Literature / American Girls Collection

(aka: American Girls Collection)

3 Following

List of Movies:

• Samantha: An American Girl Holiday (2004): An adaptation of Samantha's books, starring AnnaSophia Robb as Samantha.
• Felicity: An American Girl Adventure (2005): An adaptation of Felicity's books, starring Shailene Woodley as Felicity.
• Molly: An American Girl on the Home Front (2006): An adaptation of Molly's storyline, starring Maya Ritter as Molly.
• Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (2008): An adaptation of Kit's storyline, starring Abigail Breslin as Kit.
• An American Girl: Chrissa Stands Strong: (2009): The first Girl Of The Year movie, starring Sammi Hanratty as Chrissa.
• McKenna Shoots for the Stars (2012): The second GOTY movie, starring Jade Pettyjohn as McKenna.
• Saige Paints The Sky (2013): The third GOTY movie, starring Sidney Fullmer as Saige.
• Isabelle Dances Into the Spotlight (2014): The fourth GOTY movie, starring Erin Pitt as Isabelle.
• Grace Stirs Up Success (2015): The fifth GOTY movie, starring Olivia Rodrigo as Grace. Also a tie-in with MasterChef Junior.
• Lea To the Rescue (2016): The sixth GOTY movie, starring Maggie Elizabeth Jones as Lea.
• Melody 1963: Love Has to Win (2016): BeForever movie starring Marsai Martin as Melody.
• Maryellen 1955: Extraordinary Christmas (2016): BeForever movie starring Alyvia Alyn Lind as Maryellen.
• Ivy and Julie 1976: A Happy Balance (2017): BeForever movie starring Nina Lu as Ivy and Hannah Nordberg as Julie.
• An American Girl Story: Summer Camp, Friends For Life (2017): The first Contemporary Character movie, starring Zoe Manarel as Z Yang.
• American Girl: Corinne Tan (2023): The (long delayed) seventh GOTY movie, starring sisters Miya and Kai Cech as Corinne and Gwynn Tan.

• Accidental Time Travel: The protagonists of the My Journey Game Books don't initially decide to go back in time; they end up back there by interacting with something from that era such as a coin, miniature portrait, vintage camera, or brooch. (The exception being the one from Melody's, who goes back by singing "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing".) However, after the first trip, they (mostly) go back to explore the era willingly.
• Acme Products: In-universe, items such as appliances, flashlights, food brands, and equipment are branded under the American Girl moniker, using the brand logo as such. Selected items are officially licensed scale model versions like Julie's Volkswagen Beetle and the Kodak film from Kit's reporter accessories.
• Acquaintance Denial: In "A Smart Girl's Guide to Knowing What to Say", one hypothetical scenario involves the reader needing to apologise to her brother John after pretending not to know him because he's nerdy.
• Actionized Adaptation:
  • The film adaptation of Kit's series of novels added some relatively mild chase and action scenes in the film's climax, where Kit and her friends chase after and confront Mr. Berk, along with his assistant Frederich and Miss Bond, who turned out to be the ones responsible for the robberies involving hobos.
  • Lea's movie has her confronting poachers and rescuing her older brother in Brazil. This does not happen in the books.
• Adapted Out: Several minor characters aren't cast in the historical movies.
  • Felicity's movie removes the Lord and Lady Dunmore; they're stated to have already left the colonies (since the movie starts in spring 1775). Instead, the fancy ball is held by a local well off woman. Also Felicity's birthday has already happened, so Isaac from her birthday book is removed.
  • In Kit's movie, Charlie and Aunt Millie both function as The Ghost; they're referred to, but you only see Charlie in a photograph in the background. Other characters have their significance cut down (Uncle Hendrick and Roger each only have a scene or two) but remain in the story.
  • All of the pets except Kit's dog Grace and Felicity's horse Penny are removed.
  • Isabel and Nicki's parents are completely absent from the web series Isabel and Nicki's Super-Duper Twin Adventures.
• Adaptational Costume Change:
  • Ariel from The Little Mermaid (1989) as part of the part of the AG x Disney Crossover release, has her signature Seashell Bra and tail adapted into a mermaid style dress with a purple top and green scale-print skirt and purple heeled shoes.
  • Minor; Zoey from KPop Demon Hunters has had her halter top from "How It's Done" modified into a sleeveless top with mesh accents.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • In the original Felicity books, Felicity's best friend Elizabeth is a brunette, but in the movie (and later, for her doll) she's a blonde.
  • In the Chrissa books, Jayden is brunette; in the movie, she is dirty blonde.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: In Felicity's books, Elizabeth was introduced along with Annabelle in Felicity Learns a Lesson when Felicity starts attending finishing school with Miss Manderly. In the movie, Elizabeth appears before the first lesson in Mr. Merriman's store.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Felicity is sometimes called "Lissie" by her parents and Nan.
  • Molly's father calls her "Olly-Molly".
  • Maryellen's family often calls her "Ellie"; her older sister amends this with rhymes, such as "Ellie-jelly."
  • Melody's family calls her DeeDee, and her grandmother calls her "little chick" as she calls all her grandchildren chickadees.
  • Lindsey's uncle Bernie calls her "Pumpkin."
• Age-Inappropriate Dress: In "The Dress Disaster," a short story published in the magazine, Liz's grandmother gives her a yellow dress for her birthday that looks like something a much younger girl would wear, with lacy bows on the sleeves and a teddy bear on the front. Her mom persuades her to wear it to school to make her grandmother happy. It's only after Liz gets to school that she remembers it's class picture day. Luckily for her, the picture is only taken from the shoulders up, so the embarrassing details don't show.
• All Dogs Are Purebred: The dogs shown in the line are frequently purebred, unless they're specifically designed to be a unique mixed breed or are fantasy in nature.
  • In the Historical characters Marie-Grace's dog Argos is a Bouvier des Flandres, Kit's found pet Grace is a basset hound, Molly and Emily get Jack Russell terriers as birthday pets, and Maryellen has a dachshund. A major exception is Kaya, who has a wild dog.
  • In the Girls of the year, most of them have dogs and they're frequently purebred. These include a dachshund, a French Bulldog found as a stray in France, a corgi, and a golden retriever.
  • The named modern pets (which are not tied to any character and instead were their own subline) have pets such as Coconut the Westie, Pepper the husky, and Chocolate Chip the Golden Retriever. Unnamed dogs include a wheaten terrier, corgi, and cocker spaniel to name a few.
• All Girls Like Ponies: Felicity and Kaya both have horses that are significant parts of their stories; Felicity likes horses more than anything. Nicki Fleming and Saige also have horses in their stories and enjoy riding them, and Lila goes to riding camp as part of her stories and has a horse in her collection. Since 1998 with the release of the American Girl Horse (whom was designed after Penny), the modern collection has continuously offered a horse to purchase for modern characters.
• Alliterative Name: Rebecca Rubin, Molly McIntire, and Margaret Mildred "Kit" Kittredge in the historical line; Raquel Reyes in the modern line.
• All There in the Manual: Each named character — historicals and modern-era characters such as the Girls of the Year— come with a meet book that introduces the character, theme, and setting (and in the case of historical characters, the historical specifics of the era.) The rest of the character's series is sold separately, including any side books or spinoffs. Originally outfits and accessories came with data about the books they were connected to; this was depreciated but in the 2020s started to return. The intentions of the brand founder, Pleasant Rowland, was to market the historical characters as a whole world with educational benefits, with the historicals being marketed as showing history through the eyes of a 9 year old of that era.
• Alpha Bitch: The majority of series has someone who is nasty to the main character.
  • In the Historical Character line, this includes: Harriet Davis in Addy's series; Lavinia Halsworth in Cécile and Marie-Grace's series; the Water Fountain Girls and Mark in Julie's series.
  • For the Girl of the Year books, we have: Blair in Lindsey's story with Missy as her Dragon, and Tara from Chrissa's stories.
• Always Identical Twins: Rebecca's twin older sisters Sadie and Sophie (which results in her having doubles of all their clothes). Nicki and Isabel Hoffman avert this; they are fraternal twins and have different hair and eye colors.
• Ambiguous Gender: Throughout the years, Coconut the dog has been marketed as male, female, and with no explicit gender so whoever purchases them can decide. In 2014, the marketing settled on making her explicitly female.
• Ambiguously Brown: Zigzagged. Named characters always have their race and/or ethnicity specified, both Girls of the Year and Historical Characters (and other lines such as the short-lived Contemporary and World By Us lines). However, the unnamed modern line (now called Truly Me) has none of the dolls given a specific race or ethnicity, as they're intended to be akin to "open canvases" to let purchasers create characters of their own. The medium tones have been used with more of the facial molds than the light or dark tones; for example, the Josefina mold has been used with all three available categories. Furthermore, using the Create Your Own system (which allows purchasers to pick the features of the doll), medium skin tones can be used with any of the available face molds offered. Basically, if the doll doesn't have a name, it doesn't have an ethnicity.
• American Title: The franchise name (American Girl) and the initial subtitles for the meet books: Name: An American Girl.
• Amicably Divorced:
  • Julie's parents, especially when Ms. Albright scolds Tracy for her Bratty Teenage Daughter behavior towards Mr. Albright.
  • Courtney's parents; she went back and forth between their households until her father had to move far away for his job.
  • Despite Corrine not thinking so to start due to their fighting in the past, her parents do get along (and her father and stepfather are not in conflict).
• Animal Lover: Most of the doll collections come with a pet or animal companion of some kind. These range from fairly ordinary pets, like Marisol's cat or Addy's (neighbor's) canary, to context-appropriate farm animals, like Felicity's lamb and horses and Josefina's goat, to just plain unusual ones, such as Kanani's harp seal (not a pet, but saved by Kanani and her cousin), or Chrissa's mail-delivering llama.
• An Immigrant's Tale: The main focus of Kirsten's series as she moves from Sweden to the US, and touched on with Rebecca's cousin Ana's journey from Russia. Discussed in Nellie's series (especially Nellie's Promise), but she herself didn't immigrate from Ireland—her parents did, and she was born in America.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Lindsey to Ethan (this one goes both ways, Lindsey thinks he's annoying too), Maryellen's younger sister and brothers to herself, and Danny to the reader insert in A New Beginning.
• Apology Gift: Seen in two magazine short stories.
  • In "A Dog Like Killybegs," Paloma is Michelle's friend who loves handmade clothes and is fond of Michelle's dog Killybegs, but is an outcast at school. After they have a temporary friendship breakup because Michelle didn't stand up for her, Michelle cuts ties with her friends who were being mean to Paloma and gives her a shirt with a handpainted design of Killybegs on the front.
  • In "Picture Perfect (At Last)," Ellen ruins a family photo by making a face. It turns out to be the family's last photo with Nana before she unexpectedly dies, and Ellen's mother is very angry with her. Ellen has her friend Haley take the ruined photo and Photoshop it so Nana is in her armchair and floating in the sky, surrounded by all the things she loved like hollyhock flowers, Shakespeare books, and a grand piano.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Nanea gets peeved that her beloved teacher Miss Smith gave her usual classroom role of "right-hand girl" to the new girl Dixie. "Someone who didn't even know everyone's names? Someone who liked tap dancing?" All of this is treated like Serious Business.
• Artistic License – Sports: A ten-year-old McKenna in 2012 would be aiming not for the 2016 Olympics, but the 2020 Olympics — all gymnasts who compete in the Olympic Games must turn at least 16 in the Olympic year, but McKenna would at most turn 15 in 2016. Likely artistic license by the narrators, as the film was also released in an Olympic year and the Rio Olympics were on every gymnast's mind.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Emily was originally a minor character who stayed with Molly's family for two weeks. She was later made into a doll, given her own book and starred prominently in the movie.
  • Elizabeth, Nellie, Ruthie, and Ivy eventually got their own doll and book, best friends to Felicity, Samantha, Kit, and Julie, respectively. All of the Best Friends were eventually retired.
  • Amazon's third special is called Ivy & Julie, not Julie. It adapts the books in which Ivy got A Day in the Limelight (Good Luck, Ivy and, to a lesser extent, Happy New Year, Julie) and makes her the main character and Julie the sidekick instead of the other way around. Strangely enough, this happened after Ivy and her small collection were retired, seemingly forever.
• Audience Shift: The remarketing of BeForever and Truly Me—as well as the lack of illustrations and denser texts—were meant to try and avert this and keep the 8-12 target demographic interested in the characters and dolls instead of the demographic shifting towards younger kids who can't read the books, won't take care of their dolls, and may injure themselves with small accessories. This also was part of the drive behind the creation of the WellieWishers line.
• Baldness Means Sickness: The bald dolls are not purely associated with illness; the company's official position is the dolls are for representing children "affected by cancer, alopecia, or any medical condition causing hair loss."
