名人轶事:Barbara Cooney

（单词翻译）

Broadcast: January 30, 2005

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ANNOUNCER:

Now, the VOA Special English program, PEOPLE IN AMERICA. Today, Shirley

Griffith and Steve Ember tell about the life of Barbara Cooney, the creator¹

of many popular children’s books. She died in March, two thousand.

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VOICE ONE:

For sixty years Barbara Cooney created children’s books. She wrote some. And

she provided² pictures for her own books and for books written by others. Her

name appears on one hundred ten books in all.

The last book was published six months before her death. It is called "Basket

Moon." It was written by Mary Lyn Ray. It tells the story of a boy who lived

a century ago with his family in the mountains in New York state. His family

makes baskets that are sold in town. One magazine describes Barbara Cooney's

paintings in "Basket Moon" as quiet and beautiful. It says they tie together

"the basket maker’s natural world and the work of his craft³."


VOICE TWO:

Barbara Cooney was known⁴ for her carefully detailed⁵ work. One example is in

her artwork for the book "Eleanor." It is about Eleanor Roosevelt, who became

the wife of President Franklin Roosevelt. Mizz Cooney made sure that a dress

worn⁶ by Eleanor as a baby was historically correct down to the smallest

details.

Another example of her detailed work is in her retelling of "Chanticleer and

the Fox." She took the story from the "Canterbury Tales" by English poet

Geoffrey Chaucer. Barbara Cooney once said that every flower and grass in her

pictures grew in Chaucer's time in fourteenth-century England.

VOICE ONE:

Barbara Cooney wondered at times if her concern about details was worth the

effort. "How many children will know or care?" she said. "Maybe not a single

one. Still I keep piling it on. Detail after detail. Whom am I pleasing --

besides myself? I don't know. Yet if I put enough in my pictures, there may

be something for everyone. Not all will be understood, but some will be

understood now and maybe more later."

Mizz Cooney gave that speech as she accepted the Nineteen Fifty-Nine

Caldecott Medal for "Chanticleer and the Fox." The American Library

Association⁷ gives the award each year to the artist of a picture book for

children. She received a second Caldecott Medal for her folk-art paintings in

the book, "Ox-Cart Man."

VOICE TWO:

Barbara Cooney’s first books appeared in the nineteen forties. At first she

created pictures using a method called scratchboard.

The scratchboard is made by placing white clay⁸ on a hard surface. Thick black

ink is spread over the clay. The artist uses a sharp knife or other tool to

make thousands of small cuts in the top. With each cut of the black ink, the

white clay shows through. To finish the piece the artist may add different

colors.

Scratchboard is hard work, but this process can create fine detail. Later,

Barbara Cooney began to use pen and ink, watercolor, oil paints, and other

materials.

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VOICE ONE:

Barbara Cooney was born in New York City in nineteen seventeen. Her mother

was an artist and her father sold stocks¹⁰ on the stock⁹ market. Barbara

graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts in nineteen thirty-eight with a

major in art history.

During World War Two Barbara Cooney joined the Women's Army Corps¹¹. She also

got married, but her first marriage did not last long. Then she married a

doctor, Charles Talbot Porter¹². They were married until her death. She had

four children.

VOICE TWO:

Barbara Cooney said that three of her books were as close to a story of her

life as she would ever write. One is "Miss Rumphius," published in nineteen

eighty-two. We will tell more about "Miss Rumphius" soon.

The second book is called "Island Boy." The boy is named Matthias. He is the

youngest of twelve children in a family on Tibbetts Island, Maine. Matthias

grows up to sail around the world. But throughout¹³ his life he always returns

to the island of his childhood. Barbara Cooney also traveled around the

world, but in her later years always returned to live on the coast of Maine.

VOICE ONE:

The third book about Barbara Cooney’s life is called "Hattie and the Wild

Waves." It is based on the childhood of her mother. The girl Hattie lives in

a wealthy family in New York. One days she tells her family that she wants to

be a painter when she grows up. The other children make fun of the idea of a

girl wanting to paint houses.

But, as the book explains, “Hattie was not thinking about houses. She was

thinking about the moon in the sky and the wind in the trees and the wild

waves of the ocean."
Hattie tries different jobs as she grows up. At last, she follows her dream

and decides to "paint her heart out."#p#副标题#e#
VOICE TWO:

Of all of Barbara Cooney's books, the one that seems to affect people the

most is "Miss Rumphius." It won the American Book Award. It was first

published in nineteen eighty-two by Viking-Penguin. "Miss Rumphius" is Alice

Rumphius. A young storyteller in the book tells the story which begins with

Alice as a young girl:

VOICE THREE:

"In the evening Alice sat on her grandfather's knee and listened to his

stories of faraway places. When he had finished, Alice would say, 'When I

grow up, I too will go to faraway places, and when I grow old, I too will

live beside the sea.’

‘That is all very well, little Alice,' said her grandfather, 'but there is a

third thing you must do.'

'What is that?' asked Alice.

‘You must do something to make the world more beautiful,' said her

grandfather.

'All right,' said Alice. But she did not know what that could be.

In the meantime¹⁴ Alice got up and washed her face and ate porridge for

breakfast. She went to school and came home and did her homework.

And pretty soon she was grown up."

VOICE ONE:

Alice traveled the world. She climbed tall mountains where the snow never

melted¹⁵. She went through jungles and across deserts. One day, however, she

hurt her back getting off a camel.

VOICE THREE:

“'What a foolish thing to do,' said Miss Rumphius. 'Well, I have certainly

seen faraway places. Maybe it is time to find my place by the sea.' And it

was, and she did.

Miss Rumphius was almost perfectly¹⁶ happy. 'But there is still one more thing

I have to do,' she said. 'I have to do something to make the world more

beautiful.'

But what? 'The world is already pretty nice,' she thought, looking out over

the ocean."

VOICE TWO:

The next spring Miss Rumphius' back was hurting again. She had to stay in bed

most of the time. Through her bedroom window she could see the tall blue and

purple and rose-colored lupine flowers she had planted the summer before.

VOICE THREE:

"'Lupines,' said Miss Rumphius with satisfaction. 'I have always loved

lupines the best. I wish I could plant more seeds this summer so that I could

have still more flowers next year.'

But she was not able to."

VOICE ONE:

A hard winter came, then spring. Miss Rumphius was feeling better. She could

take walks again. One day she came to a hill where she had not been in a long

time. "'I don't believe my eyes,' she cried when she got to the top. For

there on the other side of the hill was a large patch¹⁷ of blue and purple and

rose-colored lupines!”

VOICE THREE:

"'It was the wind,' she said as she knelt¹⁸ in delight¹⁹. ‘It was the wind that

brought the seeds from my garden here! And the birds must have helped.' Then

Miss Rumphius had a wonderful idea!"

VOICE TWO:

That idea was to buy lupine seed -- lots of it. All summer, wherever she

went, Miss Rumphius would drop handfuls²⁰ of seeds: over fields, along roads,

around the schoolhouse, behind the church. Her back did not hurt her any

more. But now some people called her "That Crazy Old Lady."

The next spring there were lupines everywhere. Miss Rumphius had done the

most difficult thing of all. The young storyteller in the book continues:

VOICE THREE:

"My Great-aunt Alice, Miss Rumphius, is very old now. Her hair is very white.

Every year there are more and more lupines. Now they call her the Lupine

Lady. ...

"'When I grow up,' I tell her, 'I too will go to faraway places and come home

to live by the sea.'

'That is all very well, little Alice,' says my aunt, 'but there is a third

thing you must do.'

'What is that?' I ask.

"'You must do something to make the world more beautiful.'"

VOICE ONE:

Many readers, young and old, would agree that Barbara Cooney did just that.

VOICE TWO:

Many of Barbara Cooney's later books took place in the small northeastern

state of Maine. She spent summers there when she was a child, then moved to

Maine in her later years.

She loved Maine. She gave her local library almost a million dollars. The

state showed its love for her. In nineteen ninety-six, the governor²¹ of Maine

declared Barbara Cooney a State Treasure.

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ANNOUNCER:

This Special English program was written by Avi Arditti and produced by Paul

Thompson. Your narrators²² were Shirley Griffith and Steve Ember. Adrienne

Arditti was the storyteller. Join us again next week for another PEOPLE IN

AMERICA program on the Voice of America.