One of the biggest box office draws this summer, at least for little girls and their mommies, is “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl.” It is based on one of the popular American Girls Collection dolls that represent pivotal periods of American history.

The movie opens in 1934. Kit lives in a nice house in Cincinnati with her father, a car dealer, and her housewife mother. Her first inkling that their safe middle-class world is about to be shattered comes when the girl next door’s furniture is repossessed and her home is foreclosed upon by the bank. Her family leaves town to live with relatives in California

Then Kit’s father loses his business because no one is buying cars. She comes face to face with him when her class volunteers at the local soup kitchen and she spots him standing in line to eat. Unable to find work in Cincinnati, Mr. Kittredge leaves town on a bus, promising to write every week and send money once he finds work. Desperate to pay the mortgage, Kit’s mother takes in boarders and plants vegetables where her flowers once grew. She starts raising chickens and makes Kit clothes from the flowered sacks the feed comes in.

This is a Hollywood movie, of course, so most everyone manages to look clean and neat and pretty despite the hard times. But we imagine the America depicted in this movie will come as a surprise to the young girls who just know Kit as a doll with lots of accessories.

Maybe they better get used to it.

We don’t know what led the entertainment industry to schedule a movie about a child of the Great Depression at this time, but its confluence with some of the grim economic news in the last few weeks is enough to make one wince.

According to a U.S. Labor Department report released on July 3, U.S. employment fell an additional 62,000 jobs in June, the sixth consecutive decline, while the unemployment rate held constant at 5.5 percent. The Labor Department had estimated job losses in April and May at 28,000, but that was revised upward to 52,000. Oops.

Economists are still arguing about whether we are experiencing a recession or just very sluggish growth. And 5.5 percent unemployment isn’t anything like what was going on in Kit’s day, when the unemployment was at 25 percent. But that was years after the stock market crash of 1929 and bank failures had taken their toll. Some economists are saying the weaknesses evident in today’s banking system haven’t been seen in decades, maybe even since the 1930s.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke of “the combination of declining wealth, a weak job market, rising food and energy prices, foreclosures, tight credit” in testimony to Congress last week. Even President Bush, while using platitudes reminiscent of Herbert Hoover, acknowledged it is a “tough time.”

What is the average American family — up to their ears in credit card debt, the value of their home equity shrinking, no cost-of-living raise in sight, gas-lapping SUV in the driveway — to do?

The cheerful example set by the Kittredges doesn’t create a blueprint for today’s families, but it certainly suggests the right approach to take. Stop spending money you don’t have. Work hard and hope you keep your job. Save as much of your paycheck as you can and start paying down your debt. Park the car and walk or take your bicycle places. Make your own fun. Cook at home and eat family dinners around the table. Plan a “staycation” rather than a vacation. And give a hand to others who are struggling more than you are.

Ideas for accomplishing these things abound. The front cover of last Sunday’s Parade magazine focused on thrifty families who “Save Money! (and still have fun).” The Anderson County Visitors and Convention Bureau lists “Thirty-two ways to have fun without spending a dime” in the upstate on its Web site, www.visitanderson.com. And any charity in town would be glad for your donations of time and, if you have it, money.

The lessons of thrift, self-sufficiency and neighborliness taught during the Great Depression were permanently imprinted on a generation of Americans.

While we aren’t hoping for a repeat of those hard times, we do hope that once this recession or slow down or whatever it is ends, Americans will be wiser people when it comes to our personal finances, with a better grip on what made Americans who came of age in the 1930s “the greatest generation.”