Robert McCloskey was the quintessential Mainer from away. A resident for nearly 60 years, he was originally from Ohio and beautifully expressed a love of the state through his painting and words. His work was a way of seeing Maine that made some of its simplest pleasures sparkle.

Mr. McCloskey, who died at age 88 Monday on Deer Isle, was born on Sept. 14, 1914, in Hamilton, Ohio, and when he was 26 created a wonderful story and illustrations about a bare-foot boy named Lentil, the name of his first book. Lentil lives in the small town of Alto, Ohio, teaches himself to play the harmonica and becomes a hero for a day. The next year, 1941, Mr. McCloskey went from boy to duck in what would become his most famous story, “Make Way for Ducklings,” an endearing story about a duck family set in Boston’s Public Gardens.

Mr. McCloskey arrived in Maine and showed Maine to the rest of the world through his books “Blueberries for Sal,” “One Morning in Maine” and “Time of Wonder” – lyrical stories about the small events that stay with a child forever: a coming storm, a visit by boat to town, a lost tooth and blueberry picking. Even the fanciful idea of Sal and a bear cub, both out for blueberries, mistakenly following each other’s mother somehow would seem likely to a child. His 1963 book, “Burt Dow, Deep-Water Man,” is a whale of a fishing tale in the best Maine tradition.

Maine made Mr. McCloskey its own and he, in turn, presented readers with a Maine that was friendly, down to earth (or mud, when clamming), scenic, interesting and a bit mysterious. It was, in all his books set here, a place very much worth exploring. Mr. McCloskey twice won the Caldecott Medal, the American Library Association’s annual award for children’s book illustration.

Some time ago, Mr. McClosky commented, “Most of my friends and neighbors just don’t seem to see as I do, even looking at simple things like a ball of string. But I’m not a nut, really, as anybody can see. I have one foot resting on reality and the other foot planted firmly on a banana peel.” A banana peel near the coast of Maine, he might have added.