Miss Rumphius
by Barbara Cooney
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Book Reviews of Miss Rumphius
Book Review: A book that will stay in your heart forever.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of those rare picture books that is so beautiful and so wise that you ought to read it even if you donŐt have children. But if you have a child to share it with, do so immediately, and consider yourself privileged.In this book, you watch a little girl named Alice grow into an old, old woman, a retired librarian, named Miss Rumphius. Her life is filled with exciting adventures, but as she grows older, none of it feels like enough to her. She keeps recalling some advice her grandfather gave her when she was a child. He told her that in order to live a good life, she had to "do something to make the world more beautiful." But even as an old woman, she canŐt figure out what to do. Finally, realizing the joy sheŐs always gotten from flowers, especially lupines, she decides to share that joy with others by scattering lupine seeds everywhere she goes. She completely transforms the rocky landscape around her home. In the end, she tells her story to her young niece, who wonders how SHE will make the world more beautiful. And so the cycle continues.
My daughter, who is six, has talked about this book several times, and told me she hasnŐt yet figured out how she is going to make the world more beautiful. But the fact that she is thinking about it at such a young age makes me proud, and very happy to have found this lovely book to share with her.
Book Review: rather odd, but charmingly-illustrated book
Summary: 3 Stars
This book explains the proliferation of lupine flowers in a certain locale. A young woman leaves her home for adventure, only to return in her later years. She spreads flower seed in an attempt to bring beauty to the world, as directed by her grandfather. The illustrations are lovely, as is the setting itself. The tone is gentle.
However, the biggest problem with this well-put-together book is the message. Beauty is considered something of enormous value in this book. Yet this rather superficial interpretation of beauty seems to be the last-resort gift to the world of a spinster. My children found her solitude very disturbing and kept pointing it out to me.
You do not get the impression this solitude was because Miss Rumphius wanted a husband, children, or companions and never got them. You get the impression that she never thought a husband, children, or companions were as important as her books, travels or flowers. Or perhaps she didn't decide she wanted them until too late. She seemed to favor the beauty of flowers and landscape over the beauty of kindness, love, humor, charity, or the like. It didn't sit right with me, and it makes the tone of the book awfully glum for a children's book. My kids loved the pictures but didn't otherwise find it very engaging. It is rarely read in our bibliophile household.
Book Review: Nice moral but too hypocritical for me . . .
Summary: 2 Stars
After having MISS RUMPHIUS recommended to me the other day by a dear friend, I ordered it on amazon prime for my kids (ages 2 and 5). After reading the book, I'm sorry to say that I won't be giving it to my kids. Here's why: I LOVE the book's message that "you must do something to make the world more beautiful" (that's why the book was recommended to me, for its excellent life lesson) but I can't stand the hypocrisy of the fact that the "wise artist grandfather" in the book who teaches the young Miss Rumphius that valuable lesson spends his days "making figureheads for the prows of ships, AND CARVING INDIANS OUT OF WOOD TO PUT IN FRONT OF CIGAR STORES. For Alice's grandfather was an artist" (my caps for emphasis). There's even a full-page illustration of his workshop with the wooden "Indians" standing around in the background waiting to be stuck in front of cigar shops! So Alice's grandfather --and Barbara Cooney, the author-- thinks he's making the world more beautiful by perpetuating a racist stereotype?!? Yuk. Also, this book was first published in 1982, by which point the author should have known better.Book Review: Miss Rumphius
Summary: 4 Stars
Miss Rumphius is a very good book. It is about a little girl named Alice who lived in a city by the sea. She told her grandfather that when she grew up she would travel around the world and live in a little house by the sea. Her grandfather said that was all very well but she would also have to do something to make the world more beautiful. When Alice got older she traveled all over the world and saw many different things and did many neat things too. Then she bought a little house by the sea, but she still had not done anything to make the world more beautiful. One spring she was ill. When she looked out her bedroom window she could see the lupines she had planted the summer before. They were so pretty, she wished she could have planted more. When she got better, she went outside and found lupines all over the hill. She knew the wind must have done it. Then she had an idea; she would sprinkle lupine seeds everywhere she went. That was what she would do to make the world more beautiful. And she did.Book Review: Beatiful
Summary: 5 Stars
I just left home and school to live on my own as an intern in DC. I've been doing lots of responsible adult type activities, cooking, waking up early, cleaning etc and was feeling a little strange about feeling so old. As I was walking to work this morning, I took a slightly different route that had a house with lupines just covering their yard. They looked so beautiful in the morning. I immediately thought to myself "what was that book with these flowers??" and called up my lovely mother. It felt like a long lost dream. I could remember the symbolism, but not the specifics. When I was young, I think I was enthralled with little Alice being able to paint the clouds and even more so when she becomes a librarian and transforms the landscape by the sea. This is a truly amazing book. I'm going to walk to the library tonight and check it out again. It definitely made me appriciate beauty in the world as a child, and through my memory of it, as an adult.