Doll Hospital Books In Order

Publication Order of Doll Hospital Books

Doll Hospital is a series of children’s books written by Joan Holub. The books follow the exploits of two girls who learn about life via the stories of the dolls their grandmother finds and repairs.

+The Story

The Doll Hospital series began publication in 2002. Joan Holub wrote six Doll Hospital novels before finally bringing the series to an end in 2003. The books are small in size, rarely longer than two hundred pages.

The stories they tell are written with young children in mind and their length is designed to contend with the attention spans of that particular audience. Though, there are adults who will attest to reading and enjoying this series.

The Doll Hospital series follows Lila and Rose. Lila and Rose, an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old, are forced to move in with their eccentric grandmother. Their parents are compelled to go to Africa for work, and circumstances will not permit their young children to come along.

As such, it is decided that they will spend a year with their Far Nana until they can be reunited with their parents. Lila and rose are initially quite unenthusiastic about this prospect.

The idea of living with their grandmother does not bring them much joy. Their trepidation changes to curiosity when they realize that the old woman runs a doll hospital.

She has skills which allow her to fix dolls which have fallen into disrepair. Lila and Rose are initially primarily fascinated by the idea of discovering exotic new dolls and playing with them.

Their grandmother goes the extra mile of blowing their minds when she reveals that her ability to repair dolls is accompanied by a gift that allows her to actually talk to them. To be more specific, the old woman can read the lives of the dolls upon which she is working.

That power comes in handy for Lila and Rose who quickly find that the dolls their grandmother finds and repairs have lived vastly more interesting lives than they could have imagined.

Tatiana, their first patient, lived in Russia before circumstances drove her to flee to Ellis Island with Ella, the person who initially owned her.

Tatiana’s story as an immigrant is by far the least heartbreaking for Lila and Rose; they also meet Goldie, the doll of a girl whose family lost its fortune in the great depression, not to mention Glory and her life on a plantation during America’s darker times.

Lila and Rose listen and take to heart every word their grandmother says to them. They are awed by the epic adventures the dolls bore witness to, not to mention the precarious nature of the journeys they encountered as they were passed from one pair of hands to another during history’s more difficult times.

The Doll Hospital books are often commended for their brazen approach to storytelling. Despite their young target audience, Joan Holub does not shy away from tackling the sorts of difficult subjects that authors normally choose to restrict to adult literature.

Joan talks about the hardships of immigration. She takes readers to a girl born into slavery on a plantation. There are also stories that look at the complexities of orphan life in the United States.

The Doll hospital books traverse the decades and the centuries, and through Lila and Rose, they attempt to educate their young readers on issues of a serious matter. That being said, the series never gets so dark that it might frighten or scar the children who read it.

At the end of the day, Joan Holub endeavors to make her books simple, fun, light reads that tackle the contemporary problems that children encounter such as the hardships of family life and the troubles some people face when trying to fit in.

The Doll Hospital books do not have to be read in the order they were published. Each new installment in the series tends to focus on its own doll, story and lesson. The books have been criticized for their habit of switching back and forth between the Doll’s story –which is typically set in the past—and Lila and Rose’s own actions at the present.

Some people believe that the approach can get distracting. They would prefer it if Joan Holub simply focused on the Doll’s story. Other readers believe that it is necessary to highlight Lila and Rose’s reactions to the stories they hear.

+The Author

Joan Holub is an American author that writes children’s fiction. Holub was educated in Texas. She graduated with a degree in Fine Arts and spent several years freelancing.

Holub always knew that she wanted to write Children’s books. The opportunity to follow her dreams did not come until she moved to New York and started working with editors and illustrators to design children’s books. It wasn’t long after that the opportunity came for Holub to author her own children’s books.

+Tatiana Comes to America

Lila and Rose are eight and ten-year-old siblings whose lives change in ways they do not initially appreciate. Lila and Rose are forced to go live with their grandmother when their parents go to Africa for work.

Lila and Rose are only supposed to live with their Far Nana for a year. However, the girls are hesitant to embrace the change. It isn’t until they learn the truth about their grandmother that they alter their tune.

Not only does the old woman run a doll hospital but she has the power to read the lives of the dolls she fixes.

In this first book in the Doll Hospital series, Lila and Rose meet Tatiana, a doll who belonged to a girl called Ella. Tatiana and her owner left Russia for America because of World War II.

Along the way, Ella gave her doll to a Romanian girl she met in a detention center.

+Goldie’s Fortune

Lila and Rose are two young girls living with their grandmother because their parents moved to Africa to work for a year. Lila and Rose were initially unenthusiastic about the idea of living with Far Nana.

Then they learned that the old woman ran a Doll Hospital and she could talk to dolls to discover their life story.

This time, Lila and Rose are introduced to Goldie. Goldie belonged to Eliza, a girl whose family lost everything during the Great Depression.