Home is like a fairy tale for children’s book author

If award-winning children’s book author Josephine “Joi” Nobisso were to write a book about her own life, perhaps it would begin like this:

Once upon a time, in the tiny village of Quiogue, a mother and daughter with fairy dust in their eyes lived in a whimsical gingerbread house filled to the brim with beautiful books and works of art. There, they spent many hours a day creating books for children, drinking tea, and giggling an awful lot.

“Sometimes it feels like we’re the Pigeon Sisters from the old TV show, ‘The Odd Couple.’ They were so happy together that they finished each other’s sentences and ‘cooed’ when they laughed,” said Ms. Nobisso of her similar soul-mate connection with her 24-year-old daughter, Maria Nicotra.

In 2000, the women co-founded Gingerbread House, a home-based publishing press specializing in the publication and worldwide distribution of fine children’s books, including Ms. Nobisso’s own critically-acclaimed titles—“Show: Don’t Tell! Secrets of Writing,” “The Weight of a Mass: a Tale of Faith,” “Grandpa Loved,” and “In English of Course,” to name a few.

During her career, Ms. Nobisso has published more than 40 books for children and adults, and every year she conducts 100 writing workshops and clinics at schools around the country.

Ms. Nicotra, a homeschooler who learned the publishing business at her mother’s hip, today serves as Gingerbread House’s operations manager and art directress.

“I call her the art dictator,” laughed Ms. Nobisso of her daughter’s acute attention to detail.

Gingerbread House’s “corporate office” is located right off the hustle and bustle of Montauk Highway, part of the family’s tree-lined compound in Quiogue. The ¾-acre property includes a charming main house; two story two-car garage; and an overflowing two-story storage facility dubbed “the closet,” where the women keep books and all their trade show materials.

“Around 1983, I was accepted into Yale’s playwriting program, but decided I wanted to have a child and settle down instead,” said Ms. Nobisso, setting the stage for the genesis of the compound. “My ex-husband, Vic Nicotra, and I bought this piece of property with the goal of building a passive

solar house. I found a book of house plans at the supermarket, and the design I liked happened to be by Augustus Suglia, an architect from Cedarhurst.”

Ms. Nobisso paid $125 for the architectural plans, read engineering books on solar design and took a BOCES class to learn how to become her own general contractor.

“I remember being pregnant, trudging through snow, and driving stakes into the ground. When I went into labor with Maria later that summer, I was up on the roof, walking planks, surrounded by bulldozers,” she said, shaking her head at the memory.

“When we needed a garage, we found an Augustus Suglia design in another book. But when we designed ‘the closet,’ Vic and I just flew by the seat of our pants,” she recalled.

The couple eventually divorced (“Divorce was a solution for us,” she noted) and today Ms. Nobisso and Ms. Nicotra live at the compound alone, although Mr. Nicotra and Ms. Nobisso’s ailing 86-year-old mother, Mary, are regular fixtures on the scene.

“We also get visits from many friends and the wonderful illustrators we work with,” said Ms. Nicotra.

At approximately 2,200 square feet, the passive solar main house has four bedrooms and three baths, including a spacious mother/daughter apartment in the basement.

The Bronx-born Ms. Nobisso describes the décor as “eclectic European,” which is fitting since she studied languages in Paris, France; Vienna, Austria; and Urbino, Italy. She’s also lived in Italy and Austria.

“Over the years, some things have come and gone in our house, but many things have been here since we moved in 24 years ago,” she said.

The home’s decor is unique in its extensive use of Croscill’s uber-romantic “princess” pattern throughout the house. With soft yellow and white stripes adorned with blossoming rose bouquets, the pattern is used for wall covering, draperies, bedding, lamp shades and decorative accents in the living room, sunroom/library, and all of the upstairs bedrooms.

“We just love the Croscill pattern, but unfortunately the pattern has been discontinued,” noted Ms. Nobisso. “We also like to incorporate color accents of butter yellow, cornflower blue and dusty rose.”

The feminine living room has the look and feel of an English country cottage, thanks to the dusty rose sectional sofa, floral needlepoint area rugs from Neiman-Marcus, an elaborately-carved and gold-leafed reproduction mirror, and a smattering of one-of-a-kind antiques. The wide-plank pine flooring also adds to the charming effect.

“We love shopping at estate sales, antique stores and yard sales to find old handmade things that have a sense of being touched by another’s hands,” she said.

The cozy room’s only nod to the 21st century is a newly acquired (and seldom watched) large screen television over the wood-burning fireplace which was designed by Ms. Nobisso’s late father, a masonry contractor. The entire family gathered to write their names into the fireplace’s masonry before it dried. Today, the fireplace remains a vestige to time past and souls that have moved on.

The home’s walls and shelves bear homage to the mother and daughter’s religious devotion and to their many pilgrimages around the world. Paintings, pictures and statues of the Pope, the Blessed Mother and many saints, including St. Therese, are everywhere.