• Big Applesauce: Multiple characters have their series set or pass through New York City.
  • Samantha moves there by her sixth book and Nellie's book and her mysteries are all set after she lives there.
  • Rebecca lives on the Lower East Side.
  • Claudie as part of the Harlem Renaissance is set there.
• Big Brother Instinct: Mia's brothers are fairly protective of her. Especially when they accidentally get too rough with her during a game of floor hockey.
• Birthday Episode:
  • The fourth story in each Historical Character's series through Kit; this also resulted in them all having spring or early summer birthdays since the books were set in springtime. Kaya's culture didn't celebrate or track exact birthdays, so her fourth story focuses on her maturity and connection with a wild dog and its pups. (American Girl tends to give her a mid-August birthday celebration at store events.) Caroline, Marie-Grace, Cécile, Claudie, and Courtney's stories don't cover their birthdays. Melody's is shown at the start of her second volume; her birthday is January first, the earliest of any character. The Hoffman twins' series hasn't covered their birthday as of 2023.
  • The two modern characters with shown birthdays so far are Saige Copeland and Kavi Sharma, whose stories respectively end and begin with their birthdays. Tenney's Journal is said to be a birthday gift, but her birthday is not mentioned within the stories.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • Courtney's favorite video games along with the averted Pac-Man are "Gorilla Run" (highly likely to be Donkey Kong), and "Space Blaster", which could be any well known space shooting game but is likely Galaga. Her cassette player and boombox also doesn't have accurate era songs, but has made-up songs that simulate pop and rock music of the era.
  • Nicki and Isabel's computer, like Courtney's boombox, plays made-up songs to mimic the girl-group pop and alternative music of the late 1990s.
  • While Julie's first set of records and record player played authentic music of the era, the second release in 2024 plays simulated made-up songs like Courtney's and the Hoffman twins' items.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The brand initially avoided this by having the first three released characters consist of a blonde and two brunettes in Kirsten, Samantha, and Molly. They later added red-headed Felicity. A plush version of Molly was released with more auburn hair (as Felicity was not included), which completes the first trio.
• Blended Family Drama: Courtney and her stepsister Tina struggle to get along after Courtney moves in permanently.
• Blithe Spirit: Julie. Her first book has Julie try to have her new school include girls onto the boys-only basketball team.
• The Board Game:
  • A set of games were released as the American Girls Historical Games, based on era-accurate games. This included two board games for Kirsten and Molly, "The Mansion of Happiness" and "Get in the Scrap" respectively. (Samantha got a parlor game.)
  • Board games based on the characters and line included the trivia board game The American Girls Game, American Girl Treasures Game (collecting each character's unique items), and American Girl 300 Wishes Game (a modern game of guessing each other's wishes.)
• Bridezilla: Of a Mother of the Bride style in Maryellen's story. Kaye Larkin is planning to go out for her oldest daughter Joan's wedding, with home-tailored dresses and a fancy church wedding, since she and Stan didn't have the wedding they wanted because of The Great Depression. Joan wants and succeeds in getting a nice but simple backyard affair.
• Butt-Monkey: Lindsey's plans all fail spectacularly, despite her desire to help those around her.
• But Not Too Black: Biracial Evette worries that her younger brother Bud will face more discrimination as he's more obviously black than she is.
• But Not Too Foreign: Jess and Kanani are both half white and Lea is 7/8, widely suspected to be to make them more palatable to racially biased parents and children. Sonali, according to rumours and her last name; fandom calls her "half-Indian, half-whatever-you-want-her-to-be."
• The Case of...: The History Mystery book titled The Strange Case of Baby H.
• Characterization Tags: A similar practice is used to denote unnamed modern line dolls who look a bit too much like named retired dolls (e.g. "Not!Mia").
• Character Name and the Noun Phrase: Some short story titles e.g. Kirsten and the New Girl, Samantha and the Missing Pearls.
• Christianity Is Catholic: Zigzagged. While three major characters—Josefina, Marie-Grace, and Cécile—are Catholic and this features prominently in their stories, most of the Christian-specified characters are not Catholic. Addy is AME^note African Methodist Episcopal; Kirsten isn't specified but as a Swedish immigrant is likely Church of Sweden; Felicity is Church of England/Anglican; Melody is black Baptist, and Samantha and Molly are unspecified—and church doesn't feature prominently in their stories regardless, only as a few mentions. Julie, Claudie, Kit, Nanea, and Courtney never mention faith outside of celebrating Christmas, Rebecca is very much Jewish, and the Hoffman twins are interfaith with Informed Judaism. (Kaya is an indigenous faith).
• Christmas Episode: Until Kaya's release and for several characters afterwards, each Historical Character's third book focused on Christmas (with the exception of Kirsten's book focusing on St. Lucia's day). Since Kaya lived in a time prior to Christianity's widespread influence in her area, she did not get this but did get a book about a winter gift holiday. Rebecca instead has a Hanukkah Episode, but the American focus on Christmas as a universal holiday and her conflict with it as a Jewish girl is examined. A Zig-Zagged Trope with Julie; she spends a Christmas tea with her father at the beginning her book Happy New Year, Julie! but the primary focus is her time celebrating Chinese New Year with Ivy.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Discussed in Meet Rebecca where a poor woman comes with her son to get his ill-fitting shoes adjusted. She comments that one would think her son would have more shoes since his father works in a shoe factory, Rebecca's father (a shoemaker and shop owner) comments he used to work in one and had to use cardboard in the soles to walk about.
• Color-Coded Characters: Each historical girl has her own theme colour that decorates her book covers. The colours changed dramatically with the BeForever revamp and again after the depreciation. For example, Samantha, once associated with burgundy, became a soft pink which she remained at, and in Molly's absence, Addy went from a copper colour to Molly's dark blue.
• Coming of Age Story: The historical characters' narratives. Their coming-of-age intersects with their era and America's change at the same time.
• Companion Cube: The first six characters (Felicity, Josefina, Kirsten, Addy, Samantha, Molly) all have a doll that the treasure and often interact with, usually received as a gift during their respective Christmas books. Josefina's and Samantha's in particular tie in to their plot arcs.
• Compressed Adaptation: After the depreciation of the BeForever update, the main books for the historical characters were rereleased with the illustrations added back or added for the first time — but each of the two-volume books were adapted to be shorter than the imageless BeForever volumes. This ranged from the removal of small scenes that didn't impact the overall story to removing entire books. Notable examples:
  • Kaya has the last four books of her series compressed into a single volume. Kaya and Lone Dog and Kaya Shows the Way are both cropped down majorly, with Kaya and Lone Dog being reduced to two chapters and Kaya Shows the Way to only one — and in the latter, removes the conflict of her returned sister, Speaking Rain, wanting to to stay with the woman that took care of her after capture and Kaya working out a solution of her dividing her time between both families.
  • Samantha both loses books, chunks of books, and has two short stories integrated into Samantha: The Gift in order to focus less on class and race issues and more on her relationship with Nellie and Cornelia. Most sections of Meet Samantha and Samantha Learns a Lesson are removed, with the story rewritten to integrate parts of "Samantha's Blue Bicycle" so Samantha spends more time with her uncle and Cornelia (and thus gets her bike before they're even married). This results in only Nellie coming to live in Mount Bedford (and then returns to New York because her mother is sick, rather than because she's a weak worker). The entire plotline of Grandmary's seamstress Jesse quitting is removed, as is a good part of Samantha's events at school and Eddie Ryland as a character. Samantha's Surprise is removed and is instead replaced with "Samantha Saves the Wedding", moving Gard and Cornelia's wedding to the fall. The second volume removes Samantha's first birthday celebration which was ruined, focusing solely on her trip to New York City afterwards.
  • Rebecca loses all of Candlelight for Rebecca from her first volume and all of Rebecca to the Rescue from her second.
  • Maryellen loses a third of The One and Only, which covers her own Christmas section.
  • Melody loses the plotline of her cousins (who have moved up north) searching for a house and being turned down multiple times due to redlining.
  • Julie loses all of Happy New Year, Julie! from her first volume and Julie and the Eagles from the second.
• Continuity Nod: Historical Character's Short stories, Historical Mysteries, and My Journey books reference events of the main series.
• Cool Big Sis: Some of the older sisters.
  • Melody's older sister Yvonne, who is a college student involved in the Civil Rights protests and lets her hair fluff out into a natural afro in 1964.
  • Maryellen's just-before her sister Carolyn gets along great with her, as opposed to their older sister Joan; Joan however has her moments, especially during their camping/road trip.
  • Many of the girls themselves serve this role for younger relatives or relatives of friends, e.g. like Samantha for Bridget and Jenny even before they're adopted.
  • Many of the girls' big brothers or older male relatives serve as a Spear Counterpart in this role: Kirsten's big brother Lars is an easygoing guy that is fond of his little sister's wilderness knowledge and their younger brother Peter is fond of the youngest child, Britta. Addy's brother Sam watches out for her until he's not able to—and does again when he returns, swaps riddles with her, and later fights in the Civil War; he later serves as a cool big brother for Daniel, Sarah's twelve year old cousin. Rebecca's older cousin Max (her mother's cousin) encourages her acting ambitions and doesn't ignore her in favor of her other siblings. Melody's older brother Dwayne becomes a traveling Motown singer and invites his sister to the studio.
• Cool Toy:
  • Though Julie's Chinese doll Yue Yan is far more important to the story (meaning of that she actually appears), the doll that actually got merchandised as part of her Christmas collection was her Barbie styling head, due to it having been a real-life Cool Toy. Before it was retired, ads in the catalogue tried to use this to play on parents' nostalgia — did your mom or relatives have a Quick Curl Barbie Beauty Centre as a kid?
  • Samantha really wants a new special doll; her previous doll, Lydia, which she received as a gift in the first book and soon gave to Nellie as a sign of friendship and companion when she was sent away. While the doll doesn't move or do anything cool, she has a beautiful dress and comes with a tiny wooden nutcracker. Cornelia, Uncle Gard's girlfriend and later wife, gives Samantha the doll for Christmas as she thinks it's a doll she would have liked as a child.
• Cosmetically Advanced Prequel: Some of the collections released after the first three but set before have this effect, especially in relation to the very first items released. For example, if decent shoes were around by Felicity's time, why were first edition Samantha's meet shoes made of generic plastic? Averted with newer items and redesigns released for older characters, which have the same quality as items for newer ones.
• Cover Identity Anomaly: The My Journey protagonists are flying by the seats of their historically-accurate outfits when trying to act as if they belong in the era they've been been transported to (especially when they're impersonating a person they're mistaken for). The Historical Characters may initially find them suspicious but mostly chalk it up to the protagonist being a Naïve Newcomer (e.g. Addy assumes the time traveler of her book has recently escaped from slavery and so is new to the north and all alone without family, while Felicity assumes the traveler to her time came into town as part of the crowd protesting the gunpowder being taken and merely can't find her father in the crowd). The traveler still may make mistakes by knowing things from the future. Kit's traveler, for example, sees a book of The Wizard of Oz and says it's just like the film. Kit asks what she's talking about (because it's 1934 and the more famous film hasn't been released yet) and the protagonist has to cover her tracks.
• Crisis Makes Perfect: In the Rebecca mystery The Crystal Ball, after watching Harry Houdini perform, Rebecca spends the whole book trying to figure out how to escape from having her hands tied behind her back like he could. She struggles with barely a hint given to her by Sadie and Sophie, but when the culprits have her Bound and Gagged and are going to skip town if she doesn't escape and expose them, she finally figures it out in time to get free.
• Crossover:
  • With Wicked and AG's 2023 character, Kavi. Her collection received two outfits based on the stage costumes for Glinda and Elphelba. The items were also put on display at the Gershwin Theatre, with visitors suggested to go either online or to the NYC store to purchase.
  • Several with Mattel's most notable brand, Barbie. Julie's Christmas collection initially had a doll-sized version of the 1974 Quick Curl Barbie Beauty Center. A 2023 limited doll was released designed after the 1959 Barbie. 2024 saw a doll-sized version of the 1985 Day-to-Night Barbie outfit, and in 2025 to promote Mattel's 80th anniversary a doll sized version of the Peaches 'N Cream Barbie was released with a box resembling the original 1985 box.
  • In 2023 the company released three Disney Princess dolls based on Jasmine, Belle, and Rapunzel as limited edition dolls. In early 2024 they released three more based on Tiana, Cinderella, and Ariel (each with two additional outfits) as part of a new core line based on the Disney Princesses (and include Frozen). A general version of Rapunzel and special editions of Anna and Elsa from Frozen were released in late summer 2024, and Moana was released in 2024.
  • In 2025 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Clueless, limited edition outfits based on Cher and Dionne's prominent plaid outfits were released.
