Fairies, Mermaids, and Wizards at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art

Sprites, Spells, and Splashes: Magical Beings in Picture Book Art at The Carle features more than 40 classic and contemporary works on view November 22 through April 26, 2026.
 
“From the brownies of the British Isles to the djinns of the Middle East, magical beings abound in folklore," said The Carle’s associate curator Isabel Ruiz Cano who curated the exhibition. "Picture book art can be a powerful bridge between cultures, a keeper of stories, and a source of wonder that allows us to see the invisible."
 
Featured artists in Sprites, Spells, and Splashes include Iasmin Omar Ata, Ashley Bryan, Eric Carle, Ju Hong Chen, Raúl Colón, Palmer Cox, Diane Dillon, Leo Dillon, Tony DiTerlizzi, Raissa Figueroa, John Anster Fitgerald, Yvonne Gilbert, Michael Hague, Trina Schart Hyman, Julie Kim, Robert Lawson, Arnold Lobel, Jessica Love, Petra Mathers, Kay Nielsen, Brian Pinkney, Jerry Pinkney, Alice Bolam Preston, Júlia Sardà, Esmé Shapiro, Uri Shulevitz, Virginia Stroud, Saki Tanaka, Minako Tomigahara, and Phoebe Wahl.


Highlights include:

• Alice Bolam Preston’s pen and ink drawings from the 1919 fairytale book Seven Peas in the Pod by Margery Bailey including a Nixie water spirit as an elegant humanoid with fins and webbed hands
• Phoebe Wahl’s multi-textured collage for Backyard Fairies (2018) in which a modern girl searches for clever flower fairies hiding in plain sight
• Esmé Shapiro’s work for Alma and the Beast (2019) with parallel universes colliding as a hairless beast arrives in Alma’s “hairy” world
• Robert Lawson’s art from the nonsense fairytale The Wonderful Adventures of Little Prince Toofat by George Randolph Chester (1922) which features Moonaticks, made-up sprites with round moon heads who bewitch the protagonists with “marshmallow dreams”
• Arnold Lobel’s wizard from Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep by Jack Prelutsky (1976) rendered in stark black-and-white
• Leo and Diane Dillon’s cover illustration for the 1983 edition of A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle casting the mysterious Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which as witches, with The Black Thing, the source of all evil in the universe, looming behind them
• Jerry Pinkney’s graphite and watercolor artworks for The Little Mermaid (2020)