Once Upon a Fairy Tale House
The True Story of Four Sisters and the Magic They Built
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
This nonfiction picture book tells the true story of four sisters who used their skills and creativity to bring storybook houses from their childhood fairy tales to life in 1930s Southern California.
Mildred, Harriet, Brenda, and Wilma Moody grew up reading classic fairy tales and inventing their own, wishing they could live in the stories. They imagined storybook houses for themselves and slept there in their dreams every night. As adults, the sisters followed separate career paths until Mildred, an artist, needed a place to paint. Harriet, an architect, sketched plans for a studio that looked like the whimsical abodes from their childhood dreams.
When people saw the enchanting studio, they began to want fairy tale houses of their own. So, Harriet drew more plans, and Mildred decorated the insides, and Brenda and Wilma joined them to take care of the banking and business. Soon, storybook cottages bloomed throughout their tiny town. And when families moved into their new homes, they could all feel just a little bit of the Moody sisters’ fairy tale magic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
