Everything in Miniature

I was four, maybe five, and my grandparents had apparently decided this was the year they were going to give me everything I ever wanted. Gift after gift kept appearing. An art set. A white plushie cat (squeal). And then: a dollhouse.

My grandfather had built it from a kit. But my grandmother gone the extra mile, she had cut carpet from carpet samples, wallpapered the tiny walls, made it feel like a place someone very small could actually live. I don't think I've ever been that surprised or delighted again. 

My daughters had their own dollhouses, including a particularly beautiful set for their Madeline dolls (Bemelmans fans, we are a household of taste) with a separate furnished room for every part of the house. It cost the Earth. Worth every cent.

 I think the miniature obsession came from my mom. She was captivated by Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and bought a book that detailed every room in big glossy photographs. I pored over that book until the spine cracked. There's something about a tiny perfect world that hooks you and doesn't let go.

Which is probably why one of the shops in my fictional town of Blue Lake, Wisconsin is called La Petite Petite — a store devoted to doll furniture, miniature dioramas, and the kind of impossibly small things that make grown adults want to get a closer look. Every winter, La Petite Petite hosts a competition for the best miniature scene built inside an Altoids tin. I have some thoughts about what goes wrong at that competition one year. But you’ll have to wait for book three to hear more about that.