The Doll People is a children's novel series written by Ann M. Martin and Laura Godwin and illustrated by Brian Selznick.
Annabelle is a doll living with her family in eight-year-old Kate Palmer's home. She has lived with the Palmers for over 100 years, and has never had a true adventure in that time—that is, until the Funcraft Dolls move in.
The series
- The Doll People (2003)
- The Meanest Doll in the World (2005)
- The Runaway Dolls (2010)
- The Doll People Set Sail (2016)
- The Doll People's Christmas (2016)
This series provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Annabelle, Tiffany, and Auntie Sarah. Most of the series focuses on the various adventures Annabelle and Tiffany have together after they meet.
- And I Must Scream: Permanent Doll State—a rumored punishment for dolls who have done something so reckless that it puts the entire existence of living dolls in jeopardy—is this. Mean Mimi from The Meanest Doll in the World undergoes this, and it's implied that because dolls are still conscious while they are in temporary Doll State, Mimi will remain conscious despite being forever immobile.
- Averted with Auntie Sarah in the first novel, who was trapped under a heavy trunk in the attic for 45 years, but fell asleep for the entire time, leaving her largely unaware of what happened.
- Played straight with Tilly May from the third novel, the baby doll who was trapped in a box at the doll shop in London for 200 years.
- Anger Born of Worry: How Annabelle's Victorian parents often react to her coming home late from adventuring.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Mimi. She's a fancy princess-fairy style of doll, but proves that Light Is Not Good by being nasty to everyone around her. After she follows Annabelle and Tiffany back to the Palmers' and pretends to be a sweet and friendly doll, she's still nasty.
- A Boy, a Girl, and a Baby Family: Both the Dolls—Annabelle, Bobby, Baby Betsy—and the Funcrafts—Tiffany, Bailey, Baby Britney—have this family set up in their respective doll houses.
- Cassandra Truth: Kate's sister Nora sees Mimi jump off of Kate's bookshelf in "The Meanest Doll in the World", but Kate doesn't believe her.
- Cats Are Mean: The Palmers' cat The Captain is a constant adversary of the Dolls, and a major reason why Annabelle is forbidden to leave the doll house.
- Contrived Coincidence: It's a good thing the descendants of Gertrude Cox live in the same house she did, and the dolls she had a child were passed down through the years and are owned by her great-granddaughter and still together—so when the toy store Wilson and Sons in London found the package with Baby Tilly inside, it could be shipped to the exact same address the Doll Family lived back in the 1890s and the family could be reunited. Grandma Katherine points out how lucky they are to still be there when they open Tilly's package.
- Delinquent Hair: Averted. Annabelle is just as sweet as can be with her bright green hair. Notably, her hair wasn't always green—it was naturally blonde (well as natural as a china-haired doll can have) but Grandma Katherine painted it green in the 30s.
- Foreshadowing:
- The mention of Permanent Doll State in the first novel doesn't actively come into play until the second one, when Mimi is subjected to it after violating the Doll Code.
- When Annabelle enters Doll State in the first novel, she mentions feeling very groggy and tired. This is part of what kept Auntie Sarah asleep for all 45 years she was lost in the attic.
- In the second novel when the dolls at BJ's house are describing Mimi's minions, they mention that one of them is an action figure, which confuses Tiffany and Annabelle because action figures never take the oath. Turns out their confusion was right—he's just a regular doll wearing action figure parts to seem intimidating.
- Happily Adopted: Baby Betsy. Being dolls, none of them are biologically related, but all the other dolls come from the same set scale, intended for dollhouses. Baby Betsy wasn't and was shipped with them by mistake and is much larger than the rest of the dolls. Her family was relieved the Palmers didn't decide to send her back, because they "knew" she was supposed to be theirs. She's not replaced when Baby Tilly is finally sent to them either.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Mimi in the second novel. Her plan was to ruin Annabelle's life at the Palmers' home by alerting Kate to the fact that her dolls were alive. However, her jumping out at Kate and being spotted by Nora violates the doll oath and causes her to enter Permanent Doll State.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Annabelle and Tiffany, in terms of physical age and design. Annabelle was created in 1898 and made of fragile china porcelain, and Tiffany is of a brand new line of more sturdy plastic dolls when she meets Annabelle.
- Jerkass: Mean Mimi. She's nasty and controlling to the other dolls in her toy household, and carries this over to when she sneaks over to the Palmer house.
- Kaiju: Due to the obvious scale involved, the human characters are portrayed as such in the eyes of the Doll People. Luckily, the Palmer family are (mostly) gentle with them.
- Living Toys: The titular Doll People, as well as many other toys. On the Sliding Scale of Living Toys they're Schrodinger's Toy; they can move about only when not being observed, and every toy and doll takes the oath to not do so around anyone who would see, including making sure they're as close as back to where they belong after being out at night. Failure to do so can lead to Doll state, a 24 hour pause where they cannot move or talk at all but still have their thoughts. Deliberately violating the oath, such as jumping at a person purposefully, invokes permanent doll state which never wears off.
- The Masquerade: Dolls who have taken the Oath are forced to uphold this, and failure to do so results in their being placed in a temporary "Doll State" where they can no longer move or talk. Deliberate violation makes it permanent.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Tiffany reacts this way after Papa Doll gets snatched up by The Captain.
- Parody Product Placement: The endpapers and covers of the book "advertise" or display the various the dolls as if they were real products, including Aunt Sarah's page being ripped and the emphasis on Baby Tilly on the third book. The Meanest Doll in the World focuses on the Princess Mimi brand, with the hardback cover under the jacket showing the schematics of the doll herself.
- Shout-Out:
- "Surrender, Annabelle", which is written on one of the last pages of the first novel, is a reference to The Wizard of Oz.
- The Meanest Doll in the World has another The Wizard of Oz reference. When Annabelle's family first meets Mimi, she introduces herself as "Mimi, the Small and Meek."
- Small Name, Big Ego: Mimi, who refers to herself as "The Queen of All Dolls".
- Speak in Unison: The Cutouts paper dolls from the second novel do this.
- Species Surname: The Doll family are living dolls.
- Take That!: To the mindless nature of Barbie dolls and action figures, as it's stated that Barbies and action figures never take the oath.
- Year Outside, Hour Inside: A sort of additional, unnamed form of Doll State explored in the first novel as an explanation for what happened to Auntie Sarah and Baby Tilly. A doll who becomes trapped somewhere for a long period of time becomes sleepy and dozes off for however long it takes for them to be found, and when they awake, they believe it's only been a few hours at most.
