Once upon a Fairy Tale House: The True Story of Four Sisters and the Magic They Built

It’s 1902 in Santa Barbara, Calif., and the Moody sisters, four young siblings who love fairy tales, are sitting on the beach doing what they like best: Mildred draws, Harriett builds sandcastles, Brenda counts beach detritus, and Wilma pushes sand with a toy steam shovel. Though they can’t inhabit the stories they invent at bedtime, Wilma suggests, “We could imagine fairy tale houses and pretend we live in them.” When the four reach adulthood, they build artist Mildred a studio with a roof “like a mother hen’s wings,” and then collaborate to create life-size fairy tale cottages that eschew the time period’s cold modern aesthetic. Harriett, now an architect, designs, Mildred decorates, Brenda takes care of business, and Wilma handles bookkeeping and sales, a rare enterprise in an era when women’s professional options were particularly sparse. In vintage-inflected gouache spreads, Potter (Cher Ami) lavishes detail on the sisters’ clothing, on the California landscape with its palms and gardens, and, as they are built, on the cottages themselves. In a biographical portrait of lifelong collaboration that builds on childhood interests, Ray (Vrooom, Vrooom!) tells a heartfelt story about a group of women whose work unites the gifts of its members. An author’s note offers more context regarding the Moody sisters’ “pixie cottages.” Ages 4–8. (May)