Milkwood, the soon-to-open children’s book retreat in South Kortright, NY, feels like a dream realized. For its wife-and-husband owners, illustrator and author Sophie Blackall and Ed Schmidt, a playwright and high school English teacher, that’s exactly what it is—a dream that took a whole lot of work to come to life.

Just a short drive from Hobart Book Village, they’ve transformed an old dairy farm into a place where authors, illustrators, teachers, and librarians from the can all come together and celebrate children’s literature. Today, Milkwood actually feels like walking into one of Sophie’s illustrations.