Barbara Cooney

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ANNOUNCER:

Now, the VOA Special English program, PEOPLE IN AMERICA. Today,
Shirley Griffith and Steve Ember tell about the life of Barbara
Cooney, the creator of many popular children's books. She died in
March, two thousand.

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VOICE ONE:

For sixty years Barbara Cooney created children's books. She
wrote some. And she provided pictures for her own books and for
books written by others. Her name appears on one hundred ten books
in all.

The last book was published six
months before her death. It is called "Basket Moon." It was written
by Mary Lyn Ray. It tells the story of a boy who lived a century ago
with his family in the mountains in New York state. His family makes
baskets that are sold in town. One magazine describes Barbara
Cooney's paintings in "Basket Moon" as quiet and beautiful. It says
they tie together "the basket maker's natural world and the work of
his craft."

VOICE TWO:

Barbara Cooney was known for her
carefully detailed work. One example is in her artwork for the book
"Eleanor." It is about Eleanor Roosevelt, who became the wife of
President Franklin Roosevelt. Mizz Cooney made sure that a dress
worn by Eleanor as a baby was historically correct down to the
smallest details.

Another example of her detailed work is in her retelling of
"Chanticleer and the Fox." She took the story from the "Canterbury
Tales" by English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Barbara Cooney once said
that every flower and grass in her pictures grew in Chaucer's time
in fourteenth-century England.

VOICE ONE:

Barbara Cooney wondered at times if her concern about details was
worth the effort. "How many children will know or care?" she said.
"Maybe not a single one. Still I keep piling it on. Detail after
detail. Whom am I pleasing -- besides myself? I don't know. Yet if I
put enough in my pictures, there may be something for everyone. Not
all will be understood, but some will be understood now and maybe
more later."

Mizz Cooney gave that speech as
she accepted the Nineteen Fifty-Nine Caldecott Medal for
"Chanticleer and the Fox." The American Library Association gives
the award each year to the artist of a picture book for children.
She received a second Caldecott Medal for her folk-art paintings in
the book, "Ox-Cart Man."

VOICE TWO:

Barbara Cooney's first books appeared in the nineteen forties. At
first she created pictures using a method called scratchboard.

The scratchboard is made by placing white clay on a hard surface.
Thick black ink is spread over the clay. The artist uses a sharp
knife or other tool to make thousands of small cuts in the top. With
each cut of the black ink, the white clay shows through. To finish
the piece the artist may add different colors.

Scratchboard is hard work, but this process can create fine
detail. Later, Barbara Cooney began to use pen and ink, watercolor,
oil paints, and other materials.

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VOICE ONE:

Barbara Cooney was born in New York City in nineteen seventeen.
Her mother was an artist and her father sold stocks on the stock
market. Barbara graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts in
nineteen thirty-eight with a major in art history.

During World War Two Barbara Cooney joined the Women's Army
Corps. She also got married, but her first marriage did not last
long. Then she married a doctor, Charles Talbot Porter. They were
married until her death. She had four children.

VOICE TWO:

Barbara Cooney said that three of her books were as close to a
story of her life as she would ever write. One is "Miss Rumphius,"
published in nineteen eighty-two. We will tell more about "Miss
Rumphius" soon.

The second book is called "Island Boy." The boy is named
Matthias. He is the youngest of twelve children in a family on
Tibbetts Island, Maine. Matthias grows up to sail around the world.
But throughout his life he always returns to the island of his
childhood. Barbara Cooney also traveled around the world, but in her
later years always returned to live on the coast of Maine.

VOICE ONE:

The third book about Barbara Cooney's life is called "Hattie and
the Wild Waves." It is based on the childhood of her mother. The
girl Hattie lives in a wealthy family in New York. One days she
tells her family that she wants to be a painter when she grows up.
The other children make fun of the idea of a girl wanting to paint
houses.

But, as the book explains, "Hattie was not thinking about houses.
She was thinking about the moon in the sky and the wind in the trees
and the wild waves of the ocean."

Hattie tries different jobs as she grows up. At last, she follows
her dream and decides to "paint her heart out."

