We're a month into summer already. Let's check in with my historical gals and see what they've been up to lately!
1765: Kaya is on her way home after doing some trading with her Salish friends. She traded some stick horses she made for this cool wooden flute, a bracelet, and a woven basket. Her dog Tatlo accompanied her.
1775: Felicity and Elizabeth are playing a game of shuttlecock and battledore in Elizabeth's backyard. They are certainly not eavesdropping on a conversation between Elizabeth's sister Annabelle and a potential suitor. They are also definitely not making funny animal sounds to scare away the gentleman caller.
1813: Caroline is delivering the mail for Sacket's Harbor. This isn't the first time she's done it; earlier this spring, she took on her friend Seth's mail delivery route, and she loved it so much that she volunteered to do it again. She's been out since before daybreak and the big canvas mail bag is almost empty.
1825: Josefina is visiting her grandparents in Santa Fe and looking at the city through her telescope. It's incredible how the telescope makes faraway objects suddenly very close.
1853: Cécile has borrowed her brother's paintbrushes and offered to paint an elegant portrait of Marie-Grace, but what Marie-Grace doesn't know yet is that the portrait will be a silly caricature. Cécile loves making her shy friend laugh.
1855: Kirsten is on her way to go fishing at the creek. She's wearing her new straw hat that she got a few weeks ago at the Fourth of July celebration in Maryville.
1865: Addy is bringing home some vegetables from her family's garden. Selling them will earn a bit of money for Poppa's trip south to find Addy's brother Sam and sister Esther. Any leftover money will go to their church's Freedman's Fund.
1915: Rebecca is winning prizes at Coney Island. She's pretty good at some of the games, and she knocked over enough bottles to win this wind-up musical carousel.
1955: Maryellen is getting a snow cone from the soda shop.
1986: And in case you missed last week's post, Courtney is beating her high scores in Skee-Ball at Smiley's Arcade!
I had some health issues (as well as procrastination issues) but I finally got my COVID and flu shots booster for this year! It’s not too late for you to get them too!
As someone who’s *very salty* that AG threw away the opportunity to give Maryellen a more severe disability, I’m very happy with these pages about polio in her new diary. I have a special interest in polio (that’s entirely Maryellen’s fault) and all of this is accurate to what I’ve researched.
Also, confirmation that Maryellen used to need crutches and/or leg braces?! I don’t think AG has ever mentioned her needing mobility aids after she had polio, not even for a short time.
It’s not unrealistic that she made a mostly full recovery. Kids with polio were given rigorous physical therapy to try to restore their movement and strength. It often worked. It turns out that these children’s brains were able to bypass their damaged nerves by rerouting their healthy nerves to control their muscles. I probably did a bad job of explaining that, but it’s part of the reason Post-Polio Syndrome can be so devastating for an individual. It’s when the weakness from polio shows up again later in life, and people who worked hard to regain function can have it the worst. Their bodies worked overtime to compensate the muscles that didn’t work anymore, and that over exertion of their muscles hurt their bodies over time.
Raquel Reyes may be a descendant of Samantha for AG's 40th Anniversary
2026 will be American Girl's 40th anniversary, and with it the anniversary of Samantha, Molly and Kirsten. As much as we love all three of the girls, it's undeniable that Samantha was the breakout star of the group, who was literally used as American Girl's icon for ages. Even in semi-retirement, she's still very much the face of the company and everyone remembers and loves her stories of acceptance, family, fistfighting the patriarchy and unionizing.
Recently, 2026's Girl of the Year, Raquel Reyes, and her starter collection (maybe full collection? Looks a bit small tho) has leaked. And it is looking very likely that she is either a Samantha fangirl or a straight-up DESCENDANT of Samantha Mary Parkington.
Leaks and discussion under the cut.
Got these photos from this reddit post from @/Phsyical_Occasion_57, Lord knows if it'll stay up tho so I'm reposting the relevant images below.
Now, at first, just seems like a preppy Girl of the Year. We've had pink and girly GOTYs for the last two years so a little disappointing, but I'm sure our tomboy sports girls will have their day. But no, what attracted people's attention was THIS.
Two black-and-white photos in her trunk, one of Samantha Parkington in a fancy outfit, the other seemingly of Parkington manor.
Now, she could very well just be a fangirl like Z Yang; it would fit with the meta we know she established. BUT. The black-and-white photography implies it may be a historical image rather than a printed photo of a character she likes, and we ALSO know that precedent for AG characters growing up was tested out with Julie in the graphic novel and McKenna in Lila's books (more on that later). There's also been speculation that American Girl in-universe is a company that depicts actual historical figures from their world, as Z makes a reference to "the real Nanea" when she makes her Nanea stopmotion. So this could be confirming that by having a descendant of Samantha in the same universe as Z and the other modern dolls.
But the picture isn't all– her collection is EXTREMELY Samantha-coded. Firstly, the pink-and-white and florals, obviously, but that could be for any girly girl. But let's look at her specifics.
