Abigail Breslin enjoyed her newspaper scenes the most. Here she plays Kit Kittredge on a visit to the Cincinnati Register with Darryn Lucio as a reporter in Kit Kittredge: An American Girl.

HBO

BOSTON — No one had to twist little Abigail Breslin’s arm when she was asked to take the lead role in Kit Kittredge: An American Girl.

The movie is based on a series of books and accompanying dolls whose various young heroines face crises in different American eras, blending historical fact and inspirational fiction in stories that encourage girls to embrace their dreams. Breslin, best known for being one of the youngest Academy Award nominees ever two years ago at age 10 for Little Miss Sunshine, says she has read all the “Kit” books in this series, of which there are seven, and “I’ve collected all the dolls, so I’m a big fan.

“When they asked me to do the Kit movie I said, ‘Yeah, she’s one of my favorites.’ So I was so excited.”

Breslin has been on the road for more than three weeks promoting the film, which she made last summer in Toronto, although it is set in 1934 Cincinnati during the Great Depression. In Boston, she’s seated at a big table in a hotel meeting room that makes her look even more petite than she is. Across from her is her mother, Kim, who accompanies her famous daughter on everything from movie shoots to press interviews.

Kim laughs when asked whether she’s paid by the studio when she accompanies her daughter or son, Spencer, who is appearing opposite Mark Wahlberg in The Happening. “No, no, no,” she protests with a chuckle. “Parents don’t get paid for being on the set. They’re parents. You don’t get paid for being parents.”

Kit Kittredge takes place in a time that’s not quite unlike ours, what with home foreclosures, rising unemployment, a falling stock market. So was Abigail, precocious and whip-smart as she seems, aware of the similarities to today while making the film? “I don’t like to see anybody struggling,” she responds indirectly. “But the thing I like about this movie is it’s sort of about families pulling together.

“I think Kit is very brave. And one thing I like about her is she tries to share what she does have, even if it’s not a lot. And she always tries to look at the positive. And I think that’s pretty cool.”

She does admit that Kit, who visits a Hobo Jungle on the outskirts of the city to write a story about the homeless and later tracks down a gang of thieves, “is a lot more brave than I am.

“But we both like dogs,” she adds helpfully. She has a dachshund and a German shepherd at home in New York City. “And I have a turtle and two cats, too.” She tosses in, as 12-year-old girls are often eager to do, a bit of extraneous information regarding the monkey that’s seen in the film: “The monkey in the movie was originally going to be called Sparky and we were talking and they asked me what my dog’s name was and I said, ‘Curtis.’ And so they changed the monkey’s name to Curtis.”

And why would anyone name a dog Curtis in the first place?

“It’s not really a dog name,” she says. “But my brother played in a movie where his name was Curtis. And so when we got the dog, we named him Curtis.”

So there.

Abigail, despite her fame and her on-screen appearances with such heavy hitters as Alan Arkin and Toni Collette in Little Miss Sunshine, Jodie Foster in Nim’s Island and Ryan Reynolds in Definitely Maybe, comes across as bright and unaffected.

She’s home-schooled by her mother and says she has lots of friends her age — her cousins, the kids at her playground, the kids at her swimming pool, which she especially enjoys. “One of my friends, her mom is the lifeguard at the pool.”

When’s she asked about the early morning announcement of her Oscar nomination for best supporting actress, she says, “I was in bed. And then my brother and my mom came in and woke me up. I was really excited. I was up for like an hour or so, and then I went back to bed.”

And what emotions ran through the head of the fourth youngest acting nominee ever when Jennifer Hudson of Dreamgirls was called up on stage to accept the Academy Award for best supporting actress and not her? “I was really excited just to be there and to meet everybody and see the show,” she reports. “And I was happy for the winner.”

When she’s not on a movie set — and Kit Kittredge had to be filmed in the tiny window of opportunity Abigail had last summer between other films — she’s says “I like to swim. I like to read. I like to talk on the phone. And, oh yeah, I like to video chat … talk about lip glosses.” She doesn’t seem to be wearing any for this interview, but she protests that she had some on until it got washed away by her chocolate coffee drink from Starbuck’s.

Besides Spencer, she has a brother, Ryan, who is in college studying political science. Her father is “in telecommunications,” she says but neither Abigail nor Kim seem to know exactly what he does. Only that he’s available sometimes to accompany her to a movie set when Kim can’t go. Kim adds that “We also have this 22-year-old son who was on summer break at one point and he went with her for a little while, which isn’t a bad summer job from college when you get to hang out on a film set. Not bad.”

When she’s not working, Abigail says a typical day is “I usually wake up when,” she pauses, “whenever. That’s the advantage of being home schooled. You don’t have to wake up early. And then I sort of do school, hang out, go swimming maybe.”

“The rules are different when they’re working,” chimes in Kim. “They have to have a tutor for three hours on the set.” Although making Kit Kittredge took place last summer, “They still have to have a teacher on the set, even when school isn’t in session.” She explains that while the parent is there as the guardian, “the studio teachers are there for mediating with the production.”

And Abigail’s favorite scenes in Kit Kittredge?

“My favorite part was doing the newspaper scenes,” she says without hesitation. Not because she has any great interest in writing, as Kit does, but “I just like them because Wallace Shawn is in them.” Shawn, a character actor best know for his role in the art house hit My Dinner With André and whose father, William Shawn, was a longtime editor of The New Yorker, plays the curmudgeonly editor of the Cincinnati Register in the film. “He’s very funny. He’s so sweet. Completely the opposite of his character,” Abigail adds. “It was just fun.”

Just like Abigail.

mjanuson@projo.com