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Summary
Summary
A beloved classic is lovelier than ever!
Barbara Cooney's story of Alice Rumphius, who longed to travel the world, live in a house by the sea, and do something to make the world more beautiful, has a timeless quality that resonates with each new generation. The countless lupines that bloom along the coast of Maine are the legacy of the real Miss Rumphius, the Lupine Lady, who scattered lupine seeds everywhere she went. Miss Rumphius received the American Book Award in the year of publication.
To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of two-time Caldecott winner Barbara Cooney's best-loved book, Viking has reoriginated the illustrations, going back to the original art to ensure state-of-the-art reproduction of Cooney's exquisite artwork. The art for Miss Rumphius has a permanent home in the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
Author Notes
Barbara Cooney and her twin brother were born on 6 August 1917 in Brooklyn, New York, in the Bossert Hotel. She grew up on Long Island, but spent her summers as a child in Maine. Cooney attended a boarding school as a child. Cooney graduated from Smith College in 1938 and studied lithography and etching at Art Students League in New York. Just one year after graduation, she had her first commission, the illustrations for Ake and His World by Bertil Malmberg.
Recalling an earlier trip to Germany before the war and the horrors that she had seen there, she felt compelled to join the Women's Army Corps during the summer of 1942. She enrolled in officer training and achieved the rank of second lieutenant, but was honorably discharged the following spring because of marriage pregnancy. The couple bought a farm in Pepperell, Massachusetts where they ran a children's camp during the summer months. By this time, Cooney was illustrating several books a year and wrote one now and then. It was for her adaptation of Chaucer's The Nun Priest's Tale that she won the prestigious Caldecott Medal, the highest honor given for illustrated children's books in the United States, in 1959. Twenty-one years later, Cooney again won the Caldecott Medal for Ox-Cart Man written by Donald Hall.
In 1993, Ms. Cooney deposited more than 400 pieces of original art from 21 of her books in the Northeastern Children's Literature Collection, a part of the University Libraries' Archives and Special Collections. Works from this collection and from the artist's private collection are shown in this exhibit. Miss Rumphius won the National Book Award in 1983 and inspired the creation of the Maine Library Association's Lupine Award.
Cooney died on 14 March, 2000 at the age of 83. Her last book was Basket Moon published in September of 1999.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
You might almost believe that Barbara Cooney had a Great-Aunt Alice Rumphius who did just as we read here--else why go to the trouble of spinning out a yarn, composed of transparent storybook motifs (an elderly grandfather who carves ships' figureheads; travels to exotic places; a solitary cottage by the sea), just to arrive at an old lady who strews lupine seeds about? Ostensibly, she's fulfilling her promise to her grandfather to ""do something to make the world more beautiful""; in Barbara Cooney's precisionist Maine coast pictures, the drifts of lupine blooms are a tribute to the lupine lady per se. It's a lovely notion, in short, if not much (or too much) of a story. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Ages 3-9. When Great-Aunt Alice was little she decided to go to faraway places and then live by the sea like her grandfather, who told her to help make the world more beautiful. Now the children call her the Lupine Lady.