Photograph by George Sakkestad

Alexis Williams and her American Girl doll, Samantha, came to the meeting wearing matching outfits made by Alexis' grandmother.

American Girl Club

Historical dolls, books tell 'herstory' and link generations of women

By Sandy Sims

It's a bright, crisp, Sunday afternoon when more than 75 girls and as many mothers and grandmothers flood into Borders Books & Cafe in Los Gatos. The 7- to 12-year-old girls come from all around the South Bay--Mountain View, Ben Lomond, Cupertino, Los Gatos, Saratoga, San Jose, Scotts Valley. What draws them here are the dolls cradled in their arms.

While this gathering of girls and dolls is a first for Los Gatos Borders, this phenomenon has been going on at bookstores and in homes all across the country.

The heart of this movement is a series of books--American Girl books--which focus on fictional girls who lived during different periods in American history. Each character is embodied in an 18-inch-doll that costs $82.

"When we were planning this club meeting, we were amazed at the response," John Hartinger, community relations coordinator for the local Borders, recalls.

Rebecca Robinson says she wasn't really surprised at the response, because her daughter owns one of the dolls. Robinson, now on leave from Borders, is also the mom who volunteered to organize the club at the local bookstore. "I know how big this thing is," she says.

"There are not many books out there for this age group," says Stephanie Spanos, public relations coordinator for Pleasant Co., the Wisconsin-based company where the American Girls phenomenon started. Many girls this age love dolls and they love to read. Some of us well remember the hours we spent devouring books like Nancy Drew and Little Women. "The books and the dolls are conceived together with research, careful writing and quality production," Spanos explains.

Adding dolls to stories makes for a winning combination. Add the historical part and you've got the moms interested. In fact, the elements of the American Girl product touch women of all ages because they offer girls and women a kind of "herstory" that spreads over time, ethnicity and race--an organic mix that can't help but grow. Perhaps this is why the American Girl Club meetings tend to be promoted by mothers.


Photograph by George Sakkestad

Participants in the American Girl Club at Borders Books are (from left) Kristen Mishalski, Julianne Wagner and Vanessa Kristensen.




When the club met for the first time at Borders Los Gatos, the girls were divided into three groups, so activities could be spread around the store.

In the cafe, girls assembled cardboard lanterns. Upstairs, another group sat on the floor and watched a woman in a long gingham skirt take a ball of raw sheep's wool and spin it into long strings. She passed around balls of wool for the girls to touch and smell, suggesting that they feel the oil residue that the wool leaves on their hands. Not too far away, another group sat on the floor enchanted as a woman read to them.

The American Girl idea originated with Pleasant Roland, a former teacher and textbook author (and for a short time a reporter and anchor for KGO-TV News in San Francisco during the late 1960s). In 1984 she made the brilliant connection between a market for quality dolls, history and girls' love for stories about girls their own age.

Roland did her homework and got the company off the ground over the next two years. In 1986, the Pleasant Co. introduced three American Girl dolls and their stories--Kirsten, a pioneer girl living in 1884; Samantha, whose story takes place during the turn of the century, and Molly, who was growing up during World War II.

Since then, the Pleasant Co. has spawned a business that includes books and dolls for six historical characters. They've sold 5 million dolls, 54 million books, and other merchandise that includes furniture and clothing for the dolls, matching outfits for the girls, and 700,000 subscriptions to their American Girl magazine. Even more amazing is the center stage these dolls/characters take in so many activities around the country. And our small part of the United States does its good share.

St. Joseph's School of Cupertino held a Samantha's Ice Cream Social at the Los Gatos History Club this year. It sold out.

Yuletide at Montalvo every year offers up for raffle one of the American Girl dolls, a bed and a slew of clothes. Saratoga mom Pat Pilarinos explains, "Four Montalvo women actually spend all year researching and sewing historically correct clothes for the doll. They even learn special detailed sewing stitches." Pilarinos' daughter, Cessa, won Felicity, the colonial doll, this year. "We almost have to add on a closet just to hold the gazillions of clothes." Cessa really wanted this doll, Pilarino says, because she'd become fascinated with the colonial days through activities at Foothill School. "It's so wholesome," Rebecca Robinson says.

The word wholesome always slips into the conversation when mothers talk about these dolls. Mattel Inc., the creator of the just-turned-40-year-old Barbie, has just bought Pleasant Co. "I hope they can keep the same quality," Robinson says.


Photograph by George Sakkestad

Seven-year-old Catherine Soule (right) listens to a reading of 'Josefina Saves the Day,' followed by a discussion about life in Santa Fe.




The theme of the February Borders Los Gatos meeting was "Celebrating Josefina." The Josefina doll is Hispanic and the most recent addition to the American Girl dolls. She debuted in 1997.

Maritza Nelson has come to Borders with her Josefina doll. Maritza is Hispanic, too, and looks exactly like her doll. She was born in Chile and adopted by her Saratoga parents, Moe and Duke Nelson, when she was a newborn. All of which is why Maritza saved half of the $82 to buy Josefina. Her parents gave her the other half. "When Maritza plays with Josefina, she's calm and peaceful," Nelson says. "The doll gives her a sense of pride in her Hispanic heritage." Maritza's best friend, Graciela Kincaid, also a Saratoga resident, feels a personal connection to her own Josefina doll. Her parents are from Puerto Rico and Cuba, and her grandmother's name is Josefina.

