Meet Arne Lindmo and Ida Skjelbakken - Selected Title Authors
We are happy to present our selected title author Arne Lindmo and illustrator Ida Skjelbakken. They have written Trollheim 1-3.
The book is one of NORLA’s Selected Titles of the spring 2023.
Read our interview with Arne here.
What is the book about?
In the Trollheim series, three 12-year-olds form strong friendships after finding their way to each other. Despite their differences in appearance, ethnicity, social background, skills, and personalities, they all have one thing in common: they’re outsiders. Tara, the tough girl from India, challenges Adam and Tobias to join her into the creepy, abandoned house in the woods. She’s the only one who dares to go – and she doesn’t come back out. The boys realize they have to go looking for her. Inside, they meet terrifying creatures from old fairytales and Norse mythology. Adam gets a sword that can cut through stone, Tara gets a magical bow that hits everything she aims at, and Tobias learns an Old Norse spell that lets him throw small firebombs. Armed with these weapons, they go into battle to combat evil. Each book in the series presents a new challenge for the children; that is, each book can stand alone and has a beginning and an end, but there are several common threads throughout the series – and the one who’s always pulling the threads is the new ruler of the underworld, Loki.
What inspired you to write this book?
The Trollheim books are a middle-grade (ca. 8-13 years) suspense series. The books are specifically written to be easy to read, with roomy text, rich illustrations, distinctive and likable characters, a fast pace, and short chapters with frequent “cliffhangers”. The series utilizes a mixture of genres in which fantasy meets reality; that is to say, the books are set in our time in a modern town, but with supernatural elements lurking just beneath the surface. This means that the series suits those who already like fantasy, but that doesn’t mean that weaker or more inexperienced readers will feel overwhelmed by a wall of new information – something that can often characterize this genre.The book has generally been very well received by children who enjoy reading, but also by children who normally don’t like to read, either because they are weaker readers or because bad experiences with the wrong books have led them to believe that reading is boring. The Trollheim books are easy to read but still take children seriously and deliver a series of thrilling page-turners.
Read more
See full presentation of the book here
See all NORLA’s Selected Titles for the autumn 2022 here
