We had several things on our 40th anniversary of American Girl wishlist: The relaunch of Grin Pins; a new historical doll with a more contemporary history (we have consistently suggested something from the 1960s Chicano Movement); a few updated Smart Girl’s guides (please help us with our taxes, American Girl!). What we never imagined—even in our wildest prepubescent or current grown-up dreams—was an American Girl novel for adults. On February 11th, 2026, American Girl announced that they would be releasing their first book aimed explicitly at adults, focusing on Samantha Parkington.

The question of how to engage—and profit from—a grown-up audience is not new in the age of the internet. Time is elastic; nothing truly disappears online, and you can sink yourself into the hazy nostalgia of your childhood at a moment’s notice . During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, social media strained under the weight of those returning to their parents’ home and cleaning out the closets of their former bedrooms. Admissions to American Girl’s “doll hospital” surged; at least one of us (Justine) can attest to finding her formative Molly McIntire doll in the back of her old closet with rumpled hair and a loose arm, and promptly utilizing her adult credit card to get her fixed.

In 2025, we published An American Girl Anthology: Finding Ourselves in the Pleasant Company Universe , in part because of the swell of reconnection we witnessed across our social media feeds, but also to satisfy our academic curiosities as scholars with titles and credentials who felt American Girl had played a role in our respective career trajectories. Dr. Tara Strauch, writing for our book, mused over the so-called “Felicity Generation”: women raised on American Girl characters, books, and accessory lines who ultimately became historians (or pursued higher education and academia more broadly). That American Girl has helped foster an interest in the past while shaping futures is both undeniable and laudable.

An “official” update to Samantha’s story doesn’t preclude headcanons. But it does narrow the scope of possibility, just a little.

Over the course of creating the anthology, we worked with a dozen writers covering topics as diverse as Asian-American representation within the brand to adult collectors and the AGIG (American Girl Instagram) community to the proliferation of “tag-yourself” memes about American Girl characters reaching the mainstream. One throughline that touched almost every essay was the question of nostalgia. Nostalgia has two components: the warmth that you feel as you step back, even for the briefest second, into a moment that has passed, but also a necessarily bitter twin–the knowledge that the moment has passed, and you cannot truly return.

Ultimately, American Girl still has to walk a fine line between being a profitable brand and remaining—and enduring as—a safe brand for children who are still learning to navigate the world. So what does American Girl and Pleasant Company owe their fans over the age of twelve?

Samantha is, in our eyes, the logical choice for this somewhat illogical project: she is one of the first three dolls created by Pleasant Rowland; she has commanded a reputation as the doll with the best stuff (evidenced by her rumored status as American Girl’s best-selling doll of all time); American Girl’s 2026 Doll of the Year, Raquel Reyes , is, according to the company, Samantha’s direct descendant. Moreover, though Samantha’s original book series sees her confront the harsh realities of child labor, her storyline has (relative to others) at least somewhat less friction.

American Girl is keeping Samantha: The Next Chapter under strict lock-and-key; at time of writing, no advanced reader copies appear to be circulating, and only the first four chapters are available for review via Cosmopolitan.com (there’s something to be said for American Girl choosing to release this preview via a magazine platform that once attempted to straddle adolescence and maturity with a brand new creation: the Cosmo Girl). Both American Girl and author Fiona Davis (who has penned seven bestselling historical fiction novels involving New York City and its architecture) describe the book this way :