A Barbara Cooney Travelogue

exploring and expanding

Living in northwestern Vermont, we were lucky enough to be in the path of totality for last week’s solar eclipse. Here’s the one picture I took. I wanted to be present and off my phone, to notice what was happening around me, rather than trying to take capture an image that could never really compare to the original experience, anyway. I’m really glad I did that. I can’t even describe what totality was like except to say I felt it with my whole body. Eclipse chasers? I get it now. Totality was odd and wondrous and there was so much happening all at once but it was also very still? I don’t think I’ll ever have a sensation like that again.

The eclipse felt special because the day was a shared experience for so many of us, doing nothing except for being out in nature and out in the world, and how many of those moments do we have in modern life? It invited quiet and attention and when totality happened all I could think about was that I needed to be still. I needed to be still. I want more of that in life, and not just every hundred years or so. And not just in the case of natural phenomena, although nature helps. But really, it’s experiencing things out in the world (rather than online) that get me there.

A few months ago, I wrote about the beginning of Barbara Cooney career, where she worked primarily in a black and white medium called scratchboard, a meticulous process that required deep focus and attention. Her skilled work won Cooney the Caldecott for Chanticleer and the Fox in 1959— a project with many creative lessons and takeaways (you can read that here).

Thanks to the success of Chanticleer, Cooney finally achieved the greater freedom she longed for in illustration projects. She began working more in color, and traveled extensively to do research on her subjects. Among her many, many trips, Cooney visited France for a translation of Mother Goose, Ireland for the book Shaun and the Boat: An Irish Story, Greece for a cycle of Homeric hymns, and Mexico for the books Tortilliitas para Mama and Other Nursery Rhymes and Spirit Child: A Story of the Nativity. Cooney said: “I knocked around a great deal of Mexico in a little yellow rented Volkswagen. On that trip, I was especially interested in studying the land and the light. The colors in Mexico are astonishingly, deliciously brilliant.”¹

Here’s an image from Cooney’s book Tortillitas para Mama:

And here’s how illustrator Becca Stadtlander captured Cooney’s description of her travels through Mexico for World More Beautiful:

From the upcoming World More Beautiful: The Life and Art of Barbara Cooney. Illustration by Becca Stadtlander.

From her Greek travels, here’s Cooney’s cover art for Demeter and Persephone:

And here’s the stunning way illustrator Becca Stadtlander captured Cooney’s journey through Greece:

From the upcoming World More Beautiful: The Life and Art of Barbara Cooney. Illustration by Becca Stadtlander.

I love picturing Cooney— in a pre-smartphone, pre-translation app, pre-social media era— “knocking about,” as she would say, exploring and absorbing and taking in the specific colors and light of a place, all to create gorgeous art for children’s books.

As she grew older and her years of extensive travel slowed, Barbara Cooney also looked back on her journeys—- fictionalizing them—- in the pages of Miss Rumphius. Alice Rumphius’s three main goals, from the time she is very young, are to travel to faraway places, to live by the sea, and to do something to make the world more beautiful. Miss Rumphius accomplishes all three, and I’d say Cooney did, too— but that’s a story for a future post. In the meantime, I hope you’ll consider pre-ordering World More Beautiful: The Life and Art of Barbara Cooney, which will be published on August 6th (Cooney’s birthday).

Random Good Things

• Remembering Faith Ringgold, whose work I first encountered as a young adult at Simmons College. Her work in Tar Beach really opened my mind to the possibilities of what a picture book can be.

• Speaking of picture books, I’m longing to go to The Rabbit hOle in Kansas City, the new immersive picture book museum (That Blueberries for Sal kitchen! The Good Night Moon bedroom!). It looks like a gentler, kid-friendlier Meow Wolf. You can read about The Rabbit hOle here and here.

• Because it’s spring, I’m thinking about my garden (only a few more weeks until the last frost date!) and this wonderful look at seed catalogs by Jill Lepore.

Books I’ve Read and Loved Recently (for Adults)

• So Late in the Day: Stories of Men and Women by Claire Keegan

• What It Is by Lynda Barry

• Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Books I’ve Read and Loved Recently (Picture Books)

• Fungi Grow by Maria Gianferrari and Diana Sudyka

• A Letter for Bob by Kim Rogers and Johnathan Nelson

• Signs of Hope: The Revolutionary Art of Sister Corita Kent by Mara Rockliff and Melissa Sweet

*Please note that all books mentioned above contain affiliate links to Bookshop.org, a site that helps support local independent bookstores.

1. “Barbara Cooney.” Something About the Author: Facts and Pictures About Authors and Illustrators of Books for Young People, edited by Anne Commire, Vol. 59, Gale Research Inc., 1990, pp. 47-55.