Hilda and the Stone Forest

Hilda and the Stone Forest is the fifth book in the Hilda series of graphic novels, written and illustrated by Luke Pearson.

It is the first Hilda book not to be included in season 1 of the animated series, but is instead adapted into season 2.

Summary
The story begins with Hilda and Twig chasing after a creature that looks like a patch of land with legs. It has run off with the house of an elf. Hilda finally manages to save the house when they are already outside the walls of Trolberg. A farmer there tells Hilda that there are unusually many Trolls outside the walls. One even took his goat.

Back home, Hilda covers up her adventure with the lie that she was at David’s house all day. In the days that follow, Hilda goes on many more adventures, either alone or with her friends, and keeps making up excuses to Johanna. One day, Johanna has enough and demands to spend some time with Hilda, so the two go for a picnic (which is almost ruined when they can’t find a good spot). Back home, Frida calls and asks if Hilda can sleep at her house tonight, but Johanna refuses, leading to another argument between her and Hilda. It ends with Hilda being send to her room. There, she is visited by the Great Raven, and convinces him to take her and Frida for a flight across Trolberg. While flying, they notice multiple fires burning on the mountainside, and the Raven claims these to be the work of Trolls. Things almost go wrong when the Raven collides with a zeppelin and Frida falls off his back, but he catches her in time.

When the raven brings Hilda home, they are confronted by Johanna, who is furious that Hilda snuck off and endangered Frida. Johanna grounds Hilda. Days go by and Hilda grows bored. In an attempt to get out, she blackmails Tontu into letting her into Nowhere Space. She already has one arm in Nowhere Space when Johanna enters the room and tries to stop her. Tontu warns them that it’s dangerous, but too late; Johanna, Twig, and Hilda are send to a place they have never seen before; a cave filled with stone pillars.

They argue a bit more, with Johanna wanting to wait for help, but Hilda insisting to find her own way out. Hilda wins the argument and the three of them venture deeper into the strange forest. For a long time they encounter nobody, but when Hilda follows the sound of running water, they end up near a room filled with Trolls. Since they are thirsty, Johanna and Hilda try to sneak to the water unseen, but have to hide when a troll leading a goat packed with goods comes their way. And she’s not alone; she has a Troll child, who sees Hilda and Johanna and gives them away. Hilda and Johanna manage to escape the troll by hiding among the goods on the goat’s back. They are lucky; the troll takes the goat outside the cave, where several other trolls are sitting around a fire, eating. Johanna notices they are close to the walls of Trolberg.

The trolls enjoy their meal, until a two-headed troll appears and picks a fight in attempt to steal the other trolls’ belongings. Hilda and Johanna try to use the distraction to run, but Twig stays behind and is accidently taken back into the cave by the two-headed troll when he runs off with his loot. Hilda insists on saving him, but Johanna orders her to stay put while she will go back for Twig. Naturally, Hilda quickly grows tired of waiting and follows her mom into the caves anyway.

Johanna finds Twig in the lair of the two-headed troll, but the troll seals off the exit before the two of them can escape, and takes a nap in front of the door. They search for another way out, but accidently wake up the troll. Hilda meanwhile is in a tunnel underneath the Troll’s lair, but finds her path blocked by a hatch with a padlock. She spots a white worm that eats rocks, and tricks it into chewing through the padlock. With the hatch unlocked, Johanna and Twig can escape the troll.

On their way to the exit, they run into the female Troll and her child again. She picks up Hilda and Johanna and carries them off to her home. There, it turns out the Troll means them no harm. She offers them a drink, and a place to sleep. Hilda even plays with the young Troll, who uses rocks and a strand of Hilda’s hair to make stone figures of the two of them. The following morning, the troll has drawn a map of the Stone Forest in the dirt to show Hilda and Johanna the way out. She also creates a small, burning cloud shaped like a woff to guide Hilda and Johanna to the exit.

Unfortunately, they encounter the two-headed troll, who is furious. He grabs Hilda and Johanna, but drops them when Twig attacks him. Chased by the troll, Hilda and Johanna flee into a cave filled with the white worms Hilda saw earlier, including 1 gigantic worm. The troll is clearly scared of the worms and backs off.

