By the Basket Children’s book weaves historic tale of boy who learns more than a craft

BASKET MOON, written by Mary Lyn Ray, illustrated by Barbara Cooney, Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 1999, 30 pages, $15.95.

In the very young child’s world the sun rises and sets because Mom and Dad tell it to. Parental ideals and values have the authority and weight of, say, the Ten Commandments. Eventually into every life comes the realization that the outside world might not agree.

Maybe that moment of enlightenment becomes mildly embarrassing. Mom listens to Elvis (instead of the Backstreet Boys) and has turned the living room into a shrine for him. Maybe there’s a gut-wrenching tug of loyalties when parents try to shut out treasured friends. Resolving the conflict is a challenging part of growing up. For this reason Mary Lyn Ray’s “Basket Moon,” set in the long ago past, is very timely.

A boy finds it hard to wait for his chance to accompany his father to Hudson to sell the baskets his folks create from native trees. He carefully learns the secrets of the craft. Seasons pass, but each time that he feels he is old enough to make the trip, he is told not yet.

When he turns 9 his father finally permits him to go along. At first the journey is filled with enchantment and wonder. He commits all to memory to share with his mother: the orderly rows of an apple orchard, the vivid colors and smells of the goods at Luckyman’s Grocery, the broad Hudson River and its ships. They even are able to buy bananas right off a boat.

Then things get ugly. A man calls them hillbilly bushwhackers and says that basket making is all they know. The onlookers’ harsh laughter seems to circle the boy like crows all the way home. Baskets aren’t something to take pride in. They’re what hillbillies make. He will never go to Hudson again and he wants his father to stay home, too.

Fortunately the story doesn’t stop there. In a poetic and touching ending the boy rediscovers the beauty of his folks’ craft.

“Basket Moon” is the last book Maine’s own Barbara Cooney illustrated before her death last March at the age of 83. A palette of pastels and a folk-art style give it a vivid sense of place and time. Luminous shades of green bring dignity and strength to the trees the boy and his folks respectfully depend on for the materials for their baskets. The boy’s face exquisitely reflects his conflict and inner growth. In one especially poignant scene he stares out a door as his mother tries unsuccessfully to comfort him.

In a career spanning more than half a century Cooney illustrated more than 100 books. In addition to her own stories her art has graced the work of many authors such as Margaret Wise Brown. Her numerous honors include the Caldecott Medal and the Lupine Award.

Accolades and honors never diminished her modesty or playfulness. In a very revealing passage in a “Horn Book” story she claimed to have started out with no more talent than any other child.

“I started out ruining the wallpaper with crayons, like everybody else, and making eggs with arms and legs,” she said. “Most children start this way, and most children have the souls of artists. Some of these children stubbornly keep on being children even when they have grown up. Some of these stubborn children get to be artists. … I became an artist because I had access to materials and pictures, a minimum of instruction, and a stubborn nature.”

The heroine of perhaps her best loved book, “Miss Rumphius,” set out to make the world more beautiful. Whether she herself set out with the same goal, Cooney certainly succeeded in fulfilling it.