  • In 2025 as part of the promotion of the second season of Wednesday, a limited-edition doll was released.
  • In 2026 as part of a license for Mattel making merchandise for KPop Demon Hunters, a set of dolls based on the members of HUNTR/X will be released.
• Cross-Referenced Titles: Raquel Reyes Saves the Wedding is titled in reference to one of her ancestor Samantha's short stories, "Samantha Saves the Wedding."
• Cut-and-Paste Suburb: Maryellen laments living in a neighborhood where all the houses look alike. This prompts her to try and paint the front door red to make it stand out.
• Cypher Language: American Girl Magazine (and several related American Girl published books) used a well-known pigpen cipher, which they labeled "AG Code". The cypher consists of two grid variants that corresponded to the letters of the alphabet and was used to write secret messages in the margins and decode puzzles.

• Dad the Veteran: Many of the fathers fall under this trope, given the multiple conflicts in American History.
  • Caroline's father gets involved in the US militia, and her grandmother states her husband (Caroline's grandfather and her mother's father) died in the Revolutionary War.
  • Kit’s father, Jack, is stated to have fought in the Great War.
  • Both Maryellen and Melody have fathers who fought in World War II, with Melody's father being a mechanic in the Tuskegee Airmen.
• Daddy's Girl: Kit, Molly, and Caroline are all very close to their fathers; to a lesser extent, Rebecca is too.
• A Day in the Limelight: The Best Friends, who were side characters to the main, each got their own narrated book when they were released as a doll; the books focus on them and generally add an angle that is not covered in the series by the main character (e.g. Elizabeth's books focus on the British Loyalists and their conflict in the colonies, while Ivy's discusses Chinese Americans in the 1970s.)
• Darker and Edgier: The History Mysteries book series had darker plots than the Historical Character books. The series had older protagonists than the historical characters, and often touched on some of the darker, sadder, and more controversial eras of history the main historical series tend to play down or hadn't covered at the time.
  • Circle of Fire, deals with Ku Klux Klan activity and how it targets the protagonist's family.
  • Voices at Whisper Bend, which takes place during WWII, has a student of German descent bullied because of her ancestry, including when some classmates dump a whole can of sauerkraut in her desk. The book also covers how people with any German or Italian background were treated with disdain and suspected as enemies of the country and the in-story crime.
  • Secrets on 26th Street deals with the disappearance of the protagonist's mother, who was later found to be jailed for participation in the suffrage movement; this is appropriate to the book's 1914 setting.
• Debating Names: In Chrissa's first book, Nana Louise's mini llamas Cosmos and Checkers have given birth to a new baby, and Chrissa and Tyler think of what to name her. They suggest "Bubba", "Claude", "Cynthia", and to Tyler's thought, "Minnie". Nana then brings up a name that her late husband was suggesting: "Starburst", which the children happily agree is the perfect name.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Many of these characters are discriminated against in-story in line with the values of the time. They usually have a more "progressive" older relative or friend to drive the point home that this wasn't okay then or now.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • At the release of Kaya's collection in 2002, Felicity and her collection was made available dominantly online, and she was no longer included in short story releases or compilations. She was partially restored with the release of her movie and best friend, but was retired yet again. Her third return gave her new-style books and a new meet outfit, but she was only available at the largest stores and online before being retired again.
  • Samantha (round one), Felicity (twice), Kirsten, and Molly (twice) were all retired (or, as the company called it, "archived") in various years, with their collections made fully unavailable. Their books were initially available, but with the release of BeForever, any books in the older style were retired.
  • Circle of Friends has Kirsten's segment focus on her schoolmates instead of either Singing Bird or Marta, and Josefina's segment is about her connection with Tia Dolores instead of Mariana due to the smaller cast.
  • With the releases of Melody, Nanea, and Courtney, Addy, Samantha, Kit, and Josefina were demoted as Felicity was before — to online-only and flagship store availability, with only the doll, meet accessories, and books available. When Felicity and Molly came back under BeForever, they were given this treatment on arrival and ended up being archived again for low sales (as their small collections meant they didn't move quite as well and Molly was only through Costco). Many of them have returned in smaller amounts as "classics" with select items from the older collection.
• Department of Redundancy Department: One of the pretend snacks that came with Courtney's lunch box has the label "Cheese Flavored Cheese Puffs"◊.
• Didn't Think This Through: In Lindsey's book, nearly all her problems come from the fact that she acts rashly when trying to solve a dilemma and doesn't think of the consequences, even when she's trying to be helpful. Especially when she's trying to be helpful.
  • When trying to protest the school's annual pet parade, where the students dress their pets in costumes, she takes Josh's lizard and runs up a tree with it. When they can't get her down, the parade has to be cancelled, and everyone gets mad at her for ruining it. Her mother asks her, "What Were You Thinking?"
  • When she stays after school to help her teacher set up for an upcoming class project, she sees that said teacher's desk is a complete mess, so she reorganizes it according to her own system. Her teacher doesn't like the change, because while it looked like it was just a mess, she was used to where everything was and Lindsey rearranging it completely threw her off.
  • Her grumpy Uncle Bernie is constantly sitting on the couch, so she tries to cheer him up by having him ride her scooter. He's never ridden a scooter before and crashes into a thornbush.
  • She notices that one of her male teachers is lonely and tries to get him together with her female teacher (the same one from the desk incident), who she thinks is also single. As Lindsey finds out, her female teacher is engaged, but can't wear a ring because she's sensitive to metal. (This one might not have been a big deal if she had just nudged them towards each other — that alone would have likely been a pretty minor thing at the end of the day — but she crossed the line when she flat-out lied to the male teacher to further the scheme.)
  • She tries to cheer up her grumpy neighbor by putting happy-face stickers on her trash cans, and nearly gets arrested for vandalism and "defacing personal property".
  • Finally, at her brother's bar mitzvah, she tries to set Uncle Bernie up with her Cousin Sophie, only to learn that not only does Sophie hate Uncle Bernie, she was the one who convinced his wife to divorce him. Her appearance results in a food fight, but afterwards Uncle Bernie is actually glad it happens because, in his words, "I've been wanting to throw something at that woman [Sophie] for ages!"
• Digging to China: Davy and some of Maryellen's siblings start digging a hole to China at the beach in her first story.
• Dirty Communists:
  • Maryellen's school story talks about the Cold War and centers around an allegory for the same with her friends treating her poorly for befriending an Italian girl.
  • In Melody's first book, when she hears that there's been a bombing in Alabama, she asks if it's the Russians. (It's actually the KKK, as it's the sixteenth Street Church bombing.)
• Disability Aid Loss: In Joss's first book (titled Joss) at one of her early cheerleading practices, she face-plants on the trampoline and knocks her hearing aid out. She panics from the sudden quiet and once her coach Kara learns what happened, she has everyone search for the pieces. They find the main body easy but have to search for the ear mold. Joss is distressed at not being able to hear anything that's going on around her and feels ashamed and embarrassed, especially after another girl talks about her tuck and she angrily says it's a surf trick. The next time she goes to practice, she has added a yellow stretch headband to her outfit to keep her hearing aid in place.
• Disappeared Dad:
  • Molly's dad isn't present until the end of Changes for Molly, as he's off serving in World War II.
  • Gwen's dad from Chrissa's series; in the books he abandons the family, and in the movie he has died.
• Distant Sequel: Raquel Reyes — the 2026 Girl of the Year — is Samantha's great-great-granddaughter; her books are set in 2026, over a century after Samantha's, and mention how Samantha's life ended up: she became a teacher, had at least one child, and opened up a school for girls. Samantha also has a sequel set after her series in the 1920s, Samantha: The Next Chapter.
• Dolled-Up Installment:
  • Taken to a literal turn with The American Girls Premiere, which started life as Opening Night, a theatrical simulation game released by MECC in 1995. SoftKey—a company infamous for making a name for itself by grabbing whatever Cash-Cow Franchise it sees, and which has since absorbed itself under The Learning Company label—acquired MECC, and since their theatre sim didn't sell well made a licensed version of Opening Night for Pleasant Company in 1997. And as Lazy Game Reviews explained in his video, this verison sold like hotcakes and may have accounted for Mattel's subsequent acquisition of both The Learning Company and American Girl itself.
  • The dolls themselves are dolled-up. Pleasant Rowland made negotiations with Götz, a German dollmaker, in the 1980s; she purchased a face mold of theirs, the Romina mold, to use as the face mold for the first three AG dolls. The construction of the dolls, including the limb molds and the soft cloth torso, was similar to the soft-bodied version, Somina. They look enough alike that it's easy to mistake early Samantha dolls as redressed dark haired Somina dolls.
• Dramatis Personae: At the front of every book, the protagonist's family and friends are depicted in a historically accurate way — individual portraits for the well-to-do Colonial Merrimans, but a group family daguerreotype for Kirsten's family, and so on. (Later books tend to stick with individual portraits for all the stories, Kirsten's group daguerreotypes being replaced with single portraits. The frames reflect the character's time period and culture, though.) BeForever books had no illustrations at all and didn't have this section, but they were restored in the 2019 remodeling to the books.
• Dreaming of a White Christmas: In Maryellen's story, she wishes for a "real" Christmas with snow like she's seen in White Christmas and some TV shows, unlike the one in Florida where they have an artificial Christmas tree and go have a picnic on the beach. She takes a trip to Georgia where her maternal grandparents live to achieve this goal, and later, she and her grandparents drive down to Daytona Beach to spend Christmas with the family and see Joan get engaged.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first three dolls — Samantha, Kirsten, and Molly — were originally released with white muslin bodies that sharply contrasted with the head and limbs, which was standard for many cloth-bodied dolls at the time. All clothing was made high to the throat and with sleeves and skirts (and underpants) long enough to cover this up, which was historically accurate for the eras. When Felicity was released in 1991, the historically accurate lower necklines of the Revolutionary/Colonial Period resulted in the company changing the main cloth bodies to better match the skin tone of the limbs.
• Edible Theme Naming: Coconut and other pets in the modern pet line were originally named after various food items, such as Licorice, Chocolate Chip, and Meatloaf.
• EgoCorp: A Real Life example: Pleasant Company was named after its founder, Pleasant Rowland. Original sketches for the brand show that the name "Pleasantries" was considered as well.
• Embarrassing Last Name: In "Snickerdoodle," a short story published in the magazine, a girl named Kayla Bobsburger is constantly bullied for her last name. When she goes to snowboarding camp, the exact same thing happens, and someone takes it a step further by pouring ketchup, mustard and other hamburger toppings all over her hair in her sleep.
• Even the Dog Is Ashamed: From Lindsey's book, after everyone gets mad at her for ruining the pet parade.
  It didn't get any better when I got home, either. Mom met me at the door with her own version of the asparagus face. Even my dog, Mr. Tiny, the most loyal and fabulous wiener dog in the history of the world, lowered his tail and slunk down to the basement at the sight of me.
• Everyone Is Christian at Christmas: This is one of the underlying conflicts of Candlelight for Rebecca. Rebecca's teacher Miss Maloney has her students make a Christmas decoration as a class project, but there are several Jewish students in her classroom. Some — like Gertie — have families that partake in the social aspect of Christmas without the religious aspect, but others — like Rose — are from families that strictly don't. When Rebecca's classmate Rose and Rebecca speak up to say they don't celebrate Christmas, Miss Maloney tells them that the holiday is an American holiday that anyone can participate in. (Rose makes her decoration, but later throws it away rather than take it home.) Rebecca is concerned that her parents will be angry if she comes home with a Christmas decoration, especially after her mother scolds her older sisters for singing Christmas carols and wearing festive red and green ribbons. Rebecca contemplates throwing her decoration away like Rose, but ends up bringing it home. She's surprised to find that her grandmother is pleased with her — both because she obeyed her teacher and because she made something beautiful in the process. Rebecca ends up gifting the decoration to her Christian neighbor Mr. Rossi who really appreciates it. The "Looking Back" informative section in the stand-alone version explains how many schools focused on Christmas traditions regardless of their students' personal beliefs as it was assumed that celebrating Christmas was a way for immigrant children to assimilate into American culture.
• Everytown, America: While most of the Historical Characters live in real-life locations (or outside of them), some of them live in fictional cities and towns. For example, Courtney lives in Orange Valley, California which is based on the San Fernando Valley, and Molly lives in the fictional town of Jefferson, Illinois.
• Fan Fiction: In-universe, Maryellen makes up her own stories about The Lone Ranger with a more idealized self in the co-starring role.
• Fantasy Helmet Enforcement: All modern bike, roller skate, and equestrian sets have helmets and safety gear (either included or sold separately). Julie's, Molly's, and Samantha's skate and/or bike items don't, but the catalogues and website included disclaimers saying that the exclusion is only for the sake of historical accuracy and reminding modern kids to please wear their safety gear.
