Miss Rumphius

Title: Miss Rumphius
Author: Barbara Cooney
Genre: Realistic Fiction

Miss Rumphius is the tale of a young girl named Alice who promises her grandfather that before she dies she will do three things for him: go to faraway places, live beside the sea, and most importantly to make the world more beautiful. As Alice grows older, she moves away from her home town and becomes a librarian. The children at the library now call her Miss Rumphius. She often visits the plant conservatory and breathes in the sweet smell of tropical plants. After visiting the conservatory one day, she decides that it is time to fulfill her first wish to her grandfather, to visit faraway places. She at visits snowy mountains and tropical islands, and her final destination leads her to Egypt. In Egypt, she falls off a camel and hurts her back. She realizes that she has become old and that it is time to move on to her second wish, to live by the sea. Miss Rumphius realizes that she is getting old and due to her back injury it is difficult for her to get around like she used to. One day while lying in her bed, she looks out the window to see the beautiful blooming lupine flowers she had planted the previous spring. When she feels well enough, she goes on a small walk, and realizes that the wind and birds had scattered some of the lupine seeds she had planted. Lupines now grew all along the cliffside. Miss Rumphius now realized how to fulfill her third promise to her grandfather. She gathered lupine seeds and began to walk all around town, scattering the seeds everywhere she went. Her back no longer hurt her as she now had a purpose. When the spring came, there were lupines everywhere as far as the eye could see. Miss Rumphius was very old now, and had a granddaughter of her own. Her granddaughter promised that she would one day fulfill the same three wishes that Miss Rumphius had completed for her grandfather. The book ends on a beautiful image of the hillside covered with lupines, as Miss Rumphius's granddaughter wonders how she will make the world a more beautiful place.

This book is full of beautiful soft images of seaside cottages, beautiful flowers, and faraway places.
In addition to the general aesthetic of the book, Miss Rumphius has an underlying message that envokes children to think what they can contribute to make the world a better place. After reading this story, I think a fitting lesson for students would be to have them write and reflect on how they would choose to make the world a more beautiful place.