A 4-year-old we know (“Actually, four and a half, Dad”) can tell you precisely why lupine brighten Maine fields and hillsides and spill along the roadways. The Lupine Lady put them there. You know the Lupine Lady. She was Miss Rumphius and she wanted to make the world more beautiful.

Botanically speaking, the 4-year-old is all wet. But there is this: The world was made more beautiful, not by Miss Rumphius, but by the author who created her, Barbara Cooney of Damariscotta. With her death in Portland last week at age 83, she leaves behind a collection of writing and illustration that is as captivating and perennial as the lupine all over her adopted state of Maine.

Though she wrote more than 100 children’s books beginning in 1940, Barbara Cooney will be best remembered for “Miss Rumphius,” “Ox-cart Man,” “Island Boy,” “Hattie and the Wild Waves” and, throughout her career, hundreds and hundreds of charming illustrations. Her final book was “Basket Moon,” published in September 1999. Through six decades of work, she won the Caldicott Medal twice, the American Book Award once and was nominated for the National Medal of Arts in 1998 in addition to many other honors. Two years earlier, Gov. Angus King declared Dec. 12 Barbara Cooney Day.

Like many renown authors who called Maine home, she was not born here — Brooklyn, N.Y., has that honor — but came to live beside the sea and appreciate Maine life. Beyond her books, Barbara Cooney will be remembered in Maine for her generosity, most notably, her substantial donations to Damariscotta to help build a new library.

It was a fortunate meeting, Barbara Cooney and Maine. Of all the far away places she might have lived, she chose here and spread lupine seeds far and wide.