The Doll People

This children's tale is about a doll made of china named Annabelle, who has existed for more than one hundred years. The book is set in the present time period and is told in the third person. Annabelle and her family belong to an 8-year-old girl named Kate Palmer, having previously been owned by Kate's great-grandmother Gertrude when she was born in 1898, later her grandmother Katherine, then her mother Annie. The dolls can move, talk, and play the miniature piano in their house but always return to the same spot they started from when a human approaches. The consequence of being seen moving is being "frozen" for twenty-four hours, also called Doll State. If a doll does something especially incriminating, the doll is "frozen" forever, called Permanent Doll State. Kate's sister Nora receives a doll house and plastic doll family named the Funcrafts for her 5th birthday. The Funcrafts' daughter is Tiffany and she becomes Annabelle's best friend. In the book, Annabelle and her friend Tiffany form a group called the Society for Exploration and Location of Missing Persons (or SELMP for short), when Annabelle finds her Auntie Sarah's Journal. Auntie Sarah has been missing for 45 years and has not been seen or heard from in all that time. Annabelle and Tiffany become determined to find her. Using the clues from the journal, they deduce she is stuck somewhere, so they go on a journey and successfully locate her. The doll family has happily reunited once again.