“There is nothing more fascinating to us than the subject of salvific history. Our faith is probably our strongest identifier. Whenever Maria and I travel, we go on a pilgrimage to places associated with the saints and Eucharistic miracles and apparitions, like Medjugorje in Bosnia,” explained Ms. Nobisso. “Art associated with those events greatly appeals to us.”

“We also have at least two paintings from each of Gingerbread House’s illustrators,” she noted. “We often buy their work to tide them over until the royalties start coming in.”

The home’s dining room, dramatic with dark, oversized neo-gothic pieces, is the only space in the house that doesn’t ooze femininity.

“I’ve always been an accidental collector,” Ms. Nobisso explained. “When we moved into this house, I had an extensive collection of Stickley furniture which didn’t seem to work here. So Vic—who does antique restoration work—traded in my Stickley pieces at Lloyd’s Antiques in Eastport for this dining room set, which dates to the late 1800s.”

The large oak pieces, darkened from years of use and polish, are elaborately carved with allegorical figures and saints. The masculine effect is softened by an antique bobbin lace tablecloth (“I’ve had a linen fetish since the age of 5,” Ms. Nobisso admitted) and “bee pattern” Provence-ware place settings from France.

The small, functional kitchen features a terra-cotta Mexican tile floor, a washer and dryer and a small center island—resplendent on this day with cheese, crackers, grapes, pastries and sparkling cider.

Strict vegetarians, mother and daughter love to cook on their small “Suzy homemaker” stove, and shower friends and family with home-cooked meals.

A set of stairs painted a soft cornflower blue leads to the second floor bedrooms. Ms. Nicotra’s childhood room still bears the pencil markings of her growth chart on the wall, but is now used by Ms. Nobisso’s mother when she visits.

Ms. Nicotra’s current bedroom pays tribute to her love of Eloise, the Plaza Hotel’s most rambunctious resident and beloved children’s book character. Eloise’s signature pink- and red-striped colors are evident in several pieces in the room, including Ms. Nicotra’s bedside table.

Tucked away in a corner of the room is a statue of an infant Jesus from a Christmas manger, now sleeping in a green “American Girl” bed.

“My father restored the statue, and our pastor lets us bring it back to church every Christmas,” she noted.

Nearby, Ms. Nobisso’s master bedroom is all frills and flounce, complete with a wood-burning fireplace, walls of bookcases, and a chaise lounge for reading and relaxing (not that she has much time to do that). Paintings and shells from her favorite places in Italy (her parents’ birthplace) celebrate her heritage and love of all things Italian.

To get to “the office” every day, the women simply walk a few hundred feet to reach Gingerbread House, which was built from a gambrel-roof Amish-made storage shed and lean-to.

Entering Gingerbread House is like entering a whimsical, fairy-tale world set in the Bavarian forest—the kind of place where you can find solace and warmth on a snowy day.

The women painted the interior a sunshine yellow and mossy green, and placed fanciful objects at every turn. At the front entrance, an antique fireplace crackles with a “pretend” fire made through the effects of a red lightbulb and Christmas tinsel on a rotisserie mechanism. On top, an antique toy bear reads from a miniature A-B-C book. At the hearth of the fireplace is a collection of clogs found on the women’s many travels.

“I’m not sure why, but we have a wooden shoe fetish,” laughed Ms. Nobisso, explaining that some of the clogs came from Garanbandal, a small village in northern Spain where the Blessed Mother is believed to have appeared to more than 2,000 girls since the early 1960s.

Still to this day, clogs like this are worn in many rural villages as an overshoe, which people wear over a slipper and kick off at the door before entering a house.

With limited wall space, the women installed a railing around the perimeter of the room to hang their many awards and the framed covers from their published books (There are even covers from the three bodice-busting romance novels that Ms. Nobisso wrote in the 1980s!).

Because aesthetics and neatness are paramount to this mother and daughter team, all unattractive modern office trappings have been purged from view, thanks to the creative use of wicker baskets, map chests and beautiful antique dressers and bookcases.

The women, who sometimes pull “all-nighters” given their intense work demands, work at side-by-side desks by the large picture windows. Their “conference table” in the middle of the room is a prized possession—a circa 1850 maple work bench with vises.

The attached lean-to’s 6-foot-by-3-foot ceiling appears extra tiny when inhabited by Ms. Nicotra, who stands a model-like 5 foot 10 inches in heels. The juxtaposition of sizes just adds to the fairy-tale effect. An oversized upholstered chair with ottoman—just big enough for the inseparable mother and daughter to squeeze into—is tucked into a corner of the lean-to.

“Maria and I have traveled the globe for work and pleasure, but whenever we return, we walk through the doors of our house and the Gingerbread House and say, ‘Ooooohhhhh, it’s so good to be home,’” Ms. Nobisso said.

Yes, cooing pigeons always find a way to fly back home.