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VOICE TWO:

Of all of Barbara Cooney's books,
the one that seems to affect people the most is "Miss Rumphius." It
won the American Book Award. It was first published in nineteen
eighty-two by Viking-Penguin. "Miss Rumphius" is Alice Rumphius. A
young storyteller in the book tells the story which begins with
Alice as a young girl:

VOICE THREE:

"In the evening Alice sat on her grandfather's knee and listened
to his stories of faraway places. When he had finished, Alice would
say, 'When I grow up, I too will go to faraway places, and when I
grow old, I too will live beside the sea.'

'That is all very well, little Alice,' said her grandfather, 'but
there is a third thing you must do.'

'What is that?' asked Alice.

'You must do something to make the world more beautiful,' said
her grandfather.

'All right,' said Alice. But she did not know what that could be.

In the meantime Alice got up and washed her face and ate porridge
for breakfast. She went to school and came home and did her
homework.

And pretty soon she was grown up."

VOICE ONE:

Alice traveled the world. She climbed tall mountains where the
snow never melted. She went through jungles and across deserts. One
day, however, she hurt her back getting off a camel.

VOICE THREE:

"'What a foolish thing to do,' said Miss Rumphius. 'Well, I have
certainly seen faraway places. Maybe it is time to find my place by
the sea.' And it was, and she did.

Miss Rumphius was almost perfectly happy. 'But there is still one
more thing I have to do,' she said. 'I have to do something to make
the world more beautiful.'

But what? 'The world is already pretty nice,' she thought,
looking out over the ocean."

VOICE TWO:

The next spring Miss Rumphius' back was hurting again. She had to
stay in bed most of the time. Through her bedroom window she could
see the tall blue and purple and rose-colored lupine flowers she had
planted the summer before.

VOICE THREE:

"'Lupines,' said Miss Rumphius with satisfaction. 'I have always
loved lupines the best. I wish I could plant more seeds this summer
so that I could have still more flowers next year.'

But she was not able to."

VOICE ONE:

A hard winter came, then spring. Miss Rumphius was feeling
better. She could take walks again. One day she came to a hill where
she had not been in a long time. "'I don't believe my eyes,' she
cried when she got to the top. For there on the other side of the
hill was a large patch of blue and purple and rose-colored lupines!"

VOICE THREE:

"'It was the wind,' she said as she knelt in delight. 'It was the
wind that brought the seeds from my garden here! And the birds must
have helped.' Then Miss Rumphius had a wonderful idea!"

VOICE TWO:

That idea was to buy lupine seed -- lots of it. All summer,
wherever she went, Miss Rumphius would drop handfuls of seeds: over
fields, along roads, around the schoolhouse, behind the church. Her
back did not hurt her any more. But now some people called her "That
Crazy Old Lady."

The next spring there were lupines everywhere. Miss Rumphius had
done the most difficult thing of all. The young storyteller in the
book continues:

VOICE THREE:

"My Great-aunt Alice, Miss Rumphius, is very old now. Her hair is
very white. Every year there are more and more lupines. Now they
call her the Lupine Lady. ...

"'When I grow up,' I tell her, 'I too will go to faraway places
and come home to live by the sea.'

'That is all very well, little Alice,' says my aunt, 'but there
is a third thing you must do.'

'What is that?' I ask.

"'You must do something to make the world more beautiful.'"

VOICE ONE:

Many readers, young and old, would agree that Barbara Cooney did
just that.

VOICE TWO:

Many of Barbara Cooney's later books took place in the small
northeastern state of Maine. She spent summers there when she was a
child, then moved to Maine in her later years.

She loved Maine. She gave her local library almost a million
dollars. The state showed its love for her. In nineteen ninety-six,
the governor of Maine declared Barbara Cooney a State Treasure.

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ANNOUNCER:

This Special English program was written by Avi Arditti and
produced by Paul Thompson. Your narrators were Shirley Griffith and
Steve Ember. Adrienne Arditti was the storyteller. Join us again
next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICA program on the Voice of
America.