in 1949 with whom she had two more children.

In 1959, Barbara won the Caldecott Medal for her own book The Nun's Priest Tale, an adaptation of one of Chaucer's stories. Barbara was very detailed when it came to illustration, and traveled extensively to research her subjects. In 1980 she won another Caldecott Medal for her illustrations of Donald Hall's Ox-Cart Man. She considered the books Miss Rumphius, Island Boy, and Hattie and the Wild Waves as being as close as there would be to an autobiography. Barbara Cooney passed away on March 14, 2000 living in the dream home built for her by her son in Maine.

Source: Denise Ortakales, Barbara Cooney