American Girl stories were the best tbh
Dude, read the books, she and her mom freed themselves in Book 1. We don’t disrespect American Girl in this house
Don’t you dare disrespect Addy, or any of my girls for that matter. American Girl used to be legit. Good stories, good dolls, good movies.
Felicity’s story was set in the beginnings of the American Revolution, and addressed the conflict that she faced when her loved ones were split between patriots and loyalists. It also covered the effects of animal abuse, and forgiving those who are unforgivable.
Samantha’s stories centered around the growth of industrial America, women’s suffrage, child abuse, and corruption in places of power. Also, it emphasises how dramatically adoption into a caring family can turn a life around.
Kit’s story is one of my favorites. Her family is hit hard by the Great Depression, and they begin taking in boarders and raise chickens to help make ends meet. Her books include themes of poverty, police brutality, homelessness, prejudice, and the importance of unity in difficult times.
Molly’s father, a doctor, is drafted during the Second World War. Throughout her story, friends of hers suffer the loss of their husbands, sons, and brothers overseas. Her mother leaves the traditional housewife position and works full-time to help with the war effort. They also take in an English refugee child, who learns to open up after a life of traumatic experience.
American Girl stories have always featured the very harsh realities of America through the years. But they’re always presented honestly, yet in ways that kids can understand. They just go to show that you don’t have to live in a perfect time to be a real American girl.
Dont you fucking dare disrespect the American Girls in my house. ESPECIALLY Addy!! That was my first REAL contact with the horrors of slavery, as I read about her father being whipped and sold and her mother escaping with her to freedom, but also how freedom was still a struggle.
A slave doll. Please. Read the books.
Don’t forget Kirsten, the Swedish immigrant who had to deal with balancing her own culture and learning the english language and customs of her classmates, or Kaya (full name Kaya'aton'my, or She Who Arranges Rocks) , the brave but careless girl from the Nez Perce tribe, or Josefina, the Mexican girl learning to be a healer.
And then there are the later dolls, that kids younger than me would have grown up with (I was just outgrowing American Girl as these came out), like Rebecca, the Jewish girl who dreams of becoming an actress in the budding film industry, or Julie, who fights against her school’s gender policy surrounding sports in the 70s, or Nanea, the Hawaiian girl whose father worked at Pearl Harbor.
These books, these characters, are fantastic pictures into life for girls in America throughout the years, they pull no punches with the horrors that these girls had to face in their different time periods, and in many cases I learned more history from these series than social studies at school. And that’s without even mentioning the “girl of the year” series where characters are created in the modern world to help girls deal with issues like friend problems, moving, or bullying. We do NOT disrespect American Girl in this house.
American Girl is probably going to be the only exposure young girls are going to get to history from a female perspective. This is actually kind of important considering that in history classes we dont really get that exposure. We dont hear about what women felt and endured during these time periods cause schools are too busy teaching us about what happened from the male perspective, which is not unimportant, but we need both. Girls need both.
If anybody’s looking for recs of similar books, the Dear America diaries and their spinoffs are also very good! The original series, Dear America, explores American history through the lens of the diaries of fictional girls. It had a ton of spinoffs, but most notably the My Name is America series, which was the same but with boys, and The Royal Diaries, which told fictionalized stories based on the girlhoods of various royalty worldwide. (I list these two specifically because they contained my favorite two books: The Journal of James Edmond Pease: A Civil War Union Soldier, Virginia, 1863, and Nzingha: Warrior Queen of Matamba, Angola, Africa, 1595.)
These books aren’t always the most historically accurate, but they’re a good introduction to a time period and what people were feeling and thinking, both about historical events and in general. And the detail really lends life to an otherwise boring subject.
Here’s a complete list with links to the spinoffs, in case anyone’s interested.
