Barbara Cooney

Barbara Cooney (August 6, 1917 – March 10, 2000) was an American writer and illustrator of 110 children's books, published for over sixty years. She received two Caldecott Medals for her work on Chanticleer and the Fox and Ox-Cart Man (1979), and a National Book Award for Miss Rumphius (1982). Her books have been translated into ten languages. where she attended Buckley Country Day School and later boarding school. She started drawing and painting early in life, and was encouraged by her mother but allowed to learn independently.

Cooney graduated from Smith College with a history degree in 1938, but continued working at art, taking classes on black and white drawing, etching, and lithography at the Art Students League of New York in 1940. She began to make connections in the publishing world. Her first professional illustration was for Ake and His World by the Swedish poet Bertil Malmberg, which was published in 1940, a year after she graduated. Soon after her service, she met and married journalist Guy Murchie in 1944. They had two children, Gretel and Barnaby, and divorced in 1947. Her work, particularly her black and white drawings, were influenced by Hokusai and Aubrey Beardsley.