Elise Hooper's Literary Dollhouses

...and why we're fascinated by miniatures.

Let’s take a break from election overload here to talk about something much more serene: dollhouses.

When I was in high school, my best friend had a dollhouse in her bedroom. It was the most magical world to burrow into. I would move around the miniature couches and coffee tables. I loved handling the tea set that was barely the size of my thumb. When I was writing All the Summers in Between, I began thinking about dollhouses as an interesting window into a character’s mind. How the tiny world inside one of these houses might symbolize a characters’ secret dreams and desires.

Around the same time, my author pal Elise Hooper began posting about her own dollhouse renovations on instagram. She built tiny furniture, wallpapered miniature rooms, and she even made a miniature set of books, including a copy of All the Summers in Between.

So I was particularly excited to discover that Hooper’s new novel The Library of Lost Dollhouses, out April 1, centers on two exquisite, never-before-seen dollhouses. The novel sounds soooo good, and I’m so excited to get my hands on a copy. Says the tagline: “When a young librarian discovers historic dollhouses in a hidden room, she embarks on an unexpected journey that reveals surprising secrets about the lost miniatures.”

Elise stopped by Dear Fiction to tell us about her new book and why she’s drawn to the world of miniatures. Don’t forget to preorder The Library of Lost Dollhouses here.

Why are you so attracted to miniatures? Is this something that you’ve been doing for a long time? What got you back into it?
I think miniatures can be attractive to novelists because we’re used to studying things closely. I also find miniatures to be very satisfying because I can make something in a short amount of time and this is so different from the long process of researching and writing novels.

In late 2020, after emailing my editor the manuscript for my fourth novel, Angels of the Pacific, a story about the hardships and heartbreak of war, I cleaned my office of the detritus that always accompanies the final push of meeting a deadline—notecards, old photos, books, empty coffee mugs, and chocolate bar wrappings—and my gaze caught on the dollhouse that had been in my family for five generations. Since my daughters had outgrown it, the antique had been serving as small bookshelf. As a child I’d spent hours sitting in front of the dollhouse, lost in my imagination. The dollhouse had offered me a gateway into a world of creativity. It was my first foray into storytelling, and I learned to sew, knit, quilt, draw, and build miniature furnishings because of it.

Over forty years later, as I considered the many ways that old family artifact had influenced my life, I realized my next book needed to be about dollhouses. As the idea of a book about dollhouses grew on me, I decided to redo and update the dollhouse as “research,” but also because it sounded fun. This was late in 2020 and Seattle was pretty quiet because of the Covid lockdown, so an engrossing creative project was exactly what I needed. My new book, The Library of Lost Dollhouses, will be out in April 2025.

In my latest novel, one of the main characters is drawn to this elaborate dollhouse in her friend’s bedroom. She keeps looking at it and thinking…if only that could be my life. Why do you think dollhouses are such a timeless tradition, and why are women drawn to them as much as girls? 
There’s a lot of science that supports how miniatures trigger a sense of comfort for people. In a world that feels uncertain and confusing, miniatures offer a way for us to control our environment and through them we can build the world the world we want to inhabit.

Also, fun fact: for centuries dollhouses served as a means for people to display their wealth and they really didn’t start to be used as toys until mass production of the twentieth century allowed them to be produced cheaply.

You’ve done so many makeovers on old dollhouse furniture. Can you talk about your creative process? How does the idea start and how does it evolve?
I tend to be very spontaneous when it comes to a miniatures project. When an idea strikes, I pounce on it. I also always have more than one miniature project underway so while the glue or paint dries on one, I can work on another. I have a lot of older pieces that I inherited from my grandmother and friends, and I love to transform them into modern miniatures. For example, I had this old upholstered chair from my great grandmother that was faded and stained, so I painted it a vivid bright blue and decoupaged big pink peony fabric flowers onto it.

I’m in the process now of converting an old discarded piano into a speakeasy—it sounds weird, but the top of the piano opens, so I’m going to fill this hidden compartment with a pop-up miniature bar. I love it when pieces can be surprising. The dollhouse is a place to experiment and take décor risks that I wouldn’t necessarily try in my real house.

Can you tell us about some of the things you’ve tried to make in miniature that have failed? 
I made a mossy stone patio out of egg carton pieces that I didn’t like. Although the stone looked real, it was too dark and I like bright, colorful pieces.

What has been the coolest thing you’ve done in miniature? The albums? The books? I love making teensy tiny 1:144 scale dollhouses that fit inside dollhouses. I tend to use kits to make these, but I personalize them with my own color scheme, window boxes, and landscaping.

Are you creating a library in your dollhouse? Why? What books are in it?
Yes, I have books all over the dollhouse. I make miniatures of my classic favorites, but also newer releases and books by friends. My new book is about a collection of dollhouses that are found in an old historic library, and these dollhouses reveal the secrets of their former owners. So, for research, I need to have a library and lots of books in my dollhouse.

Thank you, Elise! Don’t forget to preorder Elise’s book — it’s going to be a goodie!