A Review of Hattie and the Wild Waves by Barnara Cooney
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I still have my childhood copy of Hattie and the Wild Waves by Barbara Cooney. It’s wrinkled, the spine is peeling, and the pages are starting to tear loose from their bindings. Yet the pressed treasure within is still as vibrant as the first day I opened the paperback book, and my eyes drank in the deepest dreams that travel across time through the lives of mother and daughter.
Cooney is one of my favorite illustrators of such splendiferous books as Roxaboxen and Miss Rumphius. Her lines are soft and gentle, yet filled with intricate details in every nook and cranny. Hattie and the Wild Waves is a tribute to her mother, Mae Bossert Cooney, and takes us on her journey to becoming an artist.
The story opens with Hattie and her brother, Vollie, and sister, Pfiffi, discussing what they wish to achieve when they grow up. Pfiffi wishes to become the most beautiful of brides while Vollie wants to follow in his father’s steps in the family’s woodworking business. As for Hattie, her heart is set on painting, and her thoughts filled with “the moon in the sky and the wind in the trees and the wild waves of the ocean.”
Hattie is so entranced by “picture-making,” that even falling sick cannot stop her. In fact, these interludes give her the perfect opportunity “to make pictures from morning until night, interrupted only by bowls of milk toast and broth.” I particularly love this passage, because it reminds me that even when health issues flare or anxiety tangles one’s brain into knots, it’s not truly the end. Dreams are stubborn little things, after all, and spring back in the most unexpected of ways.
Cooney’s illustrations bring all the keenest moments of Hattie’s life into focus. From the bow of the family’s yacht, The Coronet, where salty breezes take “all the curl out of her hair,” and overflow Hattie's mind with fresh ideas for artwork, to her summer haven, Far Rockaway, a house beside the ocean. Here, Hattie’s solitary walks on the beach with only her tiny black dog fill her with boundless questions as she takes in the variable toss of stormy sky and sea spray.
“‘Oh, Ebbie,’ she would say, picking up the little dog, ‘what are the wild waves saying?’”
This same question follows us all through life as the clamor of our heart tosses our own deepest unnamed wishes like star foam. Hattie doesn’t get an answer right away, and her young heart must set such questions aside when her beloved Far Rockaway is later sold.
The reader follows Hattie through many homes in the story, from “the red-brick house on Bushwick Avenue,” to the grand castle-like estate “The Oaks” in Long Island. Through every season of change, her little paint box and Ebbie go with her. It doesn’t matter if she can’t play piano beautifully like her mother, or stitch elegant needlework like her sister. For Hattie’s true passion lies in capturing black swans gliding across a pond on her canvas.
Eventually, the three siblings grow up, and Hattie’s sister marries in a grand ceremony while her brother travels for work on family business. Only Hattie remains with her parents in a towering hotel that has a sweeping view of the East River and New York City. Sometimes, Hattie can paint the Statue of Liberty or even the shimmer of the ocean. However, more frequently she must relinquish the brush as she finds herself caught up in daily social demands.
In our own lives, there are times where we must drop the dream, as well—but not forever. No, our little whisper will aria anew when we least expect it. One night, while attending the opera, Hattie hears a woman sing so soulfully from the depths of her heart, that she can’t deny her own feelings anymore.
She can’t waver one second longer: “The time had come, she realized, for her to paint her heart out.”
The next day, Hattie enrolls in an art institute and then takes a trolley to Coney Island to meet her dear old friend, the ocean. The attractions are mostly shut down as the weather is fiercely inhospitable and “spitting snow.” Yet a paper scrap from a fortune-telling booth and the wild, breaking waves both echo the truth that she’s known, all along:
“You will make beautiful, beautiful pictures.”
To this, Hattie finally acknowledges, “Oh, yes, I shall.”
I love the word “shall.” It’s stronger than just a wish, for it means “to express what is inevitable.” And Hattie, in all her glorious will, is inevitable.
Yet the older and more worn I get by time, the easier it is to forget what my own wild waves are saying. Rereading Barbara Cooney’s lovely illustrated homage to her mother reminds me that even if you drop a dream, the waves will return it. Maybe they’ll tumble it around like sea glass first, but when we’re ready to receive it again, the dream will return with new gloss.
A few post-review thoughts . . .
If I hadn’t joined Substack, I probably wouldn’t be writing this little review of Hattie and the Wild Waves. Why not? I simply wouldn’t feel a compelling drive to do so, and would be content with a quiet, unexpressed fondness for my favorite children’s book.
But I made the motto of The Luniferous Gazette “Weird. Weekly. Wondrous.” It certainly makes for a pretentious boast, or a tall challenge to ink from the deepest parts of my soul, heart—whatever one calls a lost repository of stray wishes these days.
I must confess that I was a bit downcast last week when I read multiple Substack posts warning about how this platform is changing and supposedly becoming more like other social media platforms; inundated with an overabundance of notes, writers, and influencers, etc.
Hi! Bless my sparklestars, I guess I must include myself among that paltry throng of newcomers.
When my husband urged me to consider joining Substack after reading how it was a platform geared specifically towards writers, I didn’t realize that I was a part of a mass influx of people this year. But I’m happy to be here regardless of whether the Almighty Algorithm notices me or not. It never has before, so I presume we shall continue mutually ignoring each other.
My personal opinion? Ignore the doom stats and allow yourself the freedom to have fun playing in this digital playground, whatever that means for you.
I don’t know of any other social media platform that offers so many multimodal ways to communicate for free. Now, I’m contemplating turning into a podcast princess and recording some of my novels just for the joy of it next year. While other platforms feel more like pretty folders for random thoughts, organizing ink dreams on Substack reminds me of opening my Trapper Keeper in sixth grade: a deluxe delight!
And now I can include my childhood book friend, Hattie. I would love to know more about yours.
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| Princess photobombs the book spotlight. |
Sources:
Cooney, Barbara. Hattie and the Wild Waves. Scholastic Inc. 1992.
“Shall.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shall. Accessed 12 Nov. 2025.
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