• Fashion Hurts: Many of the other girls complain of impediments caused by the outfits they wear. For example, Courtney gets her ears pierced in her first book, and describes her ears as bright red and throbbing in the moments afterwards. They heal fine, though.
• Featureless Protagonist: Zigzagged with the protagonists of the My Journey books. They're supposed to be reader inserts for the target audience, so each one is a girl the same age as the historical character and are given backstory in order to relate to where they are, offer a problem in their lives that will be reflected somehow in their journey, and have them return home to their own time with something they've learned to apply to their own lives). Most of them aren't given more detail than that. However, some characters are given more specific qualities to fit the story and era. For example, the time-traveler in Addy's book is a black girl from Tennessee with overprotective parents who are busy working, so her grandparents have come to stay with them and help. Her family is well-off enough to get her a tablet for her birthday, and her great-great-granduncle fought in the Civil War. (It's his coin that takes her back in time.)
• Feud Episode: It's a common plot for multiple characters (eg. Kit and Ruthie over Christmas, Molly and Emily over birthdays, Felicity and Elizabeth due to Loyalist/Patriot conflict), though the friends always make up in the end.
• Field Trip to the Past: The protagonist of the My Journey Game Books travel back in time from their modern time (the late 2010s) to the selected historical character's era. Their trips come with lessons they're able to apply to their own lives in some form.
• Fleeting Demographic Rule:
  • The Girl of the Year Line tends to reuse themes over the years including horses, dance, and feminine sports. Given that the demographic age of eight to twelve is likely to have aged out by the next time a theme comes around again, it makes sense—especially because aspirations of dance, certain sports, and/or bonding with horses continue to be girlhood fantasies.
  • 2007's The Light in the Cellar and 2018's The Legend of the Shark Goddess were both mysteries written for the 1940s characters (Molly and Nanea, respectively) where the plot revolves around suspicions of theft and black-market activity to circumvent rationing. They end differently: In Nanea's, nobody was guilty at all, and the characters who look suspicious all have valid reasons.
• Flanderization: Not by the company, who tries their best to represent characters evenly with balanced character arcs. It's most likely in parodies or references to the first six to eight characters — by fans who only remember a few things, or poorly researched online articles — all of which reduce the characters to exaggerations or reductions in personality of themselves. Felicity is only seen as a tomboy who hates anything feminine and loves horses (and stole a horse!); Samantha is so good and noble about class issues and feminism as to be a Purity Sue who never does wrong and always cares about social issues; Molly is overly patriotic and really hates turnips; Kirsten is an ignorant immigrant who knows nothing of America (and never learns); Addy gets reduced to being a runaway slave that the others overlook (with her past often used to make the other white characters uncomfortable around her when the characters interact); and Josefina is the token Spanish girl with the dead mom. Kit, if included, is reduced to a poor newspaper reporter with no money; Kaya, if included, is made a Noble Savage who only cares for the earth and her horse. Characters after Kaya's release are more often than not left out, since these Flanderizations are mostly done by people who stopped paying attention to the brand either during their childhood or by the time of Julie's release. There's also a more practical reason for this besides just the nostalgia filter; the first seven Historicals initially had children-sized reproductions of their signature outfits as part of their collections, so most parodies and references (especially web creators) find it much easier and cheaper to buy these outfits and possibly adjust them to fit adult actors rather than incorporate later characters who would have to have their signature outfits designed from scratch.
• From Cousin to Honorary Sibling: Rebecca Rubin is the youngest daughter in her family — she has elder twin sisters, Sadie and Sophie, and often feels left out because they have a special bond. When her cousin Ana — who's 9 like her — immigrates to the country from Russia, Rebecca is excited to Invoke this trope; she's delighted that Ana looks fairly similar to her, and decides that when they wear hand-me-down matching outfits (from the twins), they'll look like twins too.

• Gamebooks: The "My Journey" books, launched with the BeForever reimagining of the historical line, involve a female protagonist going back to the Historical Character's time and having several adventures with her. However, as the books are aimed towards younger readers (late elementary to middle school), no endings result in death or major injury and the protagonist is always assumed to return home safely to her own time; thus it is more like a Field Trip to the Past.
• Gift for an Outgrown Interest: In "A Smart Girl's Guide to Knowing What to Say" has a section on how to say thank you to bad gifts. One of the hypothetical scenarios is a ten-year-old girl being given a stuffed dinosaur that teaches kids how to count.
• Girliness Upgrade: Kit states that she doesn't like pink, and her collection originally reflected this with no pink outfits and items. Once her movie came out, Kit got a batch of pink outfits and a pink quilted blanket.
• Girl Posse: The mean girl trio — aka the "Mean Bees", from Chrissa's stories, consisting of the leader Tara who's the Alpha Bitch and most mean, her second-in-command Jayden who serves as The Dragon, and the Token Good Teammate Sonali, who admits she's only mean when Tara tells her to, and eventually joins Chrissa's side.
• Gorgeous Period Dress: While not always done in-universe—many clothes are practical everyday wear for their characters, this is how many collectors feel about the well made and often accurate historical clothing, especially the fancy Christmas and holiday dresses.
• Graceful Ladies Like Purple: Caroline's Holiday Gown is a deep purple, despite Caroline being an adventurous and not-so-girly type. Felicity's meet outfit also changed to what had once been a minor outfit from a short story.
• The Great Depression: Along with Kit's story being set during the era, Maryellen's parents were married during the Great Depression which is why her mother Kaye wants to give her daughter Joan a big fancy wedding.
• Happy Holidays Dress: The historical character dolls have fancy holiday-themed outfits for their Christmas books (and with one exception, are special-occasion outfits or fine holiday clothes). The outfits initially were mostly red, white, and/or green-themed (or shades of the colors) with the exception of Felicity, who got a bright blue satin gown. The outfits accompanying the winter books are in contrast hardier, more practical winter outerwear over a regular everyday outfit — or for Kirsten, a full outfit change that is still practical wear, and this set was used for her holiday-themed mini doll. Furthermore, every year a new fancy holiday dress (and for a time, matching accessory ensemble) for the modern line is released.
• Hard Truth Aesop: Lindsey's book has a minor one; sometimes jerks and bullies don't always get what's coming to them. Blair is never punished for bullying April and even wins the Perfect World Collage contest.
• Hated Item Makeover: Lindsey is an overly helpful girl who always tries to do what she thinks is best for others, sometimes without thinking. When she has to stay behind to talk to her teacher Miss Kinney, she sees that Miss Kinney's desk is a disorganized mess and reorganizes it according to her own system. When Miss Kinney gets back, she's upset by the changes because she already had her own system of doing things and now has to spend the rest of the afternoon putting it back the way it was. Later, she plasters glow-in-the-dark happy-face stickers all over her neighbors' trash cans, which they dislike so much that they call the cops on her.
• Have a Gay Old Time: In the Rebecca mystery "The Crystal Ball", one paragraph mentions "the gay crowds". Since this story takes place in the 1910's, the language is accurate for describing a cheerful group of people. On the other hand, the story was published in 2012 - and today's average tween and young teen reading this book is likelier to be much more familiar with a very different meaning for the word "gay". This also pops up in the main Rebecca series.
• Head Swap: As is common with most doll lines (for practicality reasons) the dolls share a common body design for their respective lines; differences are in face mold, hair, skin color and outfits. This saves designers the trouble of having to do different clothing designs and all clothes can fit all dolls.
• Heroic BSoD: In Lindsey's book, after all her attempts at helping others end in complete disaster, she locks herself in her room and decides she'll never try to help anyone ever again. It's so bad that when someone (her brother) actually asks for her help, she refuses because she thinks she'll only make it worse.
• Hidden Depths: Lindsey's brother Ethan is a prime example of an Annoying Younger Sibling, but deep down he actually thinks she's brave, because even when she messes things up, she never lets failure discourage her from trying again.
• Homeschooled Kids: Many of the Historical Characters are educated at home, due to the practicalities of their locations or eras. Some have outside formal lessons in addition to their homeschooling.
  • Zigzagged with Felicity; she learned to read and write at home, but is being trained in gentlewoman lessons outside of her home. But it's still at someone else's home, not a formal school. When she's told she's of age to take formal education, her mother Martha is quick to let her know it's not the kind of education boys do at school.
  • Josefina and her sisters learn to read and write at home with their Tia Dolores, as they live on a rancho which is fifteen miles from the nearest city. Formal schooling is generally reserved for boys and done by the church and while their father is literate to keep records, the girls and their late mother didn't know how.
  • Jess is homeschooled while with her family on their trip to Belize. She wasn't expected to go, but they brought her so they wouldn't need childcare, and she is expected to send reports back to her teachers at home in Michigan via laptop.
• Horrible Camping Trip: In "r we hvng fun yet?", one of the magazine short stories, Izzy gets dragged along on a camping trip by her dad even though it's at the same time as her friend's sleepover, lamenting that she's eating freeze-dried turkey tetrazzini while her friends are back home having pizza and tropical punch. She's disappointed when he takes them to a place called Morning Glory Falls and, instead of a majestic waterfall, it turns out to be a tiny trickle of water spilling down over some rocks.
  Izzy: The leak in our shower has more water than this.
• Housewife: This is expected as a traditional role for many of the character's mothers, especially for the mid-20th century characters. Often conflict occurs when they don't wish to be or aren't the stereotypical housewife and/or with their tomboyish daughters that don't care for domestic life.
  • Felicity's mother, Martha, keeps the home and children while her husband runs the general store, doing a majority of the cooking and cleaning (with assistance from her enslaved woman, Rose). She expects Felicity to stay in the house and learn the domestic chores of a housewife and gentlewoman (as well as set an example for her younger sister Nan), when Felicity would rather be out walking fences and riding horses.
  • Kit's mother Margaret is a housewife who initially does things such as host garden parties during the day and keep about the house. Even when the Kittridges open their house to boarders (in order to keep said house after her husband Jack loses his job), she never gets a job outside the home herself, and add to her domestic duties cooking and cleaning for the boarders. Neither does Mrs. Howard, Stirling's mother, who was a housewife; at best, she cleans around the house as well and also does a small job at the hospital, but doesn't have a career like the nurses do.
  • Molly finds one of the changes of World War II that bothers her is that her mother Helen no longer is a housewife like before; instead, she's working as a Red Cross nurse and has hired a housekeeper.
  • Part of Maryellen's mother Kay's backstory is that during World War II, she worked in a factory with many other women — but once the war was over, they were expected to return back into the home as housewives so the men could have their jobs back. She was offered her position, but didn't want to work without the women that had worked with her so she went back into the home. She has some resentment at being expected to be a housewife, though it's not overtly seen — and her husband Stan thinks she's unbothered where she is. For example when he buys an Airstream trailer without consulting her, he thinks the thing that will excite her most about it is the ironing board, and Maryellen notices her mother being quietly displeased that during their road trip she still has to do all the cooking and cleaning and tending of the younger children, but in a smaller space and on the road.
  • Julie's parents Joyce and Daniel divorced because he wanted her to remain a housewife while she wished to pursue a career.
• Idiot Ball: While many of the lead characters are smart, some have been known to do some really dopey things. However this is completely justified as the main characters, despite any and all smarts, are children and thus prone to mistakes and misinterpretations of what's going on around them.
• Iconic Item: As part of the strict formula, each girl has a necklace and gets a doll at Christmas. Sometimes these have some plot significance, and sometimes they don't — e.g., Josefina's necklace is a gold cross with a garnet that's only mentioned in the first book and merely a gift, whereas Addy's is a cowrie shell her grandmother brought from Africa strung on one of her brother's shoelaces to remind her of her family; conversely, Josefina's doll is part of a family Christmas tradition for the girls from before her mother died, and Addy's just happens to be her Christmas present.
• Improbable Infant Survival: Given how ubiquitous children dying of disease was throughout most of history, it's notable that only two of the girls personally knew another child who died in childhood: Kirsten's friend Marta, and Marie-Grace's little brother. Both of them died of cholera.
• Informed Judaism:
  • Isabel and Nicki Hoffman are Jewish through their father's side and have an interfaith family, but the only mention in their collection so far has been that they received their pets (and journals) on the last day of Hannukkah.
  • From Lindsey's book, Josh picks on her a lot, but he also finds her missing dog and gets his cousin's band to play for free at her brother's bar mitzvah.
• Introspective Art: In "A Smart Girl's Guide to Boys", writing sad songs is listed as a way to deal with being dumped by a boy.
• Karma Houdini: Blair and Missy in Lindsey's story get away with everything they do to April. Blair even wins the Perfect World Collage contest.
