All Dolled Up: The Enduring Triumph of American Girl
And if you were a nine-year-old girl at any point during the last 30 years, you are almost certainly familiar with American Girl. It very well may have been an essential part of your nine-year-old girldom. From the beginning, from the time it was a mere kernel of an idea scrawled on a postcard, American Girl was engineered for nine-year-old girls. It all began when Pleasant Rowland, who was working for an educational publishing company at the time, took a trip to Colonial Williamsburg. Rowland had had a varied career; she'd been an elementary school teacher , a TV news reporter , a textbook writer. History and education were her passions, and while she was in Virginia, inspiration struck. She sent a postcard detailing her plan to her friend Valerie Tripp , a children's author. As she recalled at American Girl's 25th anniversary celebration , it went something like this: "I've been down in Williamsburg this week and had an idea. What do you think of it? A series of...
