Island Boy is a 1988 book by Barbara Cooney

Barbara Cooney

Barbara Cooney was an American children's author and illustrator of more than 200 books and double Caldecott Medalist. She has written books for six decades...

. It tells the story of a boy named Matthias, who travels around the world but eventually returns to his home on Tibbetts Island in Maine

Maine

Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...

. Cooney described it as being, with Miss Rumphius

Miss Rumphius

Miss Rumphius is a children’s fiction book by Barbara Cooney, published in 1982. The book follows the life story of Miss Alice Rumphius, a woman who sought a way to make the world more beautiful, and who found it in planting lupins in the wild....

and Hattie and the Wild Waves

Hattie and the Wild Waves

Hattie and the Wild Waves is a 1990 book by Barbara Cooney. It tells the story of Hattie, who "is from a well to do German immigrant family and has a mind of her own." She looks to the ocean to decide what occupation to pursue as she grows up: painting.The book was described as being the closest...

, the closest books she has written to her heart; it was her "hymn to Maine" http://www.ortakales.com/Illustrators/Cooney.html.

The book was also praised by Publisher's Weekly for its "wide, sweeping seascapes that contrast with the velvety, close-up interiors." PW added that the book "is an ode to simple acts of daily living. Not only one family's tale, this is also a cherishable glimpse of a bygone time." http://www.amazon.com/dp/0140507566. The book also received a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor.