PEOPLE IN AMERICA - Barbara Cooney

PEOPLE IN AMERICA - February 24, 2002: Barbara Cooney

By Avi Arditti

ANNCR:

Now, the VOA Special English program, PEOPLE IN AMERICA.

Today, Shirley Griffith and Steve Ember tell about the life of Barbara Cooney, the creator 1 of many popular
children’s books. She died in March two-thousand.

(THEME)

VOICE ONE:

For sixty years Barbara Cooney created children’s books. She wrote some. And
she provided 2 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 3."

VOICE TWO:

Barbara Cooney was known 4 for her carefully detailed 5 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 6 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 7 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 8 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

(Photo - Douglas Merriam)

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.

(MUSIC BRIDGE)

VOICE ONE:

Barbara Cooney was born in New York City in Nineteen-Seventeen. Her mother was an artist and her father sold
stocks 10 on the stock 9 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 11. She also got married, but her first
marriage did not last long. Then she married a doctor, Charles Talbot Porter 12. 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 13 his life he always
returns to the island of his childhood. Barbara Cooney also travelled 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."

(MUSIC BRIDGE)

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 14 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 15. 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 16 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 [pronounced 'loo-pin] 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 17 of blue and purple and rose-colored lupines!'"

VOICE THREE:
"'It was the wind,' she said as she knelt 18 in delight 19. "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 20 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 21 of Maine declared Barbara Cooney a State Treasure.
(THEME)

ANNCR:
This Special English program was written by Avi Arditti and produced by Paul Thompson. Your narrators 22 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.

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