IDW and Mattel are launching a line of American Girl graphic novels that will have two types of stories: Original mysteries that span the past and the present, kicking off with
Julie and the Blue Guitar,
and new takes on the original American Girl chapter books, starting with
Meet Josefina.
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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