Ferdinand the bull is at play in new pastures—or more precisely, on the site of a former apple orchard at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Jane Bayard Curley, a graceful scholar of Eloise and Madeline, Chris van Allsburg and William Steig, has curated a 90th-anniversary exhibition on the beloved classic The Story of Ferdinand, published in 1936 by Viking Press and written by the aptly named Munro Leaf, with illustrations by Robert Lawson. Its happy-go-lucky hero was considered so conflict-averse that in Spain the book was banned as pacifist propaganda until after Franco’s death, and so irresistible that the animated short ordered up by Walt Disney himself won an Oscar. Among the show’s treats are a grouchy Ernest Hemingway critique and a Louis Marx and Company windup toy. —Celia McGee