Teacup Trolls for 2024 April Vacation

Trolls are a favorite topic for research, and I have pages and pages of notes from fifteen to twenty different sources in my library. Somewhere in those notes, I jotted down a comment from a book that escapes my memory, about trolls as small as teacups. This stray comment became a mental note about teacup trolls -- clearly a topic worth exploring with the detectives.

This April, this note will become a full-blown adventure for detectives in grades 3 through 8. We will be running the mystery at Durham Community School, in the Art and Makers rooms. The program runs from Monday through Friday, April 15-19, from 9 AM to 4 PM. There is still room to enroll in the program!

This week, I have been designing the trolls for our adventure. My goal was to create trolls that look like stones that awoke and walked out of the forest, down the mountain, or up from the sea. We will be trying our hand at needle felting -- a craft I've been intending to explore for some time. I'm pleased with the design so far. She fits perfectly into the palm of the hand -- or a teacup. She's a bit mossy from her time of sleep. And she has runic designs carved into the "stone." Add some tusks and a tail, a few hagstones, and she'll be ready to meet our detectives!