Raquel's outfit, first– it's EXTREMELY evocative of BOTH of Samantha's Meet outfits. The bow is obvious, but the checker pattern on both is highly reminiscent of Samantha's main arrival outfit, with the pink and shorter skirt being very similar to her BeForever design. Both dresses also share the puffy sleeves with her. Raquel's shoes also have red bows like the BeForever outfit and Samantha's belt.
She also has a gold bow bracelet and golden heart necklace beside the Samantha portrait; while neither seem to show the detail on Samantha's brocade, it could be reversed or a different necklace simply meant to match old photos. In any case, it's EXTREMELY similar to her BeForever necklace.
She seems to be interested in Pickleball (basically tennis if y'all don't know), but her pickleball set and dress are labelled as for Piney Point, somewhere Samantha frequented in Samantha Saves the Day at her summer house.
Her floral dress is also VERY BeForever Samantha– so while not very historically accurate, VERY accurate for what AG envisions a modern-style Samantha to look like. The hat above the dress as well is definitely something I've seen in Sam's collections before.
Also compare both the floral dress and her meet outfit to Samantha's Harlem Fashion Row outfit from the 35th anniversary.
Her accessory bag also brings to mind Samantha's handbag and floral handkerchief accessories.
But that's just aesthetics– let's also take a look at that photo of Samantha. What's right next to it?
it's a recipe for Peppermint Ice Cream.
So at the VERY VERY least, Raquel is a Samantha fan. But the black-and-white photo and seemingly """handwritten""" recipe imply that she may be straight-up related to our very own Samantha Parkington. This, along with the fact that 2026 will be the 40th anniversary of American Girl, highly implicates a more-than-baseline connection between them.
And it's not just that; I think American Girl has been lowkey testing the waters for this since 2020. [Maybe even before, but Z was a bit of a rush-job I don't think they thought through.]
Back in Covid days, when Courtney dropped, there was a lot of disappointment around her design, including from me. Mostly the fact she was another blonde-haired blue-eyed white girl, but not even an interesting-looking one; she was nearly identical to Maryellen. When she first was leaked, people started rumors that she may be related to Maryellen as copium, maybe even her daughter. [photo from @/BookJockey1979 on reddit]
Obviously this wasn't what happened, but I think American Girl noticed the interest around such a thing. The next tested the waters of family dolls with Corinne and Gwynn being sisters– and that seemed to work out for them fine. Then, it was Lila Monetti being the student of McKenna, the 2012 Girl of the Year. Not only was that something fans loved, they LATCHED onto that so excitedly. And while it's definitely not the reason Lila is such a bestseller– her cute design and adorable collection is probably to blame for that– it probably helped the older market that wouldn't otherwise look her way and got Lila basically free social media publicity from fans. And AG is very social media-present.
I think the final test was 2024's Julie and the Blue Guitar. The graphic novel details a girl in modern times trying to track down an adult Julie, and eventually succeeding and meeting her. This was the first time we'd seen an adult historical character (unless you follow the Caroline or GrandMarie theories, which are faaar from confirmed), with the oldest anyone had ever gotten being Samantha's 16 in the Titanic book. And reception to this book was very positive. At the very least, nobody threw a fit; while it's only got 4 reviews on the official site, all are 5-star, with the same level of it's 5 amazon reviews. The most reviews I could find were on Goodreads, which has a 4/5 from 65 reviews right now. So if that speaks to anything? It was probably AG's last test before they gave the go-ahead for Raquel Parkington-Reyes.
Having Raquel as Samantha's descendant is also a genius marketing strategy; JUST from the initial reddit leaks, I've seen comments on both reddit and instagram saying they already are planning to buy Raquel based on the Samantha connection alone. Not only is she pandering to the nostalgia market, not only is she pink and frilly like Mattel loves (and what sold well with Lila), but she's also finally a non-white Girl of the Year, so the "AG So White" demographic isn't pissed. The name "Raquel Reyes" is very hispanic, she has the same face-mold as Maritza, and she has a medium skintone. Right now the name is very popular in Brazil and the United States, and MyNameStats.com says that 63% of people named Raquel that they've gathered are of Hispanic or Latine origin. All of this heavily implies that Raquel will be latina, which is great since the last latina doll of the year we had was Luciana (and Maritza as our last modern, who barely had advertisement).
So Raquel is nostalgia-bait for the collectors, extremely girly and frilly for the child doll-collecting market (or at least what Mattel thinks it is) and isn't a third white GOTY in a row, so it mitigates our frustration at AG's lack of diversity. Pretty much, everyone wins, and Raquel is gonna be their major cash cow for their anniversary year.
Awhile ago I made a post here about getting some forearm crutches for Maryellen. Well I finally got around to making them '50s style! They look much more metallic IRL, but the camera only picks up so much.
Fun history facts, Lofstrand Jr. filed the patent for adjustable forearm crutches in 1951, so these could have existed, though the patent wasn't approved until 1955. (This is why they're occasionally called the Lofstrand crutch). Non-adjustable variants have been in production for far longer, though.
