Barbara Cooney's Captivating World At her studio on the shore in Walpole, an award-winning artist mixes paint with homespun wisdom to create books children treasure. By Jeff Clark I F you know anything about the owner, when Josie studies Cooney's illustrations book, Island Boy. Several years ago, at you'll recognize the house immedi- of poet Donald Hall's The Ox-Cart Man, the Maine Festival, Cooney came across ately. It sits on the shore of the Dam- she turns the pages with her fingertips, a small book called John Gilley of Baker's ariscotta River surrounded by tall pines, cradling the book in her lap as if it were a Island. It was written in 1899 by Harvard almost Zen-like in its serenity and vague fragile piece of glass. University President Charles W. Eliot, resemblance to a Japanese temple. You've Cooney won her second Caldecott one of the founders of the Northeast seen it before just like this, a distant view Award for The Ox-Cart Man in 1979 (the Harbor summer colony and an early force in the pages of a children's book. You first was in 1958 for Chanticleer and the behind the formation of Acadia National approach half-expecting a tall Miss Fox), her first National Book Award for Park. The gentle story delineates the quiet, Rumphius to stride around the corner Miss Rumphius in 1983. The awards are simple life of a Maine island native, John scattering lupine seeds before her. highlights of a career that spans almost Gilley, born February 22, 1822, one of The woman who answers the door, fifty years and "107, I think" children's the "obscure millions who are sure to be however, is almost elfin, with gray hair books. absolutely forgotten," as Eliot put it. tightly braided across the top of her head "I've only done three books about With that book providing the outline, Scandinavian fashion, a purposeful walk, Maine, including this most recent one," Cooney created the story of Matthias and dancing eyes the color of a heat-hazy Cooney says. "One reason I've stayed Tibbetts, the youngest of twelve children summer sky. This is Miss Rumphius' away from Maine in my books is that SO born on Tibbetts Island, "the outermost creator, Barbara Cooney, one of the most very many artists up here are doing pic- island, crowned with spiky spruce trees, prominent and successful authors and tures and paintings of Maine. I didn't facing the sea. Cooney chose to fiction- illustrators of children's books in the dare tackle it. This place means SO much alize Eliot's monograph for a number of country. Not children's books as in the to me I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do reasons, she explains: "First, I'm more 327th retelling of the Three Little Pigs. it justice." familiar with Muscongus Bay and lower Barbara Cooney's books are art and She overcame that fear in her newest Penobscot Bay than I am with Down East poetry. Some of the great illustrated natu- Maine. Second, it allowed me to elimi- ral history books of the 1800s have been nate some aspects of the book, such as the bought up by collectors who cut out and Of the more than a hundred descriptions of the feather industry, and mount the exquisitely drawn wildlife and children's books to her credit, only add others." throw away the words. In Barbara three are specifically set in Maine - Island Boy opens with a map of "Great Cooney's case, the next generation may though many readers detect a decidedly Broad Bay," an imaginary place on the well mount her entire books. Down East influence in many of her Maine coast that Cooney drew quite de- Even children recognize the quality. works. Typical of her distinctive, liberately in the fashion of old-style maps. My own five-year-old daughter doesn't straightforward style are the "My brother told me of a man who col- hesitate to write her name on every other illustrations above and overleaf from lected and sold old maps, and I ended up page of her Golden Book, Bambi. Yet her newest book, Island Boy. buying a lot myself," she says. "I studied Photograph by Douglas Merriam DECEMBER 1988 69 them, noted the conventions they used, mid-1800s, studied the history of tourist going to sea on his brother's ship, learn- how places were named." She chose development along the Maine coast at the ing the ways of waves and sail, then names that interested her or were already turn of the century, even talked with a returning to his island home with a new in use along the Maine coast. There is a niece who is a curator in the American wife and raising a family of his own. Cranberry Island and a Sheep Island and wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art There he remains for the rest of his life, a Spruce Head. According to the author, in New York City to find out about the de- living within his own cleareyed view of her major character's family name, Tib- signs of Victorian bedclothes, pillow tick- the world, until one day when the elderly betts, "is a common name around Vinal- ing patterns, and the shape of kitchen- Matthias sets out in stormy weather to haven and Waldoboro and Muscongus ware. deliver milk, vegetables, and clean laun- Bay. I liked the sound of it." All her research was aimed directly at dry to the new summer rusticators on the Cooney used an actual island as her her goal of presenting "the story of a mainland. model of Tibbetts Island, but she refuses man's life, a person who led a simple "They never saw him alive again," the to name it. "They don't need any more life," Cooney explains. "It is a simple story goes. "Later they found the dory people going out there than they have message, really, that to have a successful swamped - and Matthias nearby." The already," she declares. life you do not have to be an important book closes with Matthias' funeral, Her study of old maps and the time person, that if you have a cleareyed view something of a dark note for a children's she spent on her real-life island model are you can achieve your goals." book, but one which Cooney felt was indicative of the amount of research Matthias Tibbetts does not do great absolutely necessary. "The jacket and the Cooney devotes to her books. In the course things in his life, which Cooney presents funeral pictures were in my mind before of writing and illustrating Island Boy, she in simple yet stirring words set amid her I even started the book," Cooney recalls. contacted maritime museums to discover trademark folk-art painting style. He lives "He had to die, to complete the story, the the type of signal flags ships used in the a good life, growing up on his island, cycle, the theme." 