I arrived half an hour early to the Boston Public Library, anxiously clutching a canvas tote bag with my childhood Samantha doll inside. The event managers admired my punctuality but told me I couldn’t go into the room yet — so I picked a nearby table and sat, discreetly eyeing the other patrons. For anyone with a large-ish bag beside them, I wondered: Were they going to this book talk? And, if so, had they brought a doll?
Was I the only one who had?
I was there to see Mary Mahoney and Allison Horrocks — historians, podcasters and authors of the book “Dolls of Our Lives: Why We Can’t Quit American Girl.” For the uninitiated: Each of the original American Girl dolls portrays a preteen girl from a particular time period in American history, accompanied by six chapter books of illustrated stories. I had grown up with these dolls, which were first introduced in 1986, and the podcast played to millennial nostalgia like mine. The English teacher in me also enjoyed Mahoney and Horrocks’ “hot takes” on each book’s plot, characters, and representations of power and privilege. (Some have aged better than others.) In short, I was a fan, and I had been sure that other fans would bring their dolls to the library…