Once, long ago, Miss Rumphius was a little girl named Alice who lived in a city by the sea. When she grew up, she wanted to travel and see faraway places and then come home to live beside the sea, just as her grandfather had. But there was one thing more she had to do.

"What is that?" Alice asked her grandfather.

"You must do something to make the world more beautiful," he told her.

Little Alice grew up to become Miss Rumphius, and true to her promise to herself, she traveled all over the world. Then she came home to live in a house by the sea. Miss Rumphius was almost happy.

But there was one more thing she had to do.

Barbara Cooney has illustrated more than one hundred picture books, including two Caldecott Award winners. In this simple, beautiful, and very personal story, drawn from the imagination and from the heart, she gives us the life—and the legacy—of an artist.

From the dust jacket