In honor of my recent summer trip to Maine, where I toured the public library children’s wing named after Barbara Cooney, in Damariscotta, I’m sharing this picture book. Because Barbara by Sarah Mackenzie is about Barbara Cooney, a real person. She first gained fame with her illustrations of the book below, for which she earned a Caldecott Medal.

Then she got another Caldecott Medal for this book:

She solidified her fame with her book Miss Rumphius, about a real woman, Hilda Hamlin, who planted lupine seeds wherever she went. It’s also loosely based on Barbara’s life of world traveling.

I love Because Barbara because it tells the story of a woman who raised a family as a wonderful mother, and along the way modeled a passion for learning and creating beauty. She made beautiful illustrations for picture books, and wrote beautiful words for some of the books she illustrated. The book shows that a woman can be a wonderful mother and have a career compatible with mothering, not external to mothering but woven in and out of her mothering. Barbara would have been a great example of the Thomas Jefferson Education (TJED) key of great learning and teaching which says “You, not them.” (Some people have added onto this by saying “You, with them.” She seems to have done both, as far as I can tell.) The book shows her living family life with her artist easel in the center of the family home, amidst the commotion of life with four young children. She didn’t homeschool, as far as I know, but she exuded a love of learning.

The illustrations, by Eileen Ryan Ewen, are so wholesome and fresh, done with water color and colored pencil. They are dreamy! I love them so much! (I also find it fascinating that the author, Sarah Mackenize, is also doing the same thing, creating beauty like Barbara did, with her family and alongside her family, by doing her podcast and writing books with the imprint Waxwing Books.)

The author, Sarah Mackenzie, deftly weaves the phrase, “Because Barbara did whatever she put her mind to, she…” throughout the the whole book. She does this to show how determined this woman was. Because she was determined, her talent bloomed.

Her talents allowed her to become the following things: a first lieutenant in the army (the book never mentions that, I learned it form wikipedia, and I find it fascinating that this tiny elfin woman was in the army, the WAC!), a doctor’s wife, a mother, an artist, a children’s picture book author and illustrator, a world traveler, a “greedy reader,” “an avid gardener,” a “merrymaker,” and a “picnicker of the first water.” (The back matter of the book gives those words for some of those roles, with some tidbits about each.) She was also a promoter of children’s literacy and a generous giver. She gave $850,000 to the Skidumpha Library in Damariscotta, Maine to renovate the library. On top of that, she organized an auction for children’s picture book illustrators to raise more money for the library.

This is definitely a keeper of a book! It’s one to get for your Morning Basket if you homeschool, and even if you don’t, get it anyway, read it aloud again and again to yourself and your loved ones. It’s so inspirational! Barbara indeed followed the mantra of her grandfather, “You must do something to make the world more beautiful.”

Those words show up in her Miss Rumphius picture book. She exemplified the words by creating all of these beautiful books. The phrase is now forever inscribed in stone in the sidewalk of the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Maine. (I learned that fun fact from my sister Emily’s blog over here. Barbara lived in Maine like Emily does now.) When we are each determined like Barbara was, we can create beauty in the world like Barbara did. In this crisis world we live in, we need all the beauty we can get!

Please enjoy Sarah Mackenzie’s podcast about Barbara here! So yummy!