"Don't just stand there, Granny. Come in, please," said her mother to the shy child waiting in the doorway. "I call her 'Granny,'" she told her guest, "because she is so funny and old-fashioned looking."

Eleanor Roosevelt's childhood was a curious combination of wealth and privilege, and terrible sadness and loss. Left motherless at eight, and deprived of the company of the father who adored her, she grew up in the cheerless household of her Grandma Hall, lonely and ill at ease with other children. It was only upon leaving home for school in England that Eleanor began to discover in herself the qualities of intelligence, compassion, and strength that later made her a remarkable woman.

Barbara Cooney's Eleanor is a meticulously researched picture of life among the wealthy at the turn of the century: the grand estates and town houses, the opulent late-nineteenth-century interiors. But more importantly, Eleanor captures the essence of the poignant little girl whose indomitable spirit would make her one of our greatest and most beloved first ladies.

From the dust jacket