are American Girl books twaddle?

At my house we really love several of the historical ones (we avoid Julie, which centers on her parent’s divorce and how she copes, we just don’t need to address that personally). We use them as a fun way to draw a child into the time period when young (5-8) and keep learning from there.

Other families will be different! The thing I love is that what works well for one family doesn’t have to be what works well for another. 🙂

I think you’ll find a difference in opinion about them. As Tristan and simple home said they are great for sparking interest in history for the younger crowd. I would second sticking to the historical characters, again as Tristian said, minus Julie. The books are short and do a good job at portraying each indivdual time period. There is also a series “Welcome to Samantha’s_World” now I think out of print, but libraries may have them. They are interesting to look through and use photographs from the time periods when possible.

I grew up with the dolls and am a bit sentimental about them. I had a typical public school history expierence, but up until high school my mental time line of American History followed the dolls. Funny huh? I used to see a date and think “Oh, that was after Kirsten.” The sad part about American Girl is at the time the company began, in the 80’s there wasn’t a lot of engaging toys to spark learning for girls. The founder, Pleasant Roland, was an educator and wanted to make a quality toy (my old doll is stamped “West Germany”) to encourage girls to learn about history. She started out of her basement. The catalogs used to come with photographs of girls dressed in period attire that matched the dolls. You could turn the catalog sideways and have an 18″ doll to cut out and play with. That is if you were wlliing to cut up the catalog. (I had a “Samantha” phase and actually wore the dropped waist dresses to school, my poor mother. She made the dresses!) Okay, ending sentimental journey now. I guess my point is that the company now “American Girl” was once “Pleasant Company” and in it’s orgins was very different than it is now. My understanding is that they acutally did historical research to make the fabrics and accessories as period acurate as possible. I quit getting the catalog years ago and was very disapointed with the direction the company went. Now “the follow your inner star” garbage makes me not want to buy anything from them ever again. But it was sold to Matel – go figure.

Anyhow, I guess my point is the orgin of the company is proabaly why it’s so hard to tell if they are twaddle or not. In the 80’s they were a better quality than the other dolls and toys on the market. So are twaddle? Depends on your standards, I think they are somewhere in the middle. There are better written books out there, but they can serve a purpose for a time.