111: Cold Comforts: Maryellen, The One and Only

Dolls of Our Lives

Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney

Society & Culture, History

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2023

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Of all the questions put out into the world, some confound, others
inspire, and a few just beg for follow up. But only Val Tripp would be
bold enough to ask (through Maryellen Larkin): "how hard could it be
to cut bangs?" Maryellen knows that nothing is fair in fourth grade,
including the fallout from a quick and hasty morning haircut. We cover
Maryellen's debut book, The One and Only, and her rapid-fire meet,
lesson, and surprise plots. Though Maryellen proves to be a good
student and critic of the Cold War, we question what has been learned
about covering hard topics in the 30+ years of developing AG books.
This episode goes deep into Maryellen's moment (the year 1954) and
includes a discussion of current trends in reality television.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	In the criminal justice system, there are two separate yet equally important groups,
0:04.6	Val Trip, and everyone else on the face of planet Earth.
0:08.8	Dun, dun.
0:20.4	Welcome to Dolls of Our Lives. This is the podcast where we're reliving the American Girl Series
0:25.3	book by book. I'm Mary.
0:27.6	I'm still Allison. You know, Allison, we're gathered here to talk about, you know, a true
0:32.0	legend in the American Girl Canon. She's here at it again, taking us into the 20th century.
0:38.9	You know, I did you ever dream we'd be back with Val Trip?
0:42.5	I didn't. I really had no understanding when we started this going on four years ago,
0:47.8	that we would be with Valerie Trip from, you know, an art historical era from the mid 1980s,
0:54.2	right up to the present, but also looking at the arc of her career.
0:57.9	The earliest book she had to be writing 1985, and this Mary Ellen series that we're talking out
1:04.0	came out in 2015. So we're talking like a three-decade body of work, and I'm like more in love
1:11.2	than ever. Like I would follow this woman to the end of the Earth. I'm fascinated. I'm compelled.
1:17.6	I had no intention of sitting down and reading all of the one and only. I did.
1:24.3	The only thing I stopped for I will divulge later was to pick up a pair of scissors.
1:28.6	I can talk about that more in doubt, but this will conspired me.
1:31.8	Your bangs do look good. So I'll say that if it's related, but yeah, I think what I constantly
1:39.2	am at war with myself about Valerie Trip, because on the one hand, I find her writing so engaging,
1:44.8	and the way that she can imagine herself into the vulnerabilities and the chaos of being,
1:51.1	you know, a nine-ten-year-old kid, I think is really impressive, no matter what age she's at.
1:56.2	I do think, and we'll get into this like, you know, alerting her for Valerie Trip on certain things
	...

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