• Kindly Housekeeper: The majority of housekeepers, maids, and servants are kind and supportive to the children they care for, though some are stricter than others. This includes Samantha's servants Mrs. Hawkins the cook and Jesse the seamstress, and Molly's housekeeper Mrs. Gifford. This also includes characters whose families have live-in house servants such as those that are part of Josefina's, Marie-Grace's, and Cecile's households. Even Kit's family allows Mrs. Howard to houseclean in exchange for a rent exemption at the end of Kit Learns a Lesson — in her case, she's cleaning for all the boarders and not the Kittredges exclusively, and the arrangement ends once Stirling gets a job at the start of Kit Saves the Day and is able to pay rent on their behalf.
• Kwanzaa Showcase:
  • The company has released two different Kwanzaa sets for the modern Truly Me Collection: the Kwanzaa Outfit and Kwanzaa Accessories in 1996 and the Kwanzaa Celebration Outfit in 2021, which were both displayed on Black dolls; in both years of release the annual Christmas outfit was displayed on white-appearing dolls in group photos. The first set has a headscarf (and instructions on how to place it on the doll), a kaftan dress, sandals, and a beaded necklace; the matching accessories include many of the symbols and items used, including a miniature book about the holiday based on a real book title available at the time. The second set has a top and skirt and headband of kente cloth, sandals, a bracelet — and for items only includes the kinara, cup, and mat. Both sets were released as part of cultural holiday-themed outfit releases that also included Hanukkah and Asian New Year; the 2021 sets also included Eid Al-Fitr and Diwali, with a later addition of Dia de Los Muertos.
  • A video on the official YouTube channel, Travel Twins Learn How To Arrange A Kwanzaa Display, has the Black twin characters Makayla and Michael teach the host Ava about Kwanzaa.^note All the characters are "played" by dolls with a mix of stop motion, movement, and animations. Michael is wearing a multicolored kufi and dashiki, while Makayla is in the 2021 Kwanzaa outfit. The studio is decorated with kente cloth and a cowrie shell pillow, on the couch, drums, fruit, and lots of red, black and green. The twins discuss Kwanzaa, explaining it as a way for them to connect to their African roots; they explain the holiday's formation and background, the color meanings, events, and some of the principles. (Umoja is the only one referred to by the KiSwahili term.) The dance part has Michael playing djembe drums while Makayla and Ava dance.
• Last-Second Photo Failure: The advice book Yikes! A Smart Girl's Guide To Surviving Tricky, Sticky, Icky Situations has a section on what to do "if you know you're going to look like a total geek again in your school picture".
• Latino Is Brown: The three named Latino characters—Josefina (Mexican), Marisol (Chicano), and Luciana (Chillean) all have brown skin, brown hair, and brown eyes naturally.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: As many of the books have been published for over two or more decades — if not three or more — and the toy collections and later books reveal details about prior books, the initial endings of several of the main series is this.
  • Nellie and her sisters after their parents both die are adopted by Gard and Cornelia — and since Samantha has started living with them as well, they become a traditional family raising four girls. Nellie's doll and collection are way too nice for a poor servant, and all the mystery books after the main series include Nellie living in better conditions.
  • Felicity finds Penny again after freeing her from Jiggy Nye and is allowed to own her.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Meet Kit has a doozy of an example which encapsulates the entire historical line. After Ruthie learns from Kit that Kit’s dad has lost his job, they try to think of ways Kit can help her family. Ruthie says she’s read books about what people do when they have no money, but the girls are concerned, as the characters in those books live in “olden times”, and reading their stories doesn’t help Kit and Ruthie figure out what they can do to improve their situation in the then-present. It's an example that works on a couple of levels, as it speaks to both the impact people made before Kit's time which made it what it was and the impact people have made since then which has shaped the present in America and throughout the rest of the world.
  • In Molly's Surprise, Molly specifically complains that the only dolls she has are baby dolls and that she wants one that's more of a companion, so Molly can have pretend adventures with her...which, of course, is exactly what American Girl dolls are for many children.
• Limited Wardrobe:
  • Several historical characters have had very small wardrobes at launch outside of their meet sets, with only one or two extra outfits at best. Kaya has this realistically, as she would not have had a very expansive series of outfits or an outfit for every holiday or season (as the Nez Perce didn't do celebrations the same way as European culture or have extensive changes of clothing). Ivy never got more than a New Year's Dress and romper outside of her meet set before she was retired. Claudie was only released with her pajamas and a jazz dance outfit.^note Three other outfits were released, but are inspired by and thus not intended to be part of Claudie's daily wear. And Isabel and Nicki each had just pajamas and sport-themed sets. Nicki's skateboarding outfit kind of doubles as casual wear with the pads and skateboard removed since it's just an overall and t-shirt set, but Isabel's was a tennis dress—not exactly day-to-day wear. Claudie and the Hoffman twins both got later additions to their collections, but compared to the Unlimited Wardrobes of those before them, it can look practically puny.
  • Early Girls of the Year had minuscule wardrobes compared to later releases, back when they were considered an expansion of the modern line and not a line all to themselves. While the books might have shown extra items, the collections were small. Kailey only had a wetsuit as an extra, all Marisol's outfits were dance themed with no regular clothes, Jess just had pajamas and a swimsuit set—and Lindsey got no extra clothes at all. It wasn't until Nicki's release that more casual clothes for the characters became standard.
• Live-Action Adaptation: Samantha, Felicity, Molly and Kit got to appear in their very own films; Melody, Maryellen, and Ivy and Julie were in short films through Amazon Prime. Modern characters Chrissa Maxwell, McKenna Brooks, Saige Copeland, Isabelle Palmer, Z Yang, and Corinne Tan also received movies.
• Loose Canon: The short-run Real Stories From My Time books consist of facts about actual historical events being intertwined with a select historical character, but are loosely if at all connected to the character's main series. While some books such as Real Stories From My Time: Pearl Harbor with Nanea make sense (whose main series does cover the attack from her view), some are unclear about their connection to the main series or outright inaccurate. For example, Real Stories From My Time: The Boston Tea Party is tied to Felicity and actually has her participate in the event — but she would have been about eight years old and lived in Virginia, so the story makes her and her dad take an out-of-the-way (and in that era, long) trip up to Boston to visit relatives that have never been spoken about before, just so she can be involved. Meanwhile Real Stories From My Time: The Titanic has a now-17 year old Samantha worry about Nellie, Cornelia, and young William who were coming back from a trip on the stamship, and has her say that Nellie was there to visit the land she hadn't been in since she was born — when Nellie had already visited in the book The Stolen Sapphire which was set in 1907. The book also implies that Nellie and her sisters were born in Ireland, which is inaccurate to the main stories.

• Matryoshka Object: In the introductory BeForever commercial, Rebecca, being Russian, plays with a matryoshka doll and hands it off to the modern girl. She also has a set of the dolls mentioned in her stories and included in an accessory set.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The Title IX-ignoring basketball coach in Julie's books is named Coach Manley.
  • Rebecca's teacher who says "Christmas is a holiday everybody celebrates" to her students (who include at least three Jewish children—Rebecca, Rose and, Ana) is Miss Maloney, which rhymes with Baloney; this is something that's lampshaded on a now-defunct online board game from the website.
  • Then there's Melody, the music-themed girl.
• Memento MacGuffin: In the My Journey books, the time-travel device is oftentimes a family heirloom.
• Merchandise-Driven: The brand has this as part of the brand drive and has since the start (though the popular fandom idea is believing the brand is educational first and toy-driven second). The company, until the BeForever revamp, made sure to tie the images in the books to the historical character's collections to show off the new outfit, furniture, and accessories that "went" with each book's plot. Furthermore, initially each book cover had images of items from the collections displayed to show what purchasers could get to "recreate" the style from the character's story with the doll. For example, the cover of Happy Birthday Samantha has her in her birthday dress, holding her gifted teddy bear, and with her table and chairs decked out with her birthday treats—all things that could then be purchased as part of her collection to recreate the look. One big example is the holiday books, which all have the main character receive a doll as a Christmas gift—wouldn't you, book-reading girl, also want a doll for Christmas? This also occurs with Courtney, who gets a Molly doll for Christmas 1986—very soon after the brand would have launched. (Don't think too hard about the implications.) Girls of the Year also have the items in their collections shown in the books and movies. Notably, American Girl is among the rare 1980s toy lines that has never had any televised animated series or specials; instead they opted for live action movies and stage plays that started in the 2000s, though Isabel and Nicki (representing the 1990s) were given a webtoon series at release.
• Middle Child Syndrome:
  • Rebecca Rubin suffers shades of this. Her older twin sisters Sadie and Sophie always leave her out of their activities, Victor gets more attention than she does because he's at bar mitzvah age, and little brother Benny is coddled as the baby of the family. Ana's arrival helps somewhat, but Rebecca maintains the struggle to get her share of attention.
  • Maryellen is a middle child (with two older siblings and three younger) and her stories prominently feature her cry for attention.
• Missing Mom:
  • Marie-Grace's mother has been dead for four years at the start of Marie-Grace's first book.
  • Courtney's stepsister Tina had her mother, Bonnie, die when she was six from cancer.
• Monochrome Past: Belief in the idea of the past only being dull, browner colors is why some fans decided the BeForever rebrand was inaccurate. The historical characters got new, brighter colored meet outfits as part of the rebrand, and many fans believed clothing couldn't have been that brightly colored before the invention of colorfast dyes outside of clothing for the very rich. This misses the fact extant garments of the eras are faded because said colors were not colorfast or stored away from light; better preserved clothing, inner linings not exposed to light, and paintings and other documentation such as fashion plates shows bright colored clothing was always around, and cloth merely faded over the years.
• Mr. Fanservice: Kevin Zegers as Ben Davidson in Felicity: An American Girl Adventure. Likewise for Max Thieriot as Will Shepherd in Kit Kittredge: An American Girl. This trope also appears in the books, where readers have admitted to crushing on male characters drawn beguilingly handsome such as Kit's older brother Charlie.
• Multiple Endings: The My Journey books. Most don't have a True Ending, but one of Maryellen's branches leads to a Stable Time Loop, implying that one of the two endings that it leads to would be canon for that character.
• Nature Clean-Up: In Evette: The River and Me, Evette wants to swim in the same spot of the Anacostia River her grandmother Gran E used to swim in (as a bonding experience with her after hearing her story about discrimination in the 1960s). However, they arrive and find the spot in the river a mess that's full of discarded items, trash, and litter. Evette organizes a cleanup day with help from the community center, cleaning the space and restoring it to a picnic and swimming area. The cleanup effort also helps Evette try to figure out how to solve a long-running rift in her families as well.
• Narnia Time: In the present for the protagonists of the Journey books; the time they leave at in the present will be the exact time they return to, even if they are gone for days in the past. No one even notices they're gone.
• Never Trust a Title:
  • Kit's stories are labeled "1934" but do not actually reach that year until the last book in the main series; they start in 1932. Averted with the film adaptation that starts on May 2nd, 1934.
  • The year to represent Julie is listed as "1974"; however, her stories start in September 1975 and carry through 1977 including the mysteries.
• Newspaper Dating: The time traveling protagonist does this in a couple of the My Journey Books, if they can spot a newspaper, flyer, calendar, or something with the date on it (if one exists). Many times, they'll try to do a subtle What Year Is This? and get an answer, even if the character they're interacting with thinks they're addled for it.
  "Just inside the door of the church, flyers are posted on the wall. There's one for a benefit for the Freedom Society. It's happening in November. November 1864."
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Lindsey's numerous well-meaning attempts to help her friends and family members almost all fail spectacularly—like trying to set up two of her teachers without realizing one of them is already engaged. Although it's not just Lindsey — April indirectly gives her the idea to put smiley-face stickers on the neighbors' trash cans, which lands her in hot water with them, her mother, and the police.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: For the Mean Bees whom Chrissa has to take down, we have: Sonali the nicest one who leaves the group in favor of Chrissa, Tara the meanest of the gang who's their leader and always in command, and Jayden, who stays on Tara's side as her second-in-command but can put on a façade of niceness when she wants.
• Nobility Hennin: While more mature doll outfits tend to avoid this, the princess costumes for the infant and toddler lines ( the Bitty Twins Royalty Outfits and Bitty Princess set) both have a hennin for the girls' outfits.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The class bully in the Melody movie is a tall blond blue-eyed boy named Donald. This came about because the actors kept using Donald instead of the original name in the script, Douglass.
• No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel: For the black protagonists in the Addy and Melody Journey books, who experience prejudice. Addy's My Journey book has a middle-class modern black girl travel to 1864 and while all the book's endings are happy the protagonist faces the segregation, prejudice, poorly funded schools, and even slave-catchers of the era which gives her major culture shock. The black protagonist of Melody's has her own when, if taking the path with riding with Melody and her brother Dwayne in a nice car, they're pulled over by the police and Dwayne is accused of stealing the car and forced to contact his boss to prove he has the car legitimately.
