For some time I have wanted to correlate book reviews with author birthdays, but I never seemed able to pull off the timing. When it came to my attention that June 28 is the birthday of British poet-painter Cicely Mary Barker (1895–1973), it seemed an auspicious occasion to complete another back burner project, a collection of reviews about creation care.
My husband’s cousins introduced us to Barker’s charming seasonal/botanical paintings and poems when our daughter was in preschool. I loved learning about nature while immersed in the mystique with which Barker infused it. (Her Flower Fairies of the Autumn volume appears here: Autumn Picture Books). I was also intrigued to discover she was a devout Christian, a fact reflected overtly in some but not all of her books, as well as in her Christmas cards and installations for churches. Among several online biographies is this from current publisher Penguin Books: Flower Fairies. Cicely Mary Barker and Her Art, by Jane Laing, lamentably out of print, contains an expanded biography as well as many of Barker’s seasonal and devotional paintings.