Would You Like a Laura Amy Schlitz Cover Reveal? A Conversation About The Winter of the Dollhouse

I love Laura Amy Schlitz.

This is a simple and true fact. I love her work. I love her as a person. I love everything about her. Folks, some of you reading this may be too young to remember what will have to be remembered as (I’m going to start using capital letters now) The Greatest Newbery/Caldecott Banquet of All Time. Do you remember it? Were you there? And no, I’m not talking about the year that Stephen Gammell won the Caldecott (IYKYK). I’m talking about a year where both the Newbery winner and the Caldecott winner used their speeches to touch on aspects of storytelling for that had never truly been explored in the context of something as simple as a children’s book awards speech before.

To put it simply, Brian Selznick won a Caldecott for a book that was essentially a film turned into sequential images and placed on pages. The Invention of Hugo Cabret won the Caldecott, in spite of the fact that it was not a picture book in the strictest definition of the term. Yet when he gave his speech, he made it simultaneously multimedia and interactive. He utilized the screens in the room, showing a short film (something never before done by a Caldecott winner before or since). Then, in the course of his talk, he reached out into the audience and called out classic picture book creator Remy Charlip, who had modeled for one of the characters, but was also a classic picture book creator in his own right.

And then Laura came to the podium.

She had won the Newbery for Good Masters, Sweet Ladies, but her speech was also a deviation from the norm. Unlike Brian, Laura went in a different direction. First of all, she left the podium. No one leaves the podium. When you win a major award you are anchored to it. You stay at it. It is your rock. But Laura had a background in storytelling so they gave her a microphone, attached it to the glorious purple/blue silken outfit she chose for the night (I seem to recall that it had a connection to bears in some way), and she walked amongst the attendees. Her speech was part storytelling, part speech, and entirely enthralling. No one had ever seen anything like it before or since. Just as Brian broke barriers with his multimedia, she broke barriers by breaking her speech down to the most essential aspects of storytelling itself. It was a night to remember.

Sadly, my reporting on the event was very image-based and SLJ changed its blog hosting abilities years later, so I lost all the photos I took at the time. Fortunately, Travis Jonker at The Yarn did a delightful recap here. And here is what I wrote about their speeches at the time:

“I do not have any pictures of Laura from her speech because the minute she started talking I forgot I had a camera.  Forgot I had a camera heck, I forgot I had HANDS.  Storytelling is such a difficult art.  So many people think it’s all gauze and flowery language and significant pauses.  Laura’s storytelling speech got at the root of the talent.  She made you forget yourself.  She drew you into situations, places, and events and you went along willingly.  As everyone now knows, Laura eschewed the podium and was miked and memorized.  Her place near the end of the table was well lit, and I was rather charmed by the photographers that sat at her feet.  They, if nothing else, gave the impression that it was storytime and our favorite librarian was here to give us a glimpse into the unknowable (the unknowable in this case being the winning of a Newbery).

Laura mentioned in the speech that she had once believed she would never have a chance at a Newbery and the consolation was that she would never have to write a speech (she said it better than I have here).  After watching Brian and Laura together, I am very glad indeed that I will NEVER have to write a speech like this too.  Because for years and years now, every Newbery and Caldecott winner who steps up to that podium will do so imagining that when they leave the world will murmur, “Well, it was good.  But it wasn’t Selznick/Schlitz good, if you know what I mean.”

Best. Banquet. Ever.”

Since that win, Laura has written numerous books, but the last one she published, Amber and Clay, was published in 2021. Four long and lonely years have gone by since that time. And now, in 2025, we are finally getting a new Laura Amy Schlitz title. It is a thing to celebrate. The Winter of the Dollhouse releases on September 2, 2025. In it, Laura combines some of the aspects of her books that we all love best. The magic. The storytelling. The wonder. Here is the description of the book:

“On a gloomy November night, eleven-year-old Tiphany Stokes saves an old lady from collapsing in the street. An antique doll named Gretel watches them, longing for Tiph to rescue her from life in a shop window. Though none of these three characters realizes it, their worlds are about to change: Gretel will no longer be a precious prisoner. The old lady—is she a witch?—will discover the secret hidden in her long-neglected dollhouse. And Tiph—whose parents rejoice that she is “never any trouble”—will become a thief, a dog walker, an actor, and best of all, a friend.”

Before we get to the cover reveal itself, though, let’s hear what Laura has to say about it:

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Betsy Bird: Laura! Such a delight to get the chance to speak with you about THE WINTER OF THE DOLLHOUSE. You’ve done marvelous things in your books with other small humanlike figures before (THE NIGHT FAIRY). And you’ve touched on marionettes in SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS. This latest book sounds a bit different tonally from both of those other books, though. Could you tell us a bit about where it originated for you?

Laura Amy Schlitz: Rebound!  That’s not the right word, but often when I start a new book, I’m retreating from the last one.  For example, Splendors and Glooms wore me out with its five main characters and shifting viewpoints, so the book after that, The Hired Girl, was written as a diary.   Amber and Clay was a large-canvas work, a hairy wild beast of a novel.  Once I finished wrestling it into shape, I wanted to work in miniature.  

BB: Speaking of which, what is it about the miniature that is so appealing, not simply to children, but to adults as well? Put simply, why do we love dolls as much as we do?

Laura: That’s a fascinating question.  I’ve really had to think.  Maybe it’s because we remember being little.  Say you’re a baby; from time to time, big people strap you into a car seat, and you see the car, you’re in the car;  the car moves.  But one day, someone gives you a toy car, and at once you realize it’s for you, because you are small and the car is small.  You can move the car, you can peer inside the little windows and crash it against the wall.  You develop an intimacy with it.    

