Ben Hatke’s Lost Creatures Blog Tour

What makes a creature lovable? Mysterious? Fun? Children draw or create stories about creatures from their imagination all the time. Do you? Some people still do, and I’m glad to highlight Ben Hatke.

There are many kinds of creatures in the world of Ben Hatke (I’m looking at you, PINK! on page 52 of Zita the Spacegirl), and the newest set is from his book Julia’s House for Lost Creatures. It’s a wonderful picture book I reviewed last week. This week, Ben is taking a blog tour with some of his creatures to spark the imagination.

Today is his stop with GeekMom and he has shared a few leafy and literate trolls. Who are they?

Trolls: Pictured above from left to right: river troll, hill troll, and Mountain King. River trolls (also called bridge trolls) frequently live quietly outside villages and always near running water. They have a bad reputation as eaters of livestock, mostly due to one particular story of dubious veracity involving three goats. Most river trolls find this story to be offensive and one-sided. Anyway, they prefer fish. Hill trolls, on the other hand, are wilder. They inhabit high pasture land and forests and mostly make their dens in dry caves. They eat sheep whenever they can. Mountain kings are the largest kind of troll, but they are rarely seen. They inhabit rocky highlands and are known to nestle in among boulders and can sleep for hundreds of years.

A Note from Ben: Only the river troll and the hill troll appear in Julia’s House. They are old friends and they are really interested in poetry and music (not all trolls are uncultured). The river troll develops a bit of a crush on the mermaid.

For a complete blog tour schedule click here!