Yesterday's Doll (also published as The Doll) is a middle grade coming-of-age time travel fantasy novel written by Cora Taylor.
Meg, a sullen teenage girl whose parents are fighting, goes to stay with her grandmother while recovering from rheumatic fever. She is given an antique doll named Jesse, and when Meg sleeps with Jesse in the bed, she is transported back in time as a girl named "Morag", who lives on the Canadian prairies with her family as a nomadic pioneer.
This book contains examples of the following tropes:
- Cool Old Lady: Meg's grandmother is an awesome, understanding old lady who wears stylish tracksuits. Meg notes her favorite is one with a slogan that says "save the whales" on it.
- Creepy Doll: Jesse is cute and beloved by the family, but at first creeps Meg out because she has cold-looking eyes and is known as the "invalid doll" because any sick kid in the family slept with it in the bed for generations.
- Delicate and Sickly: Meg.
- Field Trip to the Past: Meg learns history (and so do readers) by travelling with Jesse to the past.
- Identical Grandson: A female variety, in this case Meg finds out she is a spitting image of her great-grandmother, Morag.
- The Pioneer: Meg, and also Morag and her family.
- Time Machine: Jesse the doll, strangely enough.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Meg might have the ripple effect of changing minor things in Morag's time period, but she can't change Morag's ultimate fate.