70 DOWN EAST Illustrations from Island Boy by Barbara Cooney. Copyright c Barbara Cooney, 1988. Used by arrangement with Viking Penguin, Inc. The move to Maine was a relatively won out, though, and she swept through recent development in Cooney's life. "I the art classes at Smith College. Despite loved Pepperell. We had a huge, mon- her degree, she considers herself largely strous house, great for raising children, self-taught in painting. Her paintings have and I had my own studio down at one a primitive, nineteenth-century feel to end." But the Boston metropolitan area them that seems ideal for children's books. has gone through changes that rankled She won a job as a book illustrator her. "It suddenly became a suburb, with after graduation. "It was torture going these instant Colonial homes springing from publisher to publisher with my port- up overnight and new construction eve- folio under my arm," she recalls. She re- rywhere. We figured that here in Maine, members her first three books as "really it will be a little while before it gets to dreadful, dreadful, horrible books." The that." first, The King Wreck Island, was based One of her two sons, longtime Edge- on a true story of a circus ship which sank comb resident Barnaby Porter, is build- at sea. Under Cooney's pen, all of the ani- ing a house on the shore next door to her mals survived and swam to an island, Walpole studio. Her other son, Charlie, is where they were discovered the next the adventurer in the family. Ten years winter by a mainland boy who walked out ago he navigated a modified kayak alone across the rarely frozen ice. "The ice around Cape Horn, exploring previously melts, stranding him on the island, and unknown sections of the there he remains for the next rugged coastline. He has eighty years, with only the returned to the area peri- "It is a simple circus animals for company. odically ever since, guid- message, Oh my, it was a terrible book. ing and working with Chil- But in a way, I've come full ean researchers to unearth really, that to circle from that book to Is- the region's history. have a land Boy, haven't I?" Although Maine has successful life For years she drew only rarely figured prominently in black and white. "I begged in Cooney's books, at least you do not for color, but one of my edi- directly, it has long been a have to be an tors said I had no color sense, source of inspiration for important and I believed him," she says her. Miss Rumphius was ruefully, as if still chafing at sparked by a story Cooney person. the remark. Chanticleer and heard from one of the car- the Fox changed that for- penters working on her Walpole house in ever. Today she works exclusively in 1976. "I had noticed that the lupines in color. With Island Boy just published, South Bristol seemed more numerous Cooney is already at work on her next and more beautiful than anywhere else in book, illustrating Alice McLerran's story Maine," Cooney recalls. "One of the men about the mystical western town of Roxa- told me about an elderly woman in Christ- boxen, Arizona. "I thought it was fantasy mas Cove called the Lupine Lady, be- at first," Cooney says, "but it turns out to EY recently completed a cycle cause she went about scattering lupine be a story, a place, that Alice's grand- r own. For decades she split seeds up and down the peninsula." mother and great-aunts created when they me between Pepperell, Massa- From that bare beginning, Cooney lived in Yuma, Arizona, as children. In- here her husband, Dr. Charles built a story about a little girl inspired by stead of imaginary friends, they created d a thriving medical practice her grandfather to leave the world more an entire imaginary town. And the mem- recent retirement, and the Wal- beautiful than she found it. She grows up ory of that linked them together all through n of South Bristol. This sum- to travel the globe, finally settling in a their lives. It's really quite fascinating." y settled in Maine permanently. storybook coastal town which bears a Cooney lays no claim to profound e her birth in Brooklyn, New startling resemblance to Damariscotta. philosophical insights about children's 917, "Maine is my heart's de- (And in one painting, on the shore in the books. "I like to do good work," she declares. "My grandmother distance, is a house that has the Zen-like explains simply, "and I like it that people and raised in Waldoboro, and quality of a Japanese temple.) There she find satisfaction in it. When they expect coming up here since I was strides the paths and roads spreading me to get up at conventions and offer e considers Maine, and espe- lupine seeds, bringing the beauty of the deep thoughts about children's literature, house on the river in Walpole, early summer blossoms to her new home. I feel a little uncomfortable." for her. "The first year I was in She may be uncomfortable pontifi- I turned out a Caldecott Award C OONEY grew updrawing and paint- cating before a live audience, but for the e Ox-Cart Man, SO that was a ing. "My mother was an artist, and thousands of children - of all ages - n." The house is now her stu- she gave me complete freedom who read her books, there is no doubt e and her husband have settled as long as I kept my brushes clean." The that, like Miss Rumphius, Barbara Cooney ne in Damariscotta, only ten young artist also wanted to be a ballet has found a special way "to make the way. dancer and a bacteriologist. The brushes world more beautiful." DECEMBER 1988 71