AMHERST, MASS.- This summer, a new exhibition at The Carle celebrates the wide-ranging career of author and illustrator Grace Lin. On view June 14, 2025 – January 4, 2026, The Art of Grace Lin: Meeting a Friend in an Unexpected Place features more than 90 works from Lin’s prolific 26-year career in picture books, books for young readers, and chapter books. The exhibition title is inspired by a Chinese aphorism about one of the four happinesses of life.

“When I was a child, books were the friends that always welcomed me. I hope that my books feel like that to my readers,” said Grace Lin.

This retrospective exhibition explores all aspects of Lin’s creativity through original art, sketches, manuscripts, and videos from more than 22 acclaimed titles and other work from throughout her career. The exhibition features bilingual English/Traditional Chinese wall texts and activity instructions, and Simplified Chinese translations also are available on cards in the exhibition.

“Grace Lin’s books are beloved by children because they can see themselves in them,” said exhibition guest curator Melissa Hung. “She tells stories that are inspired by family, food, and folklore, and her protagonists are often young children who are sincere, plucky, and kind-hearted.”

Born to Taiwanese immigrants in upstate New York, Lin expresses her heritage through storytelling. Much of her work features Asian and Asian American characters—something she longed to see in the books she read as a child. Today, Lin is a dedicated advocate for diversity in children’s literature who believes “a book can make all cultures universal.”

“The Art of Grace Lin: Meeting a Friend in an Unexpected Place celebrates Grace Lin’s vibrant embrace of her heritage through her multifaceted artwork, inviting viewers into a world where culture, storytelling, and discovery beautifully intertwine,” said The Carle’s executive director Jennifer Schantz. “We are incredibly grateful to our trustee Grace Lin for supporting The Carle and for sharing her creative process with all of us.”

Exhibition Highlights

Organized into seven categories that trace Lin’s career, the exhibition begins with Celebrating Culture & Traditions. Growing up, Lin felt disconnected from her cultural background, rarely seeing other Asian American families in her community. She began to explore her identity in college, seeking out Asian art and embracing the flat perspective, bright colors, and bold patterns of Chinese folk art. Lin’s early picture books on view, such as Bringing in the New Year (2008), share joyful customs of the Lunar New Year festivities, including a family making dumplings together.

In her early reader series Ling & Ting, Lin subverts the stereotype that all Asians are alike through the individual characters of identical twin sisters—Ling is focused and tidy, while Ting is energetic and a bit messy. While many of Lin’s books emphasize the commonalities among people, the Ling & Ting books celebrate differences and individuality.

Lin’s books often tell The Stories of Food, with characters sharing meals with family and friends. In Lin’s first picture book, The Ugly Vegetables (1999), an aromatic soup made with vegetables harvested from a home garden brings neighbors together. In her deeply researched work Chinese Menu (2023), Lin chronicles the history and legends behind 39 American Chinese dishes, featuring images inspired by retro Chinese advertising posters with elaborately decorated borders. Visitors can sit at a restaurant-style table and create drawings inspired by fortune cookie prompts, an exercise Lin herself partakes in.

The Myths & Journeys section of the exhibition focuses on Lin’s middle grade novels, such as Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (2009), in which young protagonists embark on arduous quests and make friends along the way. In these books, Lin reimagines Chinese myths to create fantastical worlds and builds a layered structure of stories within the story.

After becoming a mother, Lin struggled to find time to make art; only when she embraced the messiness of being both a mom and artist at once did her creativity take a leap. Highlights of the section Modern Mom Myths include A Big Mooncake for Little Star (2018), which pays homage to Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey, and A Big Bed for Little Snow (2019), inspired by The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. These works are visually sparser, with restrained color palettes and negative space. In modeling her own stories after classic picture books, Lin asserts that Asian Americans are part of Americana.

The section Grace Lin’s Studio offers a peek behind the scenes into Lin’s creative process, which starts with her writing the story, then deciding what to illustrate. She draws on tracing paper, scans the drawings, prints them onto watercolor paper, and then paints with gouache, a water-based paint that dries relatively quickly. The exhibition features a cozy reading nook in a space inspired by Lin’s attic studio, where one can sit surrounded by shelves filled with ceramics, Daruma dolls, vintage books, and other objects that inspire her work.

The closing section, Adventures Through Imagination, expresses Lin’s desire for books to sweep the reader into other places and lives, activating creative thinking. “Literature, more than any other medium, asks you to add yourself in as you consume it,” Lin says. “When you read, you have to add your own imagination.” In her illustrations for a Children’s Book Week poster (2019), which evolved into the book Once Upon a Book (2022), Lin salutes the transformative power of reading, as the protagonist’s dress melds into each world she explores.

Grace Lin, a New York Times bestselling author/ illustrator, won the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and the Theodor Geisel Honor for Ling and Ting. Her novel, When the Sea Turned to Silver, was a National Book Award Finalist and her picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, was awarded the Caldecott Honor. Her most recent book is The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon, a middle grade novel published in May 2025.

Lin is also an occasional commentator for New England Public Radio, a reviewer for the New York Times, a video essayist for PBS NewsHour, and the speaker of the popular TEDx talk, “The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf,” as well as the co-host of the “Book Friends Forever” podcast. In 2016, Lin’s art was displayed at the White House where Grace, herself, was recognized by President Obama’s office as a Champion of Change for Asian American and Pacific Islander Art and Storytelling. In 2022, Lin was awarded the Children’s Literature Legacy Award from the American Library Association.