Sarah Orne Jewett's stories have long been treasured by readers for their faithful and tender portrayal of rural Maine and its people. Now Barbary Cooney has edited and illustrated one of the most famous of these country tales with love and understanding that match the author's own.

A White Heron is the story of Sylvy, who lives with her grandmother on a lonely little farm. For a playmate she has only the plodding, plaguey cow. But there never was such a child for straying about out of doors. She roams the woods, the fields and swamps, and knows by heart the birds and twilight moths, the brooks and berry bushes.

These fill her days until the great world, in the person of a cheerful lad with his gun and gamebag, puts out its hand to her. He is searching for the rare white heron, the wild, slender bird that floats and wavers over the marshes and over the woods of hemlock and pine. With him come excitement but also new and troubling thoughts for Sylvy.

Barbara Cooney's illustrations catch the peculiar beauty of the Maine countryside—the shadowed misty woods and the green swamp, the sunny birch-ringed pastures and the ocean. Pictures and story together bring us Sylvy's beautiful world where, one morning at daybreak, she watches the white heron and the sun-dazzled sea and learns that she must remain true to her own world and to her heart.

From the dust jacket