In the package with each new doll comes a meet-the-character book--Meet Felicity, Meet Addy and so on.

Meet Josefina tells the story of a 9-year-old girl living on a rancho near Santa Fe, N.M., in 1824. The reader learns how people living on ranchos had to spin their own wool, raise their own food, how men and women had distinct roles and much more.

"That little girl [Josefina] worked from 5 a.m. till 6 p.m., baking, sweeping and cleaning," says Robinson, the mom who organized the meeting at Borders. "Little girls today don't have a sense of what little girls used to do." Robinson likes the way the characters come out of different economic, ethnic and racial backgrounds. In fact, a new doll is coming out in 2000; some are speculating she will be Asian, but the Pleasant Co. is not telling.

Although girls usually own just one of the expensive dolls, they read the stories about the other characters. The stories are fast-paced and include life challenges that girls from any time in history would face--sibling rivalry, friendship problems, overcoming fears. The stories are about brave, bright girls sometimes living in painful realities.

The character Addy, a 9-year-old slave girl, lives in the south during the Civil War. Addy's job in the tobacco fields is to take fat green worms off the tobacco leaves and squish them in her hands or with her feet. When her father and brother are sold off the tobacco plantation, Addy and her mother run away. They wear someone else's clothes, hoping the dogs won't be able to follow their scent, and they travel the underground railroad to a "free house."

Each of the girls at the Borders Los Gatos meeting owns a doll she has chosen for a reason often to do with family roots. Los Gatan Melinda Robinson brings Kirsten, a blond, blue-eyed Scandinavian doll that looks just like Melinda. Melinda's father, Mark Robinson, has some Norwegian heritage on his side. There's a slightly higher number of girls buying the Kirsten doll in Minnesota, heavily populated by Scandinavians. Saratogan Katie Nast's doll is Samantha, a character who lived during the turn of the century with a rich grandmother. "Samantha lived when my great-grandmother was a girl," Katie explains. Katie's mother, Liz, says that Katie is hoping for the WWII doll, Molly, whose character lived during the time Katie's grandmother was a little girl.

Grandmothers, in fact, are often an integral part of their granddaughters' American Girl experience; it's frequently Grandma who gives an American Girl doll as a gift. Los Gatan Adele Ratcliff bought dolls for her granddaughters, Peyton and Taylor Ratcliff, who also live in Los Gatos. Ratcliff even brought the girls to Borders for the meeting.

Sometimes the dolls create links between generations, even bringing to life some traditional women's skills. Alexis Williams, who recently moved to Scotts Valley from Monte Sereno with her parents, Sarah and Shawn Williams, is the only girl at Borders dressed in an outfit that matches her doll's. Her grandmother made both outfits. Alexis' mom is pleased because Grandma is teaching Alexis how to sew. "I'm from the generation that didn't learn to sew, and I regret it," Williams says. Patterns for the American Girl dolls are available in fabric stores, in the American Girl catalogue, and American Girl doll outfits show up in boutiques everywhere.

"Everything about these dolls is good quality," Rona Layton, a San Jose mother, says. Layton's 10-year-old daughter, Allison, says she throws her Barbies in a heap, but her American Girl doll is special. Maritza's mother, Moe Nelson, says the dolls have a softness. "You want to pick them up and hold them."

"I like my Josefina doll better than my Barbie dolls because she is big enough to hug and cuddle," Maritza explains. And although each American Girl doll comes with her own story, that doesn't prevent girls from using their imaginations to create stories of their own.


At the center of the whirlwind of interest about young girls in American history--or 'herstory'--are (from left) Felicity, Josefina, Kirsten, Addy, Samantha and Molly.




In more recent times, Pleasant Co. has developed an enormous contemporary division that includes a contemporary doll, a newborn doll called Bitty Baby, and merchandise from watches, girl's clothes, scrapbooks, and Help books that address issues such as sibling rivalry, divorce and living in blended families. The company has also published the Body Book, which addresses physical issues from brushing teeth to more intimate information like to how to insert tampons (with anatomically correct illustrations).

Bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble have set up an American Girl section just to handle all the merchandise.

In a marketing move that seems almost over the top, Pleasant Co. has announced the opening of the American Girl Place, a 35,000-square-foot, three-story building in Chicago that houses a cafe overlooking a water tower, a theater where the girls can watch The American Girls Revue, facsimiles of their six historical characters' homes, and of course, all the Pleasant Co. merchandise.

The initial idea has grown beyond expectations. Pleasant Co. has even joined living history museums around the country to set up programs around the American Girl characters. For instance, there's Samantha at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Mich., which includes a suffragette rally; and there's Molly at Strawberry Banke Museum in Portsmouth, N.H., where girls can actually hunt for scrap metal, practice an air-raid drill and shop with ration coupons in a real 1940s grocery store. And there's Felicity in Williamsburg. (Felicity is the colonial character), where girls can learn stitchery, dancing and the proper way to serve tea.

This movement might just be reaching women beyond U.S. borders. Pleasant Co.'s Spanos says she recently got a call from a teacher in Holland who was using the books for her class and wanted some of Pleasant Co.'s teaching material.

The Los Gatos Borders' club is full now and a waiting list is growing. Most likely a mom somewhere will set up another club in her home.

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