Sadly, in the chase Hilda and Johanna lost their way again, but then Hilda spots the same creature she encountered at the start of the story. Realizing the creature must know a way out, Johanna and Hilda follow him. The two-headed troll returns in a final attempt to capture the two, but they reach the exit of the cave in time. And since it’s day, the troll is instantly petrified into a boulder the moment he steps outside. The boulder rolls off the mountain, triggering a landslide. Johanna, Twig and Hilda are almost crushed, but saved in time by the Great Raven.

The Raven takes them back home. Hilda has had enough adventure for now and apologizes to her mom for everything, but Johanna tells Hilda she is still proud of who she is. She just wants Hilda to stop keeping secrets from her. Meanwhile, in the Stone Forest, the female troll can be seen playing with the stone figures of Hilda and her daughter….

The next morning, Johanna enters into Hilda's room while bringing her breakfast as something to enjoy in bed. However, much to her shock and surprise, she finds not Hilda in the bed but the Troll child Baba, who is now a human. Meanwhile back at the mountain, Hilda wakes up in the cave of the female Troll, and discovers she has somehow turned into a troll.

To Be Continued

Humans

 * Hilda
 * Johanna
 * David (cameo)
 * Frida
 * Farmer

Creatures

 * Woff
 * The Great Raven
 * Weather Spirit (cameo)
 * Water Spirit (cameo)
 * Elves
 * Salt-Lion (cameo)
 * Walking Land-creature
 * Rock-Chewing Slug (regular and giant-sized)
 * Vittra (cameo)

Trolls

 * Baba
 * Baba's mom
 * Two-Headed Troll
 * Various trolls

Nisse

 * Tontu (alpha)

Deer-foxes

 * Twig

Nominations
In 2017, Hilda and the Stone Forest was nominated for the Eisner Award in the category Best Publication for Kids (ages 9–12), but didn't win.

That same year, the graphic novel was also nominated for the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Kids' Comics, but didn't win this one either.

Adaptation
The bulk of the story was adapted for the season 2 episode "Chapter 13: The Stone Forest". The opening scene of Hilda chasing the Walking Land Creature was adapted into "Chapter 1: The Troll Circle", while Hilda getting grounded was adapted into "Chapter 7: The Beast of Cauldron Island".

There are some notable differences between the graphic novel and the adaptation:


 * The animated adaptation adds Alfur, the Bragga Family, Erik Ahlberg and Gerda Gustav as extra characters to the plot. Erik Ahlberg will not be introduced in the graphic novels until the next story, while the others minus Alfur are unique to the animated series.
 * The adaptation significantly increases the roles of David and Frida by giving them their own subplot in which they try to find Hilda, but get lost and spend a night in the woods outside the city along with Erik and Gerda. During this, Frida (who is learning witchcraft) accidentally turns Erik into a bug, while Gerda learns Trolls aren't so bad.
 * The Great Raven on the other hand is completely absent in the adaptation. The scene where he takes Hilda to see Frida thus never happens, and his role in the climax where he saves Hilda and Johanna as they fall off a cliff is given to Gerda, Frida and David (who save Johanna with their zeppelin) and a white Woff (who saves Hilda).
 * The scene where Hilda and Johanna try to find a good picnick spot is left out of the adaptation.
 * In the animated series, Hilda getting grounded happens several episodes before her being send to her room, and the reason why she gets grounded is because Johanna found out she lied about going to a Sparrow Scouts meeting.
 * The animated adaptation does not take place around the time of the Bird Parade.
 * The reason why Hilda tries to sneak off to Frida's house is changed to her wanting to give Frida the final ingredient for a spell she was practicing.
 * Upon rescuing the Elf house from the Walking Land Creature, Hilda accidentally takes it to the Bragga village in the animated adaptation.
 * In the adaptation, Hilda and Johanna do not encounter the walking-land-creature again in the Stone Forest. Instead, Alfur finds them when they are close to the exit.

Trivia

 * Hilda becomes a troll at the end of this book.
 * It is currently unknown how both Hilda and the troll child switch places and she became a troll in the process, but the stone figures Baba made seem to have something to do with it.
 * The Bird Parade is held again in this story (though Hilda only gets to see the fireworks from her window), meaning a year has passed since the events of "Hilda and the Bird Parade".

Hilda and the Stone Forest

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