136: Ms. Pac-Man: Courtney Changes the Game

Dolls of Our Lives

Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney

Society & Culture, History

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2024

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Do you think of yourself as part of history? What about the Care Bears and Ms. Pac-Man? When American Girl first revealed that there would be a new historical character set in 1986, we were in shock. Having recovered from that surprise, we were delighted to meet the young person behind the bop "Hey Courtney." Through Courtney Changes the Game, we meet Courtney Moore, a nine-year-old living in California who loves gaming, space travel, and recycling. We discuss Courtney's family dynamics, presidential history in the book, and the shock of the Challenger explosion in early 1986.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome everyone to dolls of our lives. This is the podcast where we're reliving the American Girl series book by book. I'm Mary.
0:17.5	I'm still Allison. And Allison, we've entered a brand new decade. I mean it feels fresh it feels free. I'm getting out my
0:26.0	shoulder pads like how are you feeling me Courtney we're here. We're meeting Courtney
0:31.2	Moore who is born the year of the bicentennial so she is actually a
0:36.7	February baby so she's born like the summer before Julie takes part in the bicentennial stuff and she's very fun.
0:45.0	Extremely fun. I loved this book so much.
0:48.0	It is a bit terrifying when you feel like you recognize elements of the air quotes historic girls life and we can
0:57.8	get into that so I mean that's this is one of the first books where I'm like really feeling
1:01.7	that like with Julie I could sort of
1:03.2	relate even though I never lived in the 70s but I mean talk about it were in
1:08.8	1986 the year I was born like that that's a lot, lots going on here, but you know before we get into meet
1:16.6	Courtney who to this day has the greatest theme music of any American girl, I'm sorry, she does.
1:22.6	What are we taking in?
1:23.7	What's like taking up your time these days?
1:26.8	Well, I wanted to first recommend a book
1:28.8	that a lot of people who listen to this show
1:31.0	said that we would absolutely love, and I know that they were right at
1:35.2	least in my case which is a council of dolls and so that is a book that came out
1:41.0	last year and I really really really recommend it if you're someone who's ever had a
1:46.0	relationship with a doll. It's about multiple generations of indigenous women and their connections to dolls that they care for and kind of the back and forth relationships that they cultivate.
1:58.2	And I was so worried that I might not like it. I kind of put off reading it and I just absolutely adored it. So like 10
2:05.3	out of 10 people should check it out. Awesome. Yeah that's on my two read list. It's been on it for a
	...

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