— Now that I think about it, size is one of the first mysteries to confront us when we’re children.  It’s still a mystery. What can we make of being somewhere between a vast universe and those invisible dynamos we call atoms?  We like stories about large creatures, too:  Golems and giants and Titans and dinosaurs.  But small things enchant us because we can get close to them. We can encompass them, we can touch them.

Dolls and marionettes are not only small, but human-shaped, which is endearing and just a little spooky. They’re half alive.  Dolls are human doppelgängers.  At the same time, they’re vulnerable to all our projections.  I wince when I recall how stern and abusive I was with my baby dolls—though I also cuddled them, maudlin with tenderness.  Dolls are confidantes:  I used to cry on my Raggedy Ann doll and she was unfailingly soft and kind.    

Later on my dolls became second selves and heroines.  They survived all kinds of adventures without losing their beauty or their nerve.  I realize now I was creating characters, improvising dialogue, inventing plots. I was learning to write.

I know I played with my Madame Alexander dolls (the Little Women) into junior high school.  I had a Scarlett O’Hara doll, too—I was old enough to have read GONE WITH THE WIND—and I played that after she lost Rhett, the March sisters welcomed her into their home.  They made an abolitionist out of her.  

BB: In an another era, that’s a bit of fan fiction I know people would have loved to have read. Now you are a children’s librarian by training, so your knowledge of other books is extensive. Which novels for kids about dolls are your own particular favorites? Are there any that stand out to you as books you’d recommend without hesitation to kids today?

Laura: Oh, Racketty-Packetty House;  that was my favorite when I was a child. I don’t know if Frances Hodgson Burnett was the first writer to maintain that dolls not only have internal lives, but active lives:  As long as no human is watching them, they can walk and talk and  explore.  If Frances H. was the first, many writers have followed in her footsteps (including me.)

When I was young, I read all the old doll books:  Rachel Field’s Hitty and Carolyn Sherwin Bailey’s Miss Hickory and Mrs. Richard Henry Fairstar’s Memoirs of a London Doll. I especially loved Pauline Clarke’s The Return of the Twelves, which is about the toy soldiers that belonged go the Brontë children.  I read every Rumer Godden book I could get my hands on.  As an adult, I still love them.  

Some of my other favorites include Sheila Greenwald’s The Secret in Miranda’s Closet, Ann Martin and Laura Godwin’s The Doll People series, and Yona Zeldis McDonough’s The Doll Shop Downstairs.  There are eerie doll books like Holly Black’s Doll Bones and Cassandra Golds’ The Museum of Mary Child. I love those, too.   

I probably recommend The Doll Shop Downstairs, Doll Bones, and the Doll People series most often, because they’re more contemporary. But children seldom ask me for a doll book. Boys have always been shamed for being interested in dolls;  they have to make do with action figures. From what I can gather,  girls still like dolls, but they don’t talk about it. I think there’s a bit of a stigma attached to playing with dolls. Girls of the twenty-first century don’t want to be known as `girly-girls’—a fresh flower of misogyny.  

BB: I feel we could go quite deep into that particular subject area, but we’ll leave it for now. Considering all this, how much did the book change from your original conception of the plot to the final product, would you say? Were there ideas that simply didn’t fit as you edited?

Laura: I started out wanting to write a “double book”—tête bêche—like Aliki’s Marianthe’s Story:  Painted Words, Spoken Memories.   You’d read one half, the story of the child Tiph and the old lady Szilvia as they renovate Szilvia’s dollhouse.  Then you’d flip the book over, start with the back cover, and find out what happened from the dolls’ point of view. 

But the book didn’t work that way.  Both my editor, Liz Bicknell, and my agent, Stephen Barbara, felt the story was more compelling if the reader was allowed to shuttle back and forth between the Tiph-and-Szilvia story and the Gretel-and-Red story. I trusted them and they were right. So I revised the book

The Winter of the Dollhouse is still a story of two intersecting worlds.   One story is about Tiphany Stokes.  Tiph is new at school and discontented, full of longing and unvoiced opinions.   Szilvia, the owner of the dollhouse, is in her sixties, lonely and a little bitter  She’s recovering from a divorce, the death of her closest friend, and gall bladder surgery.  Tiph and Szilvia live in the rational world.  They have no idea what the dolls are up to.  

But the dolls live in a magical world.  They are two storybook characters from Grimm’s Fairy Tales:  Gretel and Red (Riding Hood). At night they construct a fort, climb electrical cords, and play pirate. And they can talk to Szilvia’s cat and dog—which allowed me the fun of writing feline and canine dialogue.  

BB: I’m looking forward to that. Finally, what else are you interested in these days? What is piquing your interest?

Laura: Well, horology.  I’m very interested in how mechanical clocks work, though my mechanical aptitude is underdeveloped. Echlocation is fun to imagine.  Someday I may end up writing about  groupers, those huge fish that look like disapproving clergymen.  I wish I could write about Al-Jazari, because I love looking at his water clocks on YouTube, but the bulk of primary source material is in Arabic, and I have no Arabic.  And of course, I’m always interested in cats and ghosts and history and witches and bears.  

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Cat and ghosts and history and witches and bears is a marvelous way to end any interview, in my opinion. Thanks in abundance to Laura for taking the time to answer my questions today. And here, folks of all sorts, is the cover of The Winter of the Dollhouse:

Thanks too to Tracy Miracle and the team at Candlewick Press. You can find The Winter of the Dollhouse on shelves everywhere September 2nd. Until then, we must all content ourselves with waiting.

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2025, Cover Reveal, Interviews