Cooney, Barbara (1917–2000)
Cooney, Barbara (1917–2000)
American children's writer and illustrator. Born Aug 6, 1917, in Brooklyn, NY; died Mar 14, 2000; dau. of Russell Schenck (stockbroker) and Mae Evelyn (Bossert) Cooney (artist); had a twin brother; Smith College, BA, 1938; also attended Art Students League, 1940; m. Guy Murchie (war correspondent and author), Dec 1944 (div. Mar 1947); m. Charles Talbot Porter (physician), July 16, 1949; children: (1st m.) Gretel Goldsmith, Barnaby; (2nd m.) Charles Talbot Jr., Phoebe.
Author and illustrator who spent most of her life in Maine, won the Caldecott Medal for Chanticleer and the Fox (1959) and Ox-Cart Man (1980); other books written and illustrated include Miss Rumphius (1982), Island Boy (1988) and Hattie and the Wild Waves; also illustrated Margaret Wise Brown's The Little Fir Tree (1954), Edna Mitchell Preston's Squawk to the Moon, Little Goose (1974), Jean Colby's Lexington and Concord, 1775 (1975), Rumer Godden's The Story of Holly and Ivy (1985) and The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, among others. Received the Silver Medallion from University of Southern Mississippi (1975).
See also Twenty-Five Years A-Graying: The Portrait of a College Graduate, a Pictorial Study of the Class of 1938 at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, Based on Statistics Gathered in 1963 for the Occasion of Its 25th Reunion (1963).