Born in New York, Barbara Cooney (1917-2000) was a prolific children’s book author and illustrator. She wrote and illustrated over a dozen of her own titles and almost a hundred for other writers.
She collaborated with a range of other children’s authors, including Margaret Wise Brown, Jane Goodsell, Elinor Lander Horwitz, Phyllis Krasilovsky, Felix Salten, Ruth Crawford Seeger and the poet, Donald Hall.
King of Wreck Island was the first book Cooney both wrote and illustrated in 1941. In 1959, she won the Caldecott Medal for Chanticleer and the Fox (at the top of the montage above) – an adaptation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. She won the award once again in 1980 with Ox-Cart Man.
Of all the books I have done, ‘Miss Rumphius,’ ‘Island Boy,’ and ‘Hattie and the Wild Waves,’ are the closest to my heart. These three are as near as I ever will come to an autobiography.
Many of the books she has written and/or illustrated are available on Etsy and Amazon – both in the UK and USA.
In 1996, the 12th of December was declared Barbara Cooney Day in her adopted state of Maine.
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