• No Hero to His Valet: In the magazine short story "Venus, Tara and the Big Game," Venus Lozano is the most popular girl in school and the star of the soccer team, but the coach treats her like any other player and doesn't bend the rules for her. Players aren't allowed to miss more than four practices a season, so when Venus says she will have to miss a fifth practice to go see a school musical with her friend, the coach tells her that if she misses another practice, she's off the team.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: The leads are 9 and 10, so of course there's no romance. The total absence of crushes — neither peer crushes nor Precocious Crushes — is a notable creative choice, though. The sole exception is a fleeting moment in Kaya Shows the Way where Kaya has a crush on her friend Two Hawks. She is shy, doesn't know what to do with this, and basically decides to ignore it.
• No Smoking: Despite the accuracy that adults would have smoked frequently in nearly every era before the 1990s when anti-smoking messages ramped up and it no longer was cool to smoke, no smoking is seen in any book; at most, tobacco leaves are part of the plantation Addy is enslaved on. Averted with Molly's movie where her father James, serving as an Army doctor, is shown smoking a pipe. Justified as the movie is set in the 1940s when smoking was not yet considered unhealthy and many doctors not only smoked, but promoted smoking on behalf of tobacco companies.
• Not Available in Stores: One of the main features that made these dolls a shift in the industry was that they were not initially available at general toy stores, which propped up their status as exclusive, high quality, and upper class; they could only be purchased by mail order (and phone, later online and in exclusive boutiques). Attempts to branch out by selling product in stores such as Toys R Us and Kohls to expand the market have resulted in backlash from other consumers who feel this "cheapens" access.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: This almost always happens during a Changes for [Name] book, often in the form of a major change to the family or for the character's life, including reuniting with a long-lost family member. The writers' guides of the 1990s that came with the unnamed modern characters also invoked this trope in their guides, stating that the books' themes are the characters having various positive and negative changes that ultimately result in an overall positive change and the characters growing from these changes into a more mature person than how they started in their meet books and "solves" the overarching problem seeded there, showing they can't go back to how they were early in the series.
  • In Changes for Kirsten, Kirsten's family lose their log cabin in a fire. But after they obtain a late trapper's stash of expensive furs, they can afford to move into a real house, which they always dreamed of.
  • In Changes for Addy, Addy's family finally reunites with Auntie Lula and young Esther, bringing the whole family together again; but they get the news that Uncle Solomon died along the way, and Lula dies soon after as well. However, they all in one way or another became free from enslavement. Sarah also has to drop out of school to support her family, but Addy promises to study with her so she can maybe come back someday.
  • In Changes for Felicity, many different things happen. Felicity's grandfather dies of illness. Her old enemy Jiggy Nye is sick and in jail, but Felicity brings him medicine and a blanket, and he makes a Heel–Face Turn. Her horse Penny has a foal, and Jiggy Nye assists with the birth. The Revolutionary War officially begins, her father goes off to be a commissary agent, and Felicity gives him permission to take Penny with him. She is given more responsibility at the store as a result.
  • In Changes for Molly, Molly's father comes home from serving as a doctor in World War II for two years.
  • In Changes for Josefina, Josefina's aunt Dolores almost leaves the family thinking se's done all she can to teach them, but she and Josefina's father admit their love for each other and her father marries her.
  • In Changes for Samantha, Samantha's uncle and aunt decide to adopt Nellie and her sisters, after already taking in Samantha to live with them permanently — making the O'Malley girls and Samantha all sisters.
  • In Changes for Kaya, Kaya gets her horse Steps High back after she was stolen in a raid and she has a foal, who Kaya names Sparks Flying. Kautsa, her grandmother, sees her maturity and believes she is ready for her vision quest and to take on Swan Circling's name, which she was given as a gift but hasn't felt ready to use until now. Kaya's older sister, Brown Deer, also marries her fiancé, Cut Cheek.
• Not the Intended Use: For doll maintenance and repair, benzoyl peroxide (normally used as acne treatment), has a mild enough bleaching effect that it's often used to fade ink and marker stains from a doll's vinyl.
• Obvious Rule Patch: The company used to allow buyers to send dolls into the repair hospital in any state, at any age, no matter when purchased as long as there were parts to repair them—including missing heads, limbs, or entire bodies (with people citing that the parts were too damaged to send in); only one part, head or body, had to be sent in for them to work with. However, unscrupulous people would send in headless bodies and state they were rarer and/or retired dolls, then place the new heads on other matching bodies to sell at a profit. Because of this, now any dolls sent in for repairs must include the entire head and body, regardless of cited damage, and no parts replaced are returned.
• Official Cosplay Gear: At the start of the brand, Historical girl-sized outfits and accessories were released that matched the outfits available for the Historical Characters. This reduced down to only nightclothes and the modern outfits. When the historical line was revamped into BeForever, the characters all got new human-sized clothes "inspired by" their characters instead, which were less overt and could be worn in modern everyday life.
• Oh God, with the Verbing!: Somewhat in the Rebecca series from her grandparents. Sometimes the verb is a noun.
• One of the Boys: One of the main conflicts in Mia's story is her choosing figure skating instead of hockey like the rest of her family—all brothers, and something they can't wrap their heads around.
• One-Steve Limit: Played straight within each specific charcter series; unique names are used for most characters. This is averted for the franchise as a whole and can be frustrating when classifying items or looking up character information.
  • Cécile Rey (of the Historical line) and Cécile Revel (of the Spin-Off Girls of Many Lands line) are both of French background, though different times and locations and part of separate lines in the company.
  • Some characters share names, such as: Samantha "Sam" Parkington, her little sibling William Samuel Edwards (born to Cornelia and Gardner) and Addy's brother Sam Walker; Ruthie Smithens and Addy's mother Ruth Walker; Emily Bennett and Emily Holland; the Larson family from Kirsten's stories and Kit's neighbor Mrs. Larson; and Sarah Moore and Sarah Barrett. This is justified as these characters are from different times and places and have no interactions, and these names are common enough to carry through other times (e.g. Ruth is from the bible and was a popular name for centuries.)
  • There have been three characters named Isabel(le): Isabel Campion in the Girls of Many Lands for England 1592; Isabelle Palmer as Girl of the Year, 2014; and Isabel Hoffman as the Historical for 2000s.
  • Nicki Fleming as Girl of the Year, 2007 was followed by and Nicki Hoffman as the historical for the 2000s. They even have the same spelling.
  • Maryellen's stories avert this by having two Karens, two Skips, and two minor characters called Betty.
• Only in Miami: Averted with Maryellen Larkin. She and her family live in Daytona Beach, which is in the central part of Florida.
• Only Six Faces: As with most doll lines, only a few face molds are used for a variety of of dolls. But it's more variety than some as there are twelve molds currently in use, and some have been used less than four times.
• Outdoorsy Gal: Most girls get outdoor hobbies or excursions with clothing and accessories to accompany the hobby. Lanie was themed to encourage kids to go outside and be more active.

• Parental Abandonment:
  • Samantha was orphaned at age five when her parents died in a boat accident. Later, Nellie's parents die of the flu, and her Uncle Mike sells their things for drink and then abandons them. This allows her and her younger sisters to be adopted by Gardner and Cornelia.
  • Marie-Grace's father is still alive, but he's so busy with his doctor work that she only sees him in the evenings. At one point he tries to send Marie-Grace to live with her relatives due to the yellow fever epidemic keeping him away from home so often.
• Peer as Teacher: When Mckenna Brooks struggles to grasp reading comprehension, she is paired with Josie Myers, a girl only two years older than her, as a tutor.
• Pimped-Out Dress: The holiday dresses for both modern and Historical characters. Justified as these are supposed to be formal outfits and initially were the fanciest style of dresses for the era (e.g. Felicity's is a fine ball gown).
• Pink Product Ploy: A lot of items released are heavily pink, as the brand is aimed towards girls 8-12. This includes pink and pastel clothes, accessories, furniture, and packaging (though the brand color is technically called "Berry Pink"). Some fans consider this a detriment especially when it relates to the appearance and rebranding of some of the older historical characters, as they feel it's "pinkifying" the brand or making it too much like its related brand Barbie since the purchase by Mattel in 1998.
• Plot Parallel: Each of the characters in the My Journey books has a personal issue that they end up facing one way or another through their time in the past, returning to the present having learned something new they can personally apply. For example, the protagonist of Caroline's My Journey Book is upset a parent must go off to serve in the military, and sees this issue with Caroline who had her father snatched away against his will.
• Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: Happens constantly in the Girl of the Year and Contemporary books, starting with Nicki's books and continuing onwards from Chrissa. Most obvious examples are Saige, whose first book focuses on her insecurity over her New Friend Envy, and Tenney, who had a whole book dedicated to her friendship with Jaya.
• Pony Express Rider: The History Mystery book Hoofbeats of Danger focuses on a mystery set during the era; the main character Annie Dawson lives at the Red Buttes station and a major character, Billy Cody, is a rider for the Pony Express.
• Pony Tale: Lila's story has her befriending a quiet, pariah horse named Hollyhock at riding camp and learning through their connection more about herself and her gymnastic skills.
• Princess Phase:
  • The Girliness Upgrade of Felicity's collection, which was criticized for putting frills and jewels before everyday practicality (since Felicity is the daughter of a middle class shopkeeper), was suspected by some collectors to be aimed at grabbing the younger end of the 8-12 range just as they would coming out of their Disney Princess doll collecting. The same is also leveraged at Caroline's satin blue holiday dress; collectors assumed ties to Frozen (2013) which was still in its popularity height.
  • Maryellen's little sister Beverly is not going through a Princess phase—she's going through a Queen phase.
  • 2023 saw a Crossover with the Disney Princess franchise with three dolls based on Jasmine, Belle, and Rapunzel released as limited edition dolls; this carried into early 2024 when AG launched the start of a Disney character focused line as part of the brand.
• Prized Possession Giveaway: This is a very common plot-point across the historical girls; the constant motif is that, in a show of maturity, the girl chooses to gift her precious item to another person or cause over her desire for it.
  • Samantha gives her beautiful new doll, who she recently earned through daily tasks and is named after her late mother, to her friend Nellie after she learns Nellie is being sent away for failing to work.
  • Addy and her mother have been saving up money for a scarf and a lamp — meager niceties to make their lives a little more comfortable. Momma decides to donate the lamp money to a charity fund that helps recently freed slaves. After some initial hesitation, Addy does the same.
  • Josefina is given one blanket of their stock to trade for whatever she wants in the Santa Fe marketplace. After eyeing a toy for herself, she ultimately decides to pool with her sisters and trade it for a violin for her father after seeing his love for it.
  • Kit is a mild example; she has free lumber she had hoped to use to build a treehouse, and eventually gives it to be used to enclose their porch and make it an extra room for use in the house and bring in more boarders.
  • In her mystery, Kaya gives away her beloved dog Tatlo to be basically an emotional support animal to a traumatized woman who clearly really needs him.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Merch-wise, the retirement of various Historical Characters through the years. While books originally stayed in publication, this has been slimmer since the BeForever launch.
  • With the destruction of the Best Friends Line, Cécile, Marie-Grace, Ivy (Julie's Best Friend), and Ruthie (Kit's Best Friend) were all retired from the line.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: All of the historical character movies are streamlined to some degree in order to create a single plot arc out of a series of (in most cases six) self-contained plots. Most of them also condense the two-year-long series into a year or less. Felicity's movie goes a step further in terms of intertwining the different stories. The first part includes major elements of both Meet Felicity and Felicity Learns a Lesson, then the next part is drawn from Felicity Saves The Day, finishing with another arc that combines Felicity's Surprise and Changes For Felicity into a single holiday season.
• Product-Promotion Parade: Each main-series book and several of the short stories has merchandise associated with it, and sometimes scenes are dedicated just to showing it all off. The birthday books are especially guilty, and it becomes awkward when the items get retired.
• Proper Tights with a Skirt: Enforced historically with characters living in the more Western cultures of the 19th century such as Samantha, Addy, Kirsten, Rebecca, and Marie-Grace and Cecile; all their outfits have two-piece stockings or tights that cover their legs entirely underneath their skirts and underwear. (Samantha was also expected to wear long underwear underneath her stockings from September to June.) Truth in Television, as while young girls in the early-mid to late 19th century wore skirts shorter than older women (with skirts lengthening as they got older until they reached the ankles), they were expected to have their legs covered at all times in public to appear presentable. The enforcement of full-coverage stockings under skirts for girls only started to taper off post-World War I to be replaced with knee or ankle socks.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In the magazine short story "A Dog Like Killybegs," Michelle gives one to her three friends, Cathleen, Sarah, and Brittany, after she's had enough of them being horrible to her other friend, Paloma.
  Sarah: She's unbelievably annoying. Wouldn't it be great if she just moved away again?
  Michelle: I think...I think you are three of the meanest people I've ever met! You want Paloma to move back to Atlanta just because she makes her own pants? Because she has a Southern accent? How can you hate someone you've never even talked to?
• Recursive Canon: Courtney's divorced father sends her a Molly doll with a copy of Meet Molly for Christmas, confirming that the American Girl Collection exists in Courtney's world. The official website also included sight gags that show that the Melody, Ivy & Julie, and Kit movies also exist in her universe, despite those films not even having existed in the real 1986.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Several, though not all, of the main protagonists are Red Oni to their Blue Oni best friends. Examples:
  • "Chatterbox" and impulsive American Molly and the reserved and thoughtful Emily.
  • Inverted with shy Courtney Moore and her more outspoken best friend Sarah Barrett.
• Regal Ringlets: Cécile, a well-to-do free girl of color, has her hair in sausage ringlets.
• Refusal of the Call: In both Caroline and Josefina's My Journey books, the time traveling protagonist can decide not to go back in time after the first trip and thus end the story immediately; however there are multiple endings and the reader is encouraged to go back to experience the others, thus having the protagonist "accept" anyways.
• Reimagining the Artifact: Samantha's ice cream maker was spoken of in her books first (since her birthday book was released in 1987), but released in Addy's collection first in 1994; it was not given to Samantha until 1998. When Samantha was rereleased (and Cécile and Marie-Grace archived), Samantha got their parasol, Addy got their underwear (specifically, a chemise and hoop), and the ice cream maker — still Addy's and part of a birthday set — was soon retired.
• Retcon: With the launch of BeForever, lines in original stories were modified to align to new looks; Addy's meet oufit was originally a cinnamon-pink dress given to her by Miss Caroline, but the text describes her new blue meet dress. The same can be seen in Rebecca's description of her purple dress over the prior maroon one.
• Rite of Passage: Among collectors, you'll often find people citing memories of poring over the catalogues, pining after their doll of choice, and either receiving a doll on Christmas morning (or some other gift-giving holiday), spending ages saving up the money to buy her themselves, or resigning themselves to the fact that they would never have a doll (until they were adults and maybe purchased dolls then).

• Sentimental Homemade Toy: Most of the girls live in historical eras where store-bought toys weren't widely available or prohibitably expensive to obtain. Several have special handmade dolls made by their mothers or family. As a doll line, the importance of girls and their dolls is a repeat theme.
• Series Continuity Error: While the books are largely free of these, with most writers knowing the character's stories well and properly referencing stories both available and out of print in later books, this wasn't so for the Loose Canon side series Real Stories From My Time. These books shoehorned Felicity and Samantha into the real-life events of the Boston Tea Party and sinking of the RMS Titanic respectively. Felicity participates in the Boston Tea Party firsthand—when she's eight, which surely would have come up in any other book if she had—and has her and her father travel to Boston, which was a long trip from Virginia at the time, to visit relatives she'd never mentioned before. In her series she never travels further than her grandfather's plantation, which is considered a long distance trip, and she never goes out of Virginia. Samantha's has her in 1912—making her almost seventeen, well into being considered an adult at the time and encroaching on Rebecca's stories—slips up on her cousin's name, and says that Nellie has never been to Ireland before and that she and her sisters born there—except she got to visit Ireland at the end of The Stolen Sapphire which would be set previously, and she and her sisters were born in America.
• Series Mascot: Samantha is continuously seen as the most central character in the line. She was simulated in the Pleasant Company logo, and many new product lines and updates find a way to involve her. She also recieved a decendent in Raquel Reyes and a adult-aimed book set during her early adulthood for the 40th anniversary.
• Shadow Archetype: Blair and Missy to Lindsey — Lindsey is a good friend to April and helps her feel better, but Blair and Missy get their kicks bullying her.
• Shared Universe: The True Heart online games had Felicity, Samantha, Kit, and Molly share a universe. The premise is that a mysterious heart-shaped ruby called the True Heart has mysteriously disappeared and reappeared many times throughout history, with each of the girls coming across it during their respective time periods.
• Shout-Out:
  • Rebecca reads Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Her phonograph plays clips of songs from the era: "Take Me Out To The Ballgame", "Maple Leaf Rag", and "You're a Grand Old Flag."
  • Julie, one of the earliest released characters to have influences from pop culture, likes The Brady Bunch. Her first edition record player plays clips from "Saturday in the Park" by Chicago, Love's Theme by Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra, and "Shining Star" by Earth, Wind & Fire.
  • Courtney's series and collection mention My Little Pony and multiple pop-music singers of the era. Her collection not only includes items featuring the Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake (1980s) (her pajamas and her sleeping bag, which comes with a plush bear) but a Pac-Man arcade cabinet with actual working levels of the game. Furthermore, she has a miniature reproduction of the 1986 Molly Doll and Book set, complete with vintage-style packaging and a reproduction of the first Pleasant Company catalog.
• Shown Their Work:
  • At the end of each historical book is a "Looking Back" section that goes into historical details about the time period and helps to place the character in the era.
  • Several characters of color had cultural panels involved in their creation.
  • Kaya is the only historical doll with a closed mouth, as showing one's teeth in a smile is considered offensive to Nez Perce culture.
  • Author Lisa Yee took the effort of doing research at the Amazon Rainforest for her Lea Clark books, taking part in river raft rides while mingling with wildlife and the locals for her and the readers to better immerse with the setting and to add authenticity to the story.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Birdy, the reader insert in Josefina's My Journey book, is implied to be one; she's mistaken for a Spanish captive, Francisca says her party outfit makes her eyes look very green, and she was cast as the lead in Annie.
• Special Guest:
  • McKenna Shoots for the Stars features Cathy Rigby—the first female American gymnast to medal at the World Championships—as McKenna's coach.
  • In-Universe, Corinne encounters Eileen Gu, a Chinese skilled professional freeskier.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: The company has done this in a meta sense several times.
  • With the move of American Girl to start releasing Girls of the Year in early fall starting in 2023 (instead of at the start of the year) Lila's release cut focus on the prior girl, Kavi, short. Social media promotion focusing on Lila lead to Kavi — who was still actively out — not even getting a birthday post on her day.
  • The release of the new redesign of the Truly Me line only a few weeks after Claudie's release meant that Claudie — a new historical — was overshadowed by the redesign. Claudie didn't get a catalog cover because of this.
  • The release of Tenney six weeks after Gabriela's release led to her getting more focus and Gabriela having to share the spotlight, and since Tenney had the first named male doll with Logan, she and Logan got tons of focus. Many physical stores readjusted their displays to spotlight Tenney in the same spot Gabriela had been in not even two months prior. Gabriela was also overshadowed by the rerelease of Felicity and the releases of Z and Nanea.
• Stay in the Kitchen: The Historical Series features several situations that lampshade the trope and show what it means for the girls.
  • The Gardner family's cook Mrs. Curtis tells her employer, Marie-Grace's father, that girls learn all they need to know at home and schooling fills a girl's head with "useless nonsense".
  • In Kit's Journey Book, Uncle Hendrick complains about "Lucille"'s mother (Lucille being an identity the time-traveling protagonist can take on), saying her head is filled with nonsense and she's a "modern woman" rushing around wasting her energy with a job because she went to college instead of staying home as he feels young ladies should.
  • Two instances for Maryellen: first, her mother Kaye quit what would've been a great job in aircraft because her fellow women workers were being fired to "make way for the men" returning from World War II, and she refused to stay. Secondly, her first mostly-male science group makes Maryellen the secretary without question and ignores her ideas because she's a girl. She puts together a group with her friends and their rocket launches the highest.
  • In Julie's series, her parents divorce because her dad wanted her mom to remain content as a housewife while she wanted to start a business. Julie also has a hard time joining the school basketball team because she's a girl, but eventually is allowed to join thanks to the then-recent Title IX ruling—since the school has no girls' team, she must be allowed to play on the boys'.
  • Courtney's mother Maureen is running for mayor of their town. During a TV interview when the reporters ask Maureen if she's capable of being a good mother and a good mayor, normally shy Courtney speaks up and says her mother is capable of both.
• Stern Teacher: Several American Girls have these.
  • Julie has Ms. Duncan in fifth grade who is extremely fond of traditional, sentence-writing detentions and gives out said detentions like lottery tickets.
  • Rebecca has Miss Maloney who isn't extremely strict but conservative to the point of intimidation. When she guides the class in making Christmas decorations and Rebecca and her friend Rose both argue they don't celebrate the holiday, she states that Christmas is an "American holiday that everyone celebrates." Whether she understands why this statement would disturb Jewish Rebecca is debatable.
• Strictly Formula: The central books for historical characters initially followed a pattern of Meet ____ (introduction to the character and era), ___ Learns a Lesson (school and world lesson), ___'s Surprise (Christmas), Happy Birthday, ___! (spring and Birthday Episode, which led to the first seven characters having spring birthdays), ___ Saves the Day! (summer adventure in new locations^note with the exception of Addy and Kit, where it's a Zig-Zagged Trope as she travels against her will), and Changes for ___ (winter, about two years after the first book, and closure to the story and era). The books broke the pattern with Kaya because Native Americans of the era didn't have formal schooling or celebrate Christmas. Characters released after breifly followed a similarly loose formula (generally keeping the Meet ____ and Changes for ___ for the first and last book, with the four middle books being more flexible) until the BeForever revamp, which combined books into two-volume books and dropped the names. Maryellen had the same internal structure, but all characters released after her did not have the Idiosyncratic Episode Naming until Claudie, whose first volume is titled Meet Claudie.
• Teacher's Unfavorite Student: Yikes! A Smart Girl's Guide To Surviving Tricky, Sticky, Icky Situations has a passage on what to do if you think your teacher hates you. The illustration shows a girl offering a green apple to her cranky teacher (who is apparently unhappy because she wanted a red apple), with a poster of the girl's face in the background that says "The BAD CHILD: This could be you!" and a blackboard with only one name listed under "Bad Students".
• Technology Marches On:
  • In-universe, it's the case with medicine, transportation, and other technologies and inventions. For example Samantha's era has new inventions like bicycles, motorcars, and electricity gaining widespread use, which are considered common by the time of later era characters. (This is discussed in Samantha Learns a Lesson when she's considering what new sign of progress to focus her essay on.) By the time of Kit's era—the 1930s—all of these items are common enough to not be remarked on, and remain so through the other characters (Kit thinks nothing of having access to electricity, and by Molly's era it's pretty ubiquitous even if not available easily in more rural locations like summer camp.)
  • In Historical Collections, this initially was done to show how items changed over eras but had the same purposes; for example, the flat hornbook of Felicity's era is comparative to Addy's simple but bound Union Reader, which is comparative to Molly's hardbound reading book. Rebecca's collection has a phonograph (she's gifted one for her birthday) that plays three era-accurate songs on their records—it's still expensive, but is something even rich Samantha did not have access to. Julie not only owns a "modern" state of the art portable record player with clips from three era-accurate songs^note The rereleased 2024 version uses era-simulating songs., but her father brings her a "new" cassette tape recorder to use, and the item in the collection it can record twenty seconds and play them back. She's then followed by Courtney who has a cassette and a portable tape player that plays era-simulating songs—who is then followed by the Hoffman twins having a CD player. Funny enough, the Hoffmans' CD player doesn't play any song clips at all—their (then-)state of the art computer does.
  • Courtney's books, aimed at children of the 2020s who would be used to widespread cellphones and social media, state in the Looking Back section how children of the 80's didn't have their own personal phones to connect with each other so often met up at the mall to hang out and meet up. Isabel and Nicki's book follow this by taking about dial-up internet that wasn't always connected.
  • It's even seen in the modern collection, seeing as it's now spanned several decades. The original high-level Macintosh desktop or headset phone from the mid-ninties are nothing like the modern tablets, smartphones, and slim laptops from the 2020s. Lindsey's then high level laptop is practically clunky compared to the slimmer laptop in Joss's collection. Zigzagged again as the older items often had interactivity and batteries (Lindsey's doubled as a calculator, calendar, and digital phonebook), but the newer ones are often just solid plastic and may have one or two interactive buttons but most often have nothing outside of removable thin screens that simulate a working screen instead.
  • The early PC games ended up being unplayable on modern operating systems unless the user tweaks it to run, such as with tips for the dress designer game here.
• Textile Work Is Feminine: A lot of the girls live in time periods where learning to sew, stitch, weave, or embroider is considered a necessary part of a young lady's education.
  • Addy's mother works as a seamstress in a dress shop, and Addy learns some sewing with her and Mrs. Ford.
  • Felicity, Elizabeth, and Annabelle sew stitch samplers as part of their lessons on how to be a Proper Lady—Felicity hates it. Elizabeth also helps sew Felicity's blue ballgown.
  • A major plot point in Josefina's Christmas book is the Montoya sisters, with their aunt's help, repairing the damaged Christmas altar cloth that their mother made using colcha embroidery. Josefina sees that Clara is especially good at it, even sewing a new dress for Niña the doll when she's ready to hand her down to Josefina at last. The sisters also learn to make dresses of their own and weave blankets from sheep's wool to sell.
  • Kirsten and her friends work together on sewing a friendship quilt at school. They give it to Kirsten for her birthday as a surprise.
  • Caroline enjoys sewing, needlepoint, and doing anything to keep her hands going. She uses her map of the coast to direct her father in secret how to escape capture.
  • Samantha is working on needlepoint—an acceptable pasttime—when she spends an hour a day with her grandmother. She's not fond of it.
  • Molly's classmates, on Allison's suggestion, hold a knitting bee to knit socks for the American war effort. (Molly, angry her idea wasn't chosen, tries with Linda and Susan to collect scrap metal and the girls do poorly before they're caught spying on the meeting and invited inside.) Knitting socks turns out to be too hard for most of the girls once they reach the point of having to turn a sock heel. Molly suggests making a blanket instead with the flat squares, which gets sent to an overseas hospital and gets them the prize as well as mentioned in the local news.
• Theme Twin Naming: There's Agnes and Agatha Pitt in Samantha's series and Rebecca's older sisters, Sadie and Sophie Ruben.
• Time Travel Episode: The My Journey Books have a modern-era protagonist near the main Historical Character's age go back in time using an item from the past, and interact with the character and their time to learn something about an issue they're personally having.
• Token Good Teammate: From Chrissa's stories, Sonali is the least mean of the mean girl trio, admitting to Chrissa the night after their first day she's only mean because Tara told her to. She also apologizes for the Valentine's Day incident and gives back all the cards Tara hid, and when confronted by the principal about Gwen's Traumatic Haircut, Sonali is the only one who tells her the truth. She was also the first to quit the trio and join Chrissa's side.
• Token Minority:
  • Until the release of Cécile in 2011, Addy was the only black historical character for the entire line; she returned to being the only black historical character after Cécile's retirement in 2014, but has since been accompanied by Melody and Claudie. In the modern named line, the only black Girl of the Year has been Gabriela from 2017.
  • Josefina is the only Latina/Hispanic historical character (though there have been other Latina or Hispanic Girls of the Year), Kaya is the only North American Indigenous character, and Nanea is the only Hawaiian native/Pacific Islander character (Kanani was also native Hawaiian, but as a girl of the year was no longer available after 2011).
  • The only named East Asian characters from the company that aren't part of a Crossover have been Ivy (the Chinese best friend of main character Julie, who is no longer available), Z (Korean, who was only availiable for two years), and Corinne, who is Chinese and limited as a Girl of the Year.
  • There have only been four explicitly Jewish characters: Lindsey (who was only available for a short time); Rebecca, and the Hoffman twins—who are stated to be interfaith and only have Hannukah mentioned lightly.
  • Frequently seen in a meta example in people's collections when people only have one or two dolls of color. This can often consist of limited edition dolls, one or two Historicals, or ambigiously brown modern dolls who can be stated to be any race.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Multiple characters in the series are set in this duality; the "tomboy" is often the main character.
  • Maryellen and her older sister Joan: Maryellen is young enough she plays with boys casually and has an interest in Westerns and rockets while much older Joan is prim and is more of a literature nerd, and is getting married soon after high school. Both love fashion though and Maryellen fulfills the Tomboy trope with her girl friends at school.
  • Caroline enjoys skating, fishing, and sailing, while both Rhonda and Lydia prefer hair styling.
  • Nicki likes skateboarding and doesn't like fashion and is not really much of a girl for "girly things." Isabel, on the other hand, loves fashion, anything pink, pop music, and is very girly.
  • Julie is a sporty girl that enjoys basketball and hanging out with boys, while Ivy likes making bracelets, baking, and gymnastics.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak:
  • Nicki usually dislikes the "girly" stuff Isabel likes, like dancing and fashion. However her favorite color is purple, and she watches the Powerpuff Girls (but this is because of the Girl Power aspect).
  • Maryellen doesn't mind getting messy and active like a boy—her best friend Davey is one—but enjoys fashion due to the influences of her older sisters.
  • Julie is a sporty girl with a passion for basketball, but enjoys baking and making bracelets with Ivy, and dresses up with her for Chinese New Year.
  • Caroline is active and enjoys sailing, fishing, and ice skating, but she also enjoys embroidery and sewing.
• Toyless Toy Line Character: When the Best Friends line finally terminated, several characters had not gotten best friend companions. Which best friends were left out had a troubling pattern; they were almost all characters of color (with the exception of Ivy for Julie, but her collection was miniscule compared to other Historical Best Friends; she got only two outfits total).
• Translation Convention: The books are all written in English, but not all the characters speak English.
  • In Kaya the characters speak Nimipuutímt, and in Josefina, they're all speaking Spanish. Both series have a smattering of untranslated words for flavor, and a glossary at the back.
  • Most of the dialogue in Kirsten is in Swedish, with the exception of school, where having to speak English is a major plot point. However, unlike Kaya and Josefina, the Kirsten books don't include Swedish vocabulary (with the exception of a single ja) or a glossary. The later dolls all had advisory boards who helped with the historical and cultural aspects of the book. As one of the original 3 dolls, Kirsten's books were written before that became a thing.
  • Cécile and Marie-Grace are bilingual, speaking fluent French and English—but their "French" is written in English for the sake of the readers.
  • Felicity speaks English, but not a modern dialect of English — it's an older dialect style that is mostly recognizable with some additional flourishes of speech and grammar, such as "tis" and "aye."
  • Addy speaks a variation of older African-American English; this involves copula dropping and some grammar variants, but is largely toned down. The post-BeForever books state at the start that her books are written with a dialect that closely reflects the era, but is toned down as doing the full dialect would make the books difficult to read for the target elementary school audience.
• Trapped in the Past: Averted with the Journey books. Every character that goes back in time, even if it's not seen in the ending directly, is stated to get back to their own present without any conflict.
• Treasure Hunt Episode: Some of the Historical Mysteries have this plot. For example, Julie's The Puzzle of the Paper Daughter has Julie and Ivy searching for a doll Ivy's grandma once owned, racing against an unknown third party who wants it for the valuable treasure hidden inside.
• Trumplica: The "Donald" character in the Melody film is a thinly-veiled Take That! to Donald Trump, down to the blond hair. It was later confirmed that the racist bully Melody encounters was meant to be named Douglas, but a slip of the tongue led the cast to refer to him as Donald instead, intentional or not.
• Unlimited Wardrobe:
  • A good portion of the earlier historical characters have at least six to nine outfits in their collection. This is a lot for a quick-growing nine-year-old, especially in eras when clothes were not quickly made or mass-manufactured. This makes sense for girls like Samantha who were rich enough her family has a private seamstress, or Julie and Courtney who lived in a time of easy clothes shopping and mass manufacturing, but even characters who would logically have small wardrobes have huge ones—such as those who lived rurally and didn't have easy access to brand new clothes that weren't handed down (Kirsten), were so poor at the time the family was at risk of losing the house (Kit), were on wartime rationing (Molly), or had to build a wardrobe from scratch after becoming free (Addy).^note With Addy, the in-story logic is that her mother is a seamstress and can thus sew new clothing for her, but she's busy working for Mrs. Ford most of the time. Plus in the books Addy's best dress is almost always her first blue school set and she wears her very first freedom pink dress just as often. The trend until Kaya was that every character had at least one new outfit for each book in their six-book series (with the "outfit of the book" highlighted on the cover), and the characters included in the 1999 and 2003 short story collections got new outfits based on those.^note Except Kaya. They also had additional one- or two-scene outfits as part of the collection (like Samantha's play dress or Kirsten's traditional Swedish clothing) and some outfits were made that weren't seen in the books at all, such as the Limited Edition outfits. This is because the point was (along with showing various fashions of the era) for a kid to read the books and/or flip through the catalog and see the clothes that went with each "book" or story—and thus want them for their own. This has been toned down with newer characters—especially when there were no illustrations in the books—but ironically may have swung too far in the other direction for some characters who might not even have more than one extra daywear outfit.
  • The modern dolls have had new outfits come out almost yearly since 1995, updated as fashions for children change, and thus can access decades of outfits. In theory, a doll could have clothes older than they are even if the clothes are somewhat dated.
• Unnamed Parent:
  • Zigzagged; most of the time the characters will not state their parents' name (only referring to them using standard parent terms), but other characters will use their given names. For example, Felicity doesn't call her mother anything but "Mother," but others (including her husband and family friends) call her by her first name, Martha.
  • Caroline's mother is never named in the series, and neither is her grandmother.
• Unwanted Assistance: One of the overarching themes of Lindsey's story is that she frequently tries to "help" people in ways that aren't actually all that helpful.
• Updated Re-release: The BeForever revamp rereleased the books as text-only two-volume compilations and brought some retired products back in an updated format. For example, Addy's school lunch returned with the food and tin altered, Josefina's new meet outfit is extremely close to her old one, and Samantha returned—but with the older items in her her collection replaced with all-brand new items.
• What the Hell, Hero?: In the magazine short story "Picture Perfect (At Last)," Ellen is mad at her sister Veronica, so in the family photo, she makes a face and pretends to be hitting Veronica with a toy hammer. A few weeks later, Ellen's Nana unexpectedly passes away. Her mom gives her a tongue-lashing when the pictures are developed and she finds out Ellen ruined the last family photo they got to take with Nana before she died.
• Wintertime Episode: The first characters all the way through Kit had a Changes for [NAME] book which was set in the winter and about six months after their summer book (and a year or so after their Christmas book). While the books didn't focus fully on the enjoyment of the season, the associated collections focused on winter wear and activities, such as warm coats, sleds, and indoor activities.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Lindsey stops Blair from tormenting April, so Blair pretends that Lindsey attacked her on the way to school. It partially works.
• You Are the Translated Foreign Word: Played with in Rebecca's books; sometimes she and her family are explicitly said to be speaking in Yiddish, but Ana and her immediate family in particular are said to be learning English, and it's not always clear whether Rebecca or any of her family are speaking Yiddish or not.
• You Mean "Xmas":
  • Up until Kaya, each of the American Girl characters had a Christmas story as a part of her book series (though Kirsten's focused more on St. Lucia's Day). Since Kaya obviously wouldn't have celebrated Christmas (as she is from before the Nez Perce had much contact with Europeans and is not nominally Christian like characters before her), her books have a story about a winter "giving" ceremony as her obligatory "holiday" book.
  • A certain subset of fans and parents has called Political Overcorrectness on the switch from emphasizing only "Christmas" to pushing the more inclusive "holidays", despite the fact that Christmas is still celebrated by most of the characters, a Christmas-themed outfit is released yearly (often with accessories), and inclusiveness is never a bad thing.
  • Julie's holiday book centered more on Chinese New Year than Christmas (but the collection has always been Christmas stuff), Rebecca's on Hanukkah, and Kaya has no holiday book but practises native spirituality. Each character is (or was) put into a holiday set in advertisements and stores during the holiday season. This includes Melody's gold and cream outfit (which the books says she wears for New Year's Eve "Watch Night" services at church; Christmas is not seen in her series, as time is skipped from September 1963 to January 1964 by the next volume). Nanea's formal Hawaiian holoku dress is also shown on her at Christmas time, even though Christmas is very much downplayed in the aftereffects of the Pearl Harbor attack and she wears the dress for performances.
  • Some modern sets celebrate non-Christmas winter holidays. There were a set of Kwanzaa, Hannukah, and "Chinese" New Year sets in the late 90s, and in 2021 the company released another set of modern Winter Holiday outfits which included Kwanzaa, Lunar New Year, Eid-al-Fitr, Diwali, and Hannukah.
• You Go, Girl!:
  • Julie's efforts to join the basketball team serve as a kid-friendly representation of second-wave feminism. Later on, her campaign for student body president and willingness to stick up for deaf classmate Joy serve as both a kid-friendly version of politics, the 1976 election, and a way to explain the disability rights movements that began in the 1970s.
  • Nicki and Isabel believe in finding their "girl power" (which was heavily emphasized in the 1990s). While for Isabel this is often aligned with dance, pop music, and the music of The Spice Girls, Nicki is more of the sporty and grunge side; she wants to perform skateboarding for the millenial celebration in part to prove that girls are capable of being part of the then boy-dominated sport.