In Julie and the Blue Guitar: An American Girl Mystery, by writer Casey Gilly and artist Felia Hanakata, Emma Dhillon, a young girl living in 2024, discovers the journal kept by Julie Albright, an American Girl character, in 1977. This leads her to unravel a mystery from the 1970s that the two girls solve together. The 96-page graphic novel, rated for ages 9-12, will be released on June 25, 2024, with an MSRP of $9.99.
Gilly is the writer of several My Little Pony titles as well as Buffy the Last Vampire Slayer (see "Buffy Stakes Her Claim"), and she and Raina Telgemeier won a 2022 Eisner Award for the short story "Funeral in Foam."
Next up will be Meet Josefina, which will update the 1997 series about a girl growing up on a New Mexico ranch in 1824 and is due out in February 2025, and Isabel and Nicki Versus the Bigfoot Bandit: American Girl Mysteries Across Time, slated for July 2025.
American Girl dolls were launched in 1986 as a series of dolls with distinct personalities, each set in a different historical period. The company, now owned by Mattel, also created books about each character, including a single graphic novel, According to Aggie, which was released in 2017. The dolls, accessories, and books were all extremely popular in their heyday, which lasted from the mid-1980s through the early 2000s, about the same period as the Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley Twins books that have also been adapted into best-selling graphic novels.
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