The Doll People by Ann Martin shared by khmeg

The Doll People is a book about a family of eight people including the nanny. Since the last 45 years one of the family members named Sarah is missing. She is the Aunt of Annabelle and Bobby Doll. Without her gone there is just Papa, Mama, Uncle, and Nanny. With big sister Annabelle, little brother Bobby Doll and Baby Betsy left. Annabelle is a very restless soul and she has to do something because she thinks she will die of boredom. Annabelle remembers the time when she was played by Katherine Palmer who is now a grandma of Kate Palmer which the dolls are currently owned by her not Nora, Kate’s younger sister. The dolls were also played by Katherine’s daughter and Kate’s mother Annie Palmer. At night all the dolls would sing together for some family time when all the family members were asleep including Captain, their pet cat. Later after family time the dolls had some private time to themselves. Annabelle decides to go to the dollhouse’s bookshelves in her free time. She finds some books which are real and on that bookshelf she finds the unexpected diary of her Aunt Sarah. Annabelle quickly hides it under her bed covers and decides to keep this diary a secret. Aunt Sarah’s diary had many drawings of spiders which were carefully labeled. Annabelle read the diary any moment she could. She got so confused that how her Aunt could have so many different drawings of spiders while in the dollhouse there were not many spiders.

Soon Annabelle figures out that her Aunt used to go out of the dollhouse and she confronts this to her family. Then the Uncle, Bobby and Annabelle Doll go to search for Aunt Sarah in the Palmer’s living room at night except they find Nora’s packed birthday present, the Funcraft’s family. The Funcraft family is also like the Dolls except they do not have a nanny. They have a Dad, Mom, big sister Tiffany, little brother Bailey, and the youngest of all Baby Britney. As soon as the Funcraft were unpacked they went to the Doll’s house and invited them to their house for a party the next day. The Dolls could not visit the Funcrafts because Annabelle was taken by Nora after Kate scolded her for playing with her dollhouse instead of playing with the dollhouse Nora got. Annabelle starts to go for the dollhouse when Kate forgets to look for her. Annabelle gets home safe and Tiffany comes to visit her. Then Annabelle tells her secret to Tiffany and they decide to call themselves as Society for Exploration and the Location of Missing Persons. For short they call them SELMP. Next time Tiffany and Annabelle go to search for Aunt Sarah they forget to keep track of time and they reach their homes a bit late. Her parents scolded her and she also found out her parents did nothing when Aunt Sarah was missing which was the reason of the argument between her Uncle and her parents. So now her uncle stays away from the Dolls except Annabelle. Annabelle and Tiffany get together and go to the end of the diary and find a page telling the way into the attic except it is in a different handwriting. The Dolls finally decide to go to Tiffany’s house. Uncle Doll also comes with them because Annabelle convinced him to come. Annabelle was so exited but she did not know that something terrible was about to happen that her uncle got caught by the cat and her father saved him but then disappeared. Annabelle and Tiffany search for him and watch the Captain for strange behavior. Then the girls observe the cat for days and see the cat going toward the armoire which Annabelle’s Papa was on top of. The Papa Doll gets down with the help of the Funcraft’s but, unfortunately breaks his leg. Just then Grandma Katherine comes while the other dolls hide and see the cat with Papa doll. She scolds the cat and puts Papa Doll in the dollhouse the next day with glue on his broken leg. Now the girls go to their first assignment to find Aunt Sarah in the attic. They search for her the first time. They do not find her that time but the second time they find her. Annabelle and Tiffany tell her what she missed in 45 years. Annabelle tells her family that she found Aunt Sarah and Uncle Doll says let us go to the attic. Aunt Sarah reaches the dollhouse in the same way Papa Doll did because she just could not appear in front of the Palmer family without anybody bringing her there. And Annabelle tells her Uncle that she knows he wrote in Aunt Sarah’s Diary. There is a double celebration in the Dolls house for Aunt Sarah’s return and Annabelle’s birthday.