The Winter of the Dollhouse - Laura Amy Schlitz - ★★.¾

AUTHOR: Laura Amy Schlitz

GENRE: Middle-Grade Fantasy

PUBLICATION DATE: September 2, 2025

RATING: 2.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: A middle-grade fantasy about a girl and a doll, with the narration in both their perspectives. Quite a few subplots, which makes the book seem disjointed at times. The non-human characters are interesting; the humans are more mixed in behaviour. Some good life lessons on what to do as well as what not to do. Minor ‘Toy Story’ vibes. Recommended, though not with much enthusiasm.

Plot Preview: (The actual storyline is quite tricky. This is a barebones version.)

One day, eleven-year-old Tiph saves an old lady named Szilvia from falling and assists her back home. After a chat, Tiph realises that she can help Néni (Aunt) Szilvia with certain chores, and in turn, Szilvia could help her fulfil a long-awaited wish. Will her parents be happy with the new arrangement?

From a nearby shop window, a little antique doll named Gretel sees Tiph helping the old woman and immediately longs for the girl to rescue her from her boring play-less life. Can a doll dare to dream?

The story comes to us in the third-person perspectives of Tiph and Gretel.

This fantasy novel does quite a few things right, but also gets a few things wrong.

I didn’t expect the book to have two parallel stories: one from a girl and one from a doll. Though this leads to a bit of repetition at times, thanks to the same events being narrated from two different perspectives, it also offers a nice contrast to the character voices and behaviour. All the dominant characters in Tiph’s POV are humans while Gretel’s POV has interactions mainly from non-human characters except when she overhears the humans.

At 400 pages, this middle-grade book is much lengthier than the typical standard for this genre. There are no illustrations as well inside. So how does a simplistic dual-narrative storyline run so long? By adding a whole load of subplots and sub-subplots. It is impossible to detail every subplot in this book because they are truly numerous.

Usually, If a children’s book has so many plot tracks, it is episodic. But that doesn’t apply to this book. Almost the tracks coexist, and new tracks keep getting braided into the existing ones at regular intervals. This ensures that we get bombarded with plenty of events: some major, some minuscule. Health issues, divorce, school play, friendship struggles, shoplifting, sibling worries, stepmother troubles, a missing-object mystery… I have barely scratched the surface of topics here. The end result is that while some of the inclusions work really well for the plot, some feel inserted only for the opportunity of offering kids a quick life lesson that has no bearing on the storyline. A few of the themes felt too sad for a middle-grade book.

This isn’t a debut novel, so I didn’t expect it to have this kitchen sink of themes. The topics I enjoyed the most were connected to Tiph’s role in her school play and Gretel’s adventures with Red. However, one theme I didn’t like at all was Tiph’s justification of her habit of stealing. It just felt so much at odds with the rest of her personality that I couldn’t root for her wholeheartedly. I also didn’t anticipate the extent to which the theme of stealing would be present in this book; it just feels wrong to harp on it so much in a novel meant for middle-graders.

The number of characters in the book is quite limited. Other than Tiph’s family (comprising her father, her stepmother, and two younger stepsiblings), we have Néni Szilvia, Mr. DiLucca (the owner of the dollhouse shop), and some characters from Tiph’s school. Of these, the only one I liked consistently throughout the book was Szilvia. Her behaviour, her wisdom, and most of all, her language skills, turned her into the perfect character to impart some practical advice and valuable life lessons to young Tiph. Tiph’s parents were more annoying than endearing tbh. I think I would have been as frustrated as Tiph were I in her place. That said, Tiph herself isn't always a top-notch character. While she had some of my sympathy, I found some of her behaviour entitled.

I loved how Szilvia corrected Tiph’s slang English and spoke with an adult-level vocabulary. Her dialogues alone have the potential to offer children plenty of vocab improvements and grammar tips. (That said, Szilvia does make a mistake once by asking “Found who?” instead of “Found whom?” Not that today’s readers will notice this, but as a stickler to traditional Queen’s English, she definitely would have used the formal variant.)

Szilvia’s having a tricky Hungarian surname offers a running joke where Tiph’s parents cannot pronounce her last name correctly. I wish this trope would have been portrayed with some more dignity. It is not funny when adults don’t even bother to remember how to pronounce the last name of someone who is so active in their daughter’s life. Rather, this theme should have offered little readers the important lesson about getting pronunciation right for every name, and how we can politely clarify the pronunciation if we are not sure about it. For a book with so many themes, this was a missed opportunity.

More impressive than the humans of the book are the non-humans. The dolls (yes, plural!) are obviously the most interesting members of the cast, and their arcs will remind you a bit of ‘Toy Story’ combined with fairy tales. Their knowledge seems far beyond what dolls should possess, but let’s chalk this up to creative license. But there are two other fabulous non-human characters as well: Loki the bulldog and Flosshilde the cat. Both the animals were written with such tenderness and love, and with a perfect capture of their canine and feline personality respectively. Flosshilde’s majestic meowliness is perfectly balanced by Loki’s wildness. I loved them both! Given that the book also contains a toddler and a baby, it certainly needs a ‘Cuteness Overload’ alert! 😍

I also loved all the details related to the dollhouse. I’ve never been a dollhouse person myself, but it was fascinating to see the extent of detailing that goes into a dollhouse and its denizens.

Overall, while I liked the book enough, I think it cluttered itself with too many themes. While a few of the topics were interconnected and hence necessary, some of the trivial inclusions could easily have been deleted without impacting the story. Any book that attempts to teach too many things to its little readers won't end up creating any significant impact as the quantity of themes is inversely proportional to the individual impact of each.

Somewhat recommended, but not as a must-read. It would be better for this to be read together with some guiding adult who can offer advice on better behaviour and response in many of Tiph’s scenes.

My thanks to Candlewick Press for providing the DRC of “The Winter of the Dollhouse” via Edelweiss+. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.