The fact that Virginia Oliver was still actively lobstering from her home base in Rockland when she turned 101 garnered her a fair amount of attention: a story on National Public Radio, another on CBS News. When a short film on her aired on Maine Public, Bangor author Alexandra S. D.
Hinrichs decided it was time to tell her story in a children’s book. The result, illustrated by Peaks Island resident Jamie Hogan, is a thing of beauty. Like another award-winning Maine illustrator, Portland resident Melissa Sweet, Hogan works by hand, instead of digitally, and has an eye for detail and a reverence for the old way of life.
Her pastels are lovingly and richly rendered, one of them – a full-page sunrise over Virginia’s childhood island home – I would gladly hang on my wall. Her characters are expressive and engaging without being cloying. In a scene where Virginia visits her doctor to get seven stitches after a crab bites her, the looks on the doctor’s face and on Virginia’s as she ponders an answer to his question – Just what the dickens were you doing out there? – are priceless.
“The Lobster Lady” By Alexandra S. D. Hinrichs Illustrated by Jamie Hogan Charlesbridge Ages 5-8, 32 pages $17.
99 “The Lobster Lady” – as Virginia is widely known – follows a typical day in her life: rising before dawn to eat a chocolate donut (that she baked herself the night before), drinking some coffee (in a Moody’s Diner mug), then putting on her lipstick and earrings, g.