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Kit’s Surprise: A Christmas Story is the third book in the American Girl series that follows the life of Kit, a nine-year-old girl growing up during the Great Depression. Throughout this chapter book, Kit negotiates the relationship between reality and fantasy. Kit’s realistic outlook, prompted by her family’s financial woes in the Great Depression, contrasts with her well-off best friend Ruthie’s penchant for princess and ogre stories (Tripp 14). Ruthie attempts to give Kit one of her old Christmas dresses and free ballet tickets so they can continue their holiday tradition of going out with their mothers. When Kit refuses to accept Ruthie’s gift out of pride and shame, an ensuing fight between them dramatizes this conflict between reality and fantasy. Kit yells: “You’re always talking about wishes and wicked ogres and make-believe.

You don’t know what’s real. Your father still has his job. You can do whatever you want. You have everything, except you don’t have any idea what the world is really like” (34). Kit refuses to believe that the imaginary can have any benefit until she begins to write one afternoon:

Once upon a time, she began. And then the story seemed to sweep her away. It

wasn’t the kind of story she usually wrote for her newspaper. This story was not

about facts. It didn’t report what was really happening. This story was about a

completely different world, the kind of world Ruthie liked, a world that was

imaginary. In this world, Kit could make anything she wanted to happen happen.

(47-8)

She soon realizes how the imaginary can make her worries prompted by the Great Depression disappear. Moreover, she discovers a power and freedom in fantasy, which is not a mere luxury.

She actually needs this other world in order to cope with the great problems that she, as a child, suffers due to the Depression. Hediger 2

Kit’s Surprise suggests that the imagination makes things “happen”; it gives Kit control in a world where, as a child at the mercy of financial and social forces beyond her control, she can only do so much on her own. By the story’s end, she and Ruthie mend their friendship, and for Christmas Kit gives Ruthie a story she wrote, entitled “The Story of Princess Ruthie” (63).

Acknowledging imagination’s power to enhance the real world permits Kit to “fix” her own reality and results in greater mutual understanding between her and Ruthie. Fantasy, imagination—fiction writing and writing fiction—empowers Kit and, by extension, the girl- reader of Kit’s Surprise. Fiction gives Kit and her girl-readers the agency to better comprehend social realities and the courage to cope with them.

The Dear America chapter-book series, another historical fiction series for girl-readers, also thematizes the tie between the real and the imaginary, though it approaches the theme by representing fantasy as more than a creation of the individual imagination. As per the series’ trademark, Christmas After All: The Great Depression Diary of Minnie Swift presents a fictional girl’s diary “written” during the Great Depression. In Minnie’s diary, Minnie and her female family members go window-shopping, stopping at a fancy department store that has “the most elegant gifts in the world” (Laskey 133). This moment prompts her to reflect on the stark

“collision between realness and fantasy” that characterizes her Great Depression world. After describing some of the objects in the window, Minnie writes in her diary:

Who is going to buy a three-hundred-dollar clock or even a snow baby that costs

eight dollars? But there were scads of people pressing up against the glass at

Charles Mayer’s.

Sometimes when I think about this Great Depression I think that there has

never been such a collision between realness and fantasy. It is as if we are Hediger 3

standing with our feet in the muck and grime of these hard times but our noses are

pressed up against the window of some fantastically glamorous world. These

times are so strange. And that reminds me. Mama is talking about shutting down

another room—her and Papa’s bedroom. She says that as long as Papa’s not here

she might as well sleep in with Clem and Gwen. What if the winter is really long

and cold? Where will we get enough money for coal? (my emphasis, 134)

Within this diary entry, we see this “collision” that shapes Minnie’s life. Her diary entry starts with the fantasy of window-shopping but ends with the sober reality that her house is cold. Her father is gone, they do not know from where they will get money for coal, and their life is drastically different from the world she knew before the Depression hit.

“Fantasy” in Christmas After All functions on both an individual and a social level.

Minnie’s journal includes so many popular artistic references to actors, actresses, movies, radio shows, and fashion that fantasy is not the world of individual imagination but rather an alternate universe that exists far-removed from most people’s everyday lives. This cultural “fantasy world” helps people get through rough times, but it cannot ameliorate the harsh reality that ends the passage: “Where will we get enough money for coal?” Yet, ironically, it ultimately does, as the solution to these real world problems lies in fantasy. Minnie’s father earns six-hundred dollars when he sells the script for a radio series entitled Ozzie, the Boy Wonder about “a boy who makes contact with life in space” (145-6). Fiction writing thus materially sustains Minnie and her family, even as it culturally sustains the “collision between realness and fantasy.”

Minnie’s “real world” inspires this science-fiction script, since the title character is based on

Minnie’s scientifically minded brother Ozzie! So within the fictional world of Minnie’s diary,

“real” people prompt fictional characters, who in turn resolve the problem of her harsh reality. Hediger 4

With an outward mirroring effect, Kathryn Lasky, author of Christmas After All, provides us with a “real” writer (Minnie) who reflects on a fiction writer (her father). With these nestled fictional and real worlds, where, then, does the girl-reader of Christmas After All locate reality?

Although Minnie is fictional, she is less artificial than Ozzie the Boy Wonder since her diary mirrors what is “real” in her Great Depression life. By identifying this “collision between realness and fantasy,” Minnie positions herself on the side of the “real,” and therefore author

Kathryn Lasky positions her on the side of historical verisimilitude. The fictional world thus presents the girl-reader with a “realistic” image of life in the Great Depression, an image that represents historical truth, even as it is imaginary.

This interplay exemplifies Hayden White’s scholarship about the connections among narrativity, verisimilitude, and history. White’s argument is useful in understanding how exactly we might conceptualize the relationship between truth and fiction. He first asserts that historic events do not seem real to us unless they are narrated and shown to “poss[ess] a structure, an order of meaning, that they do not possess mere sequence” (5). When presented this way, the narrative “displays to us a formal coherence to which we ourselves desire” (21). White’s ideas can apply to Kit’s Surprise and Christmas After All, though they are scaled down to the scope of children’s literature. Kit’s and Minnie’s stories are coherent narratives about particular characters in a particular historical time, and they are “desirable” because of their happy resolutions—even if such perfect resolutions never occur in real life, not even for children. We want, according to White, “real events [to] display the coherence, integrity, fullness, and closure of an image of life that is and can only be imaginary” (24). Kit’s and Minnie’s fictional lives present such an “image of life.” When girl-readers see Kit and Minnie struggle yet ultimately Hediger 5 resolve life issues in a fictional world that, when narrated, seems real, they trust the story, trust the characters, and trust that real life can somehow imitate this fictional image.

This “image of life” not only reflects an idea of the past but also presents an image of contemporary life. Parents do not want their girls merely to lose themselves in a story set “once upon a time.” Rather, they want fiction not only to liberate the imagination, but they also want it to have concrete results—values to mimic, keys to solve their own problems, understandings to live better in a changing world. In the imaginary world, Kit can “make anything she wanted to happen happen” (Tripp 48). The series aims to empower girls to be independent, free-thinking, creative females, but it also does not aim to make just “anything” happen. Parents want to instill a certain “image of life.” This parental desire is underscored in “Move Over, Barbie,” the

December 3, 2004 cover article of Life magazine’s weekend newspaper supplement (see Image

1). The large, colorful photos show smiling girls hugging their American Girl dolls and serving them tea.i When describing the mission of American Girl, a parent applauds American Girl’s wholesome image of girlhood in contrast to that other Barbie/Britney “image of life”:

“‘American Girl builds strength, and it has a good image. I don’t like this Britney Spears’ ” (9).

American Girl markets itself to meet this cultural desire of raising a “good” girl, and its books are a key vehicle in achieving this parental goal.ii By fictionalizing reality, adults attempt to control it, because with narrative comes the option to tell a coherent story through which they can “moralize reality” (White 14). White rhetorically asks at the end of his essay, “Could we ever narrativize without moralizing?” (25). The answer is no. Parents want healthy, independent, caring, and hopeful girls like those depicted in the American Girl and Dear

America books. By presenting girls with their alter-egos who struggle but ultimately resolve Hediger 6 their problems, parents try to use narrative and the act of reading to achieve these character- building goals.

This parental desire is represented in Survival in the Storm: The Dust Bowl Diary of

Grace Edwards, another Depression-era book. Grace’s diary begins with an entry on her twelfth birthday. One gift she receives is a “beautiful book” from her parents—Anne of Green Gables.

Grace writes: “I’d wished for it ever since Mama told me how she’d enjoyed reading it as a girl”

(Janke 3). Parents recall their own experiences with reading and how they believe it shaped their inner lives, and they then try to recreate this experience in their children. The entry ends with

Grace’s leaving to read the first chapter. From the start, reading is important to this girl. Its importance derives partially from the escape it provides her from the hardships of drought and dust-storms. As she later notes: “When reading about Anne, it’s easy to slip into her world, and I almost expect to see the green hills and rocky beaches of Prince Edward Island when I glance out the bedroom window. Instead, I see the unending treeless prairie” (6). The fictional world, as removed as it is from her reality, is nonetheless believable. Parents today hope their girls will have a parallel experience while reading Grace’s fictional diary: just as Anne becomes Grace’s alter-ego, so Grace becomes the girl-reader’s alter-ego. Meanwhile, the act of the parents’ giving the girl this Dear America book mirrors the book-giving that occurs in Grace’s story. The story therefore acknowledges and reflects the exchange that occurs between girl-readers and their parents with the Dear America books. Like a play-within-a-play, this image is reflexive as girl- readers read about girl characters reading. Parents want girls to immerse themselves in the world of their historical alter-ego, even though these stories do not obviously mirror the world today. But the fictional story can offer girls important lessons that they can apply to their contemporary lives, like when Grace finishes the book and reflects: “Anne’s story reminds me Hediger 7 to be grateful for a family who loves and cares for me through both thick and thin” (17). Anne’s story not only reminds Grace to be grateful but, by extension, reminds the girl-reader to be grateful too. Even when life becomes complicated, Grace, an alter-ego for the girl-reader, stresses this simple message and the goodness in life. Fiction’s influence on reality, shown in the book and reenacted with the real girl-reader, is a theme in Grace’s diary, just as it was in

Minnie’s and in Kit’s stories.

I truly was a bookworm. Between the swinging and biking and softballing and swimming and Barbie-playing and television-watching, I still found lots of time to read. My parents took my siblings and me frequently to the public library, and my Godmother gave me books as presents for every occasion—Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas, birthday, end of the school year. My shelves were filled. I was the girl who, one winter

Saturday, read three Little House books in the morning and afternoon and bragged about it to anyone who would listen at the family party we hosted that night.

Not far from my Little House and Anne of Green Gables books, the American Girl books for Felicity, Samantha, and Addy still line my bedroom bookshelf. I tore through the series when

I was younger, engrossed by the stories as I imagined my own life “back then” in the Revolution, the Victorian era, and the Civil War. When I was eleven and these chapter books were below my reading level, I nonetheless stood in line for over an hour to have Connie Porter, the author of the Addy books, autograph two of my books. Inside Meet Addy, she wrote: “To Melissa, Follow your dreams!” Her note in Addy Saves the Day reads: “To Melissa—An American Girl!” And I truly felt I was an American Girl. Even though their lives were so different, I still found the characters understandable and their worlds interesting. So I thought only positive thoughts Hediger 8 about the series, and whenever anyone mentions it—even now—my immediate reaction was and is, “Oh I loved those books!”

When I chose also to study the Dear America series, I couldn’t think of one girl I knew who had ever mentioned the books. I could think of girls who seemed like potentially receptive audience, but I had never really heard about the series. Yet the Scholastic website lists a direct link to Dear America under “Popular Brands” and “Scholastic Favorites.” While that phrase may be a marketing ploy, it made me realize how removed I am from children’s literature. I am no longer an active member of that world. Similarly, even as I recall my fondness for the

American Girl stories, I cannot replicate that reading experience. I don’t know what it’s like to own an American Girl doll before reading the books; I don’t know what it’s like to read the Dear

America diaries while keeping my own journal; I don’t know what it’s like to check either series out of the library. Recently, I reread my American Girl Felicity books. As I read the story, the plot came back to me, but I experienced that plot very differently. I wasn’t eagerly following

Felicity’s adventures and hypothesizing how she would solve her problems. Instead, I jotted down page numbers that contained potentially good quotes for analysis, breezed through the text without once stumbling over a word, and was interrupted by roommates and friends spouting stories and saying words that would shock my younger self—not to mention innocent Felicity.

Understanding how young readers experience children’s literature is complex. The memory of past reading influences not only myself as I revisit American Girl books but also the parents who are deeply invested in their girls and their reading. As literary critics, we must recognize and grapple with the fundamental fact that we are not children and thus do not have the same experience with these books that children do. And yet we were children once and Hediger 9 engaged with texts much differently from the way we do now. But adults are the ones who create the reading context for children! A complex interplay among different reading communities thus arises. The books remain the same, but as readers change, the experience also must change. This dynamic is not only true for the individual, but it is also true over time. Great

Depression Grace would read Anne of Green Gables much differently from the way I did, and we both would experience it differently from an American girl in 2005.

What, then, is it like to be a girl today reading the American Girl and Dear America historical fiction series? In what follows, I argue that these books must be understood in terms of the split reality in which they operate: books written and endorsed by adults for girl-readers; books that use the past to morally shape the present into a particular “image of life”; and for

American Girl, books that endorse nonmaterial happiness but that exist in a highly commercial atmosphere. American Girl prompts a strange doubleness between the books’ moral teachings and the commercial forces that frame the girl-readers’ access to these books. To borrow the language of drama, the girl-reader, her parents, and even the historian engage with the book in a particular “scene of reading.” This metaphor for reading permits the critic to see the dramatic irony that the girl-readers cannot see when they engage with the physical book. This irony arises from the commercial stage on which this reading experience plays. American Girl products, moreover, physically dramatize the historical narrative as the doll engages with the reader and even upstages the book in importance. Next to the dolls, clothes, and accessories, the book becomes more a prop than the main action. The Dear America series, however, lacks this

“staging” for the reading scene. No dramatic irony exists for this reading experience since no toy enterprise frames the girl-reader’s interaction with the physical book, and thus this series serves as a useful foil to the American Girl reading experience. Hediger 10

My research has been to assemble a cultural bibliography, ranging from the actual children’s books to American Girl catalogs to publisher websites. I then place the fictional texts within the larger “cultural text,” operating under the theoretical understanding that books are not self-contained. Rather, a porous boundary exists between the literary text and the social, commercial context that colors our access to it. Thus the larger “cultural text” is crucial in order to understand fully what it means to read a physical, discrete book. The “scene of reading” takes place on a cultural stage that affects how the audience experiences and interprets the text. To begin, then, I have compiled a bibliographic inventory of the two series, replete with supplementary texts of dolls, clothing, parties, and stores, to provide the proper backdrop to understand American Girl’s ironic and commercial scene of reading, especially when juxtaposed to Dear America’s less complicated scene in which the chapter books stand unattached to other commercial objects.

Kaya, Felicity, Josefina, Kirsten, Addy, Samantha, Kit, and Molly—these are the historical American Girls. Although American Girl (formerly known as Pleasant Company) now publishes additional books with these characters, the original series is based on six books per character. When we follow Kit in her six books, available in hardcover and paperback, we follow the conventional titles that all other American Girl characters share: Meet Kit: An

American Girl, Kit Learns a Lesson: A School Story, Kit’s Surprise: A Christmas Story, Happy

Birthday, Kit!: A Springtime Story, Kit Saves the Day: A Summer Story, Changes for Kit: A

Winter Story. The American Girl books are a series by character, meaning the six books present the on-going struggles of one character, her family, and her friends within her historical moment

(ranging from 1764 to 1944). The development of plot and character link all six books into a Hediger 11 cohesive “biography” of the character and historical period. With Kit, the reader sees the continuing dynamic between the character and her time period as the Great Depression challenges Kit increasingly throughout the books (see Image 2). Characters like Kit compel readers to read all six books in the individual series, not unlike the early format of the English serialized novel. The American Girl book encourages, if not creates, desire for the entire biography. Kit cannot be thought of as a series character on her own, for her series is just one manifestation of the larger American Girl series. The commercial motive thus becomes clear.

By having a girl linked to a character, the reader or buyer is more likely to expand to the other characters and commercial tie-ins.

These tie-ins include 18-inch dolls and accessories to match each story, which are available in a mail-order catalogue, online, and in two huge stores in Chicago and New York.

The American Girl website claims: “Over 95 percent of girls ages 7 to 12 are familiar with the

American Girl dolls, which rank second only to Barbie in the dolls category.” Historical books and dolls—both material objects that create the reading scene—alone defined the company from its start in 1985 until 1992. In 1992, Pleasant Company debuted American Girl magazine for modern girls. Even though it contained historical facts and short stories, the focus was and is on contemporary girls. The company continued to expand—American Girl Today, a line of contemporary dolls where girls choose how they want their doll to look, started in 1995; and the company also started several lines for younger girls (Bitty Baby baby dolls; Hopscotch Hill

School books and dolls; and Angelina Ballerina).iii Interestingly, Mattel, Inc. acquired the company in 1998—a toy company, not a book publisher. This takeover could suggest that the toy component is now as equally important as the books, and even the book itself could be Hediger 12 considered a “plaything.” The girl-reader receives this book and enters the reading experience on a highly commercial stage.

Even with all these new additions, the historical American Girl books still are considered crucial to the company’s identity, and their moral and intellectual lessons make them “quality” reading. These books are part of their “flagship brand and the inspiration for our entire mission”

(website). This “mission” is one of education and character-building, which parents can wholly support. The American Girl promise of instructive historical fiction alleviates anxiety parents might have about what their daughter reads and what lessons she learns.

American Girl’s empire dwarfs Scholastic’s Dear America, which includes four smaller series: Dear America, My America, My Name is America, and Royal Diaries. The Dear

America series focuses on individual diaries from girls in different historical eras; most eras include two to four books, all of which feature a different fictitious girl writer. My America includes both girl and boy historical diarists, and, for each character, Scholastic publishes three different books that follow their lives. My Name is America features only boys’ historical diaries, with each character only appearing in one book. Finally, the Royal Diaries go back in time to different royal girls around the world. None of these books, unlike those under the

American Girl label, focuses on modern girl characters. Scholastic began by publishing the Dear

America series in 1996 and later added the other three series. Currently, Scholastic has published 34 Dear America books, 20 My America books, 19 My Name is America books, and

17 Royal Diaries books. The company also sells seven Dear America videos (30 minutes long each) and three Royal Diaries videos. However, the company is not known for these videos as

American Girl is known for its dolls. The books, therefore, are the key access point to the dramatic exchanges that the company provides between modern girls and America’s past. Hediger 13

While American Girl presents what we might expect as the usual Depression story—a girl’s father loses his job and the family must cope— the Dear America series presents a wider range of stories. It does not provide one character with which the girl-reader can identify and follow, but rather three books about three different girls comprise its Great Depression selection.

No continuity of experience exists among the books because the characters and circumstances change. The three female protagonists are Minnie, Grace, and Bess, who narrate these books:

Christmas After All: The Great Depression Diary of Minnie Swift, Survival in the Storm: The

Dust Bowl Diary of Grace Edwards, and Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: The Diary of Bess Brennan

(my emphasis). Minnie’s world is similar to Kit’s—both are middle-class, Midwestern-town girls coping with a father’s lost job, a common story no doubt. However, Dear America presents two very different stories, which focus on regional issues and atypical representations of the past:

Grace’s Dust Bowl story, which provides a glimpse into the struggles of a rural Texan girl, and

Bess’ story of a blind girl in Boston. We may infer that this variety suggests that a multiplicity of past stories is useful to girls today.iv Unlike American Girl, the Dear America series stages several characters’ stories. Without a larger toy enterprise, the characters and the books take center-stage in the “scene of reading.”

I learned that colonists filled brass bedwarmers with hot coals to warm the bedsheets. I learned that Boxing Day was December 26th. I learned that escaping slavery was exhausting and dangerous. More interestingly, I imagined my own life “back then”—wearing Samantha’s pretty clothes, sleeping in Felicity’s canopied bed. The stories made history more interesting, more personal, than the bland social studies textbooks that I now completely forget. But I didn’t Hediger 14 read to learn; I read to enjoy the characters and their adventures. Any historical knowledge or imagination was a bonus.

My eight-year-old cousin Shannon has little historical conception. She hasn’t read the

American Girl books, but she knows and proudly announces that her doll Kit is from the “Great

Depression, but I really don’t know what that was.” I can imagine an American Girl spokesperson saying, “Well if she read the Kit books, she would learn and know—in a fun way— what the Great Depression was.” But learning historical facts doesn’t interest her nearly as much as enjoying playtime does, and so American Girl educates her in a very different way from how it educated me.

At the other extreme lies Cindy, my eleven-year-old neighbor whose ferocious reading reminds me of my own past. When I ask her to describe the Great Depression, she tells me that it was “really poor. Everyone was poor, except for the President.” Lots of families and children and animals were “stranded,” and there were a lot of hobos. People would jump trains, and “it was really easy to go to jail—Kit went to jail.” As simplistic as this definition is, she still demonstrates that she has learned something from her reading. An exchange occurred between her and Kit’s narrative, and in the end, she benefited from that transaction. She later shows me her diary from the time when she read Kit Saves the Day. In this book, Kit befriends a hobo, who teaches her common hobo signs and signals. Cindy had recorded those signals and their meanings in her diary. By recording this fact, she incorporates it into her own narrative of what is important and meaningful in her life. She doesn’t read to hear a lesson; in fact, she only

“sometimes” reads the nonfiction “Peek into the Past” at the book’s end. A clear distinction therefore exists between what adults portray and provide to child readers and what they actually receive. She claims that she learns more from this section because, while the story is just about Hediger 15

Kit and her actions, the historical note is “more about everyone” and their “sadness and joy.”

But her attraction is to the story and the facts that naturally arise from the fictional narrative. If just these two contemporary girls have drastically different learning experiences from the same character and company, what exactly are girls learning? And what do adults seemingly want them to learn?

Kit, Minnie, Grace, and Bess live in the early 1930s, and their “stories from the past” allow the author, I would argue, to discuss contemporary issues in order to convey morals to modern girls. As alter-egos of the girl-readers, these characters teach readers about charity, a key issue in that time period and now. We may infer that because of American Girl’s expensive products ($84 for an 18-inch doll) and the “sheer joy of consumerism” that they prompt (Life 9),

American Girl’s main reading community is upper-middle to upper class girls.v An irony, perhaps invisible to girl-readers and their parents, emerges because girls who are shielded from poverty have the luxury to read about poverty. This irony, if recognized, would