“I would rather feel bad in Maine than feel good anywhere else.”
~ E.B. White
If you’ve ever read Charlotte’s Web to a child at bedtime, or traced the illustrations in One Morning in Maine with a small finger pointed at the boats in the harbor — you’ve already been here. You just didn’t know it yet.
The Blue Hill Peninsula has a quiet literary secret that we locals tend to take for granted: two of the most beloved children’s authors in American history both found their greatest inspiration right here, within a few miles of each other, on this same stretch of spruce-lined coast. Their names are E.B. White and Robert McCloskey, and if you’re visiting the peninsula this summer, you are walking — quite literally — in the pages of their books.
E.B. White: The Man in the Boathouse
Elwyn Brooks White — “Andy” to his friends — first fell in love with Maine as a boy, during summer visits to the Belgrade Lakes with his family. But it was the Blue Hill Peninsula that claimed him for good.
In 1933, he and his wife Katharine bought a saltwater farm on Allen Cove in North Brooklin — just a short drive from our properties — overlooking Blue Hill Bay. What started as a part-time retreat from his life as a writer and essayist at The New Yorker became, by 1938, his permanent home. He lived there until his death in 1985.
His studio was a small boathouse on the property. There, sitting at a simple table with a manual typewriter, he wrote some of the most enduring words in American literature. Charlotte’s Web, published in 1952, was born directly from his life on that farm — the pigs, the geese, the barn, the spiders, the rhythms of a working Maine farmstead. The County Fair in the book? That’s the Blue Hill Fair, which still runs every Labor Day weekend, just up the road.
White was a private, humble man who preferred the company of his animals to most social occasions. But his essays about Maine life — collected in One Man’s Meat and The Points of My Compass — are some of the most beautiful pieces of writing ever inspired by this coast. He understood Maine the way only someone who truly lived here can: the tides, the fog, the particular quality of the light in September, the way the place gets under your skin and stays there.
He also, famously, never wanted to be anywhere else. Which is why we love his quote so much.
Robert McCloskey: The Artist on the Island
Robert McCloskey came to the Blue Hill Peninsula after World War II, drawn — as so many artists are — by the landscape, the light, and the life of the working waterfront. He and his wife Peggy settled on Scott Island, a small island off Little Deer Isle in East Penobscot Bay, where they raised their two daughters: Sally and Jane.
If those names sound familiar, they should. Sally is the “Sal” of Blueberries for Sal, picking berries on a Maine hillside while her mother cans jam. And in One Morning in Maine, published in 1952, little Sal loses her first tooth while clamming with her father — then rows across the harbor to Bucks Harbor to run errands at the general store.
That harbor is Bucks Harbor. That store is Buck’s Harbor Market, still standing today. The white-steepled church in the illustrations? Still there too. When you stay at Captain Black House and walk down to the harbor in the morning, you are stepping into a scene that McCloskey drew from life more than seventy years ago — and it still looks remarkably like his pictures.
McCloskey went on to win two Caldecott Medals — the highest honor in children’s illustration — including one for Time of Wonder, a lyrical tribute to a summer on the Maine coast that captures Eggemoggin Reach and Penobscot Bay with breathtaking beauty. His family later donated Outer Scott Island to the Nature Conservancy, ensuring it would remain protected forever. As his daughter Sarah said, “He wanted to make sure that future generations have a chance to enjoy it like our family did.”
Why This Matters — and Why It’s Still Here
What strikes us most about both White and McCloskey is not just that they found inspiration here — it’s that the place that inspired them is still, in so many ways, intact. The farm in North Brooklin still stands. The harbor in Bucks Harbor still looks like McCloskey’s illustrations. The Blue Hill Fair still happens every fall. The fog still rolls in off the bay on August mornings, and the ospreys still fish the same tidal ponds they always have.
That’s not an accident. It’s the character of the peninsula — the people who live here, the land trusts that protect it, the slow pace that resists being hurried. White and McCloskey didn’t just document this place. In some ways, they helped us all see why it was worth cherishing.
So if you’re packing for your visit to the Blue Hill Peninsula this summer, we’d gently suggest tucking a copy of One Morning in Maine or Charlotte’s Web into your bag — or EB White On Dogs, edited by his granddaughter Martha White, if you’re traveling with a four-legged friend. Read them on the porch. Read them to your kids at bedtime. And then look up and notice that the world outside the window looks a lot like the world inside those pages.
That’s the magic of this place. It always has been.
Blue Hill Bay Property Rentals is proud to offer properties across the Blue Hill Peninsula, including Captain Black House in South Brooksville — steps from the Bucks Harbor that McCloskey made famous — and Loon Point on the Blue Hill Salt Pond. Come see it for yourself.
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