Barbara Cooney's Books and Reviews
by S.A.M.M.
Miss Rumphius
Miss Rumphius is a very good book. It is about a little girl named Alice who lived in a city by the sea. She told her grandfather that when she grew up she would travel around the world and live in a little house by the sea. Her grandfather said that was all very well but she would also have to do something to make the world more beautiful. When Alice got older she traveled all over the world and saw many different things and did many neat things too. Then she bought a little house by the sea, but she still had not done anything to make the world more beautiful. One spring she was ill. When she looked out her bedroom window she could see the lupines she had planted the summer before. They were so pretty, she wished she could have planted more. When she got better, she went outside and found lupines all over the hill. She knew the wind must have done it. Then she had an idea; she would sprinkle lupine seeds everywhere she went. That was what she would do to make the world more beautiful. And she did.
A GARLAND OF GAMES
& Other Diversions
A GARLAND OF GAMES And Other Diversions is a colonial alphabet book. For every letter there is a short rhyme or paragraph that follows a story. It tells about what kind of toys and games they played back then. I really like the illustrations a lot. They are very colorful and the skies are all different colors. Sometimes two letters on a page go together in a story.
The Ox-Cart Man
(Written by Donald Hall) This tale is about a man and his family who live in America. Every year the man hitches up his ox to the wagon and drives a long way into town; trading all of the goods his family had made the preceding year. In town he buys presents and useful things for all of his family and starts home. This story shows all the preparation for the trip by getting the goods to make their living. It is simple, yet it truly shows you what people did during that time in America.
Hattie and the Wild Waves
Hattie is a young girl who is rich. She lives in a house on Bushwick Avenue. Her father builds houses, her mother is a musician, her sister wants to be a beautiful bride, and her brother wants to join his fathers business. Hattie wants to be an artist. In the summer Hattie and her family go to their summer house in Far Rockaway. Hattie sometimes would take long walks along the beach with her dog Ebbie, and the waves seemed to be talking to them. In the fall they go back to the Bushwick Avenue house but soon her father sells the Far Rockaway house and buys a new summer house far away from it... This is a very good book, and the pictures are very colorful and imaginative. I highly recommend it.
Island Boy
Island Boy is a story about a boy who grew upon an island and his life once he moved off the island. When he was a boy he had five brothers and six sisters. In the winter they slid down snow covered slopes and in the summer they helped their mother and father with the work. One summer while helping his father gather some eggs Matthais found a orphaned sea gull and brought it home to raise. Barbara Cooney's vivid descriptions and knowledge of how Island life in Maine could be gives this book a great feeling of realness and truth. All combined with an fantastic story line.