About the Author

Barbara Cooney was anAmericanwriter andillustratorof over 100children's books, published over sixty years. She won twoCaldecott Medals, which are awarded to the year's best-illustrated U.S.picture book,and aNational Book Award. Her books have been translated into 10 languages.

Reviews

Gr 1-3‘Cooney once again brings her unique vision to biography. Beginning the story with Eleanor's Roosevelt's mother's disappointment at her birth, the author emphasizes the girl's lonely and often fearful childhood. By the time she was nine, both of her parents were dead, and she lived with her grandmother. At 15, Eleanor was sent to boarding school in London; when she returned home three years later, she had gained a confident understanding of her own unique strengths. The book ends with Eleanor's public role still to come. A brief afterword provides information about her worldwide influence in her later life. For young readers, however, the important story is of Eleanor's childhood and the many problems she overcame. Cooney's paintings are well suited to her subject and convey a sense of the past through muted colors and careful details. By showing the young Eleanor at the fringes of the pictures on many pages, the artist emphasizes her subject's isolation and loneliness. Toward the end of the story, however, Eleanor is squarely in the center of the page. Cooney thus accentuates Eleanor's coming out, her character now fully formed in all its quiet dignity.‘Barbara Kiefer, Teachers College, Columbia University, NY

The privileged though painful childhood of First Lady and humanitarian Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) is chronicled with tenderness and care in Caldecott Medalist Cooney's (Emily; The Ox-Cart Man) memorable picture book biography. Skillfully compressing a bounty of detail, the author/artist focuses on Eleanor's emotional life as a childhood "ugly duckling": "From the beginning the baby was a disappointment to her mother," Cooney begins. The tale ends with Eleanor's years at Allenswood, the English boarding school whose gifted headmistress helped transform Eleanor into a confident young woman. Cooney wisely refrains from specifically naming the Roosevelt family, allowing children to experience the text as an entertaining story as well as a piece of history. Creamy, reverently rendered paintings portray fashionable Manhattan, Hudson River Valley and Long Island settings; Cooney's intricate reproductions of houses and her recreations of period clothing and interiors are pleasures to behold as well as visual history lessons. An afterword sheds light on Eleanor Roosevelt's career (but would have benefited from the inclusion of her birth, marriage and death dates); most readers will probably want to explore more fully the groundbreaking achievements outlined here. Ages 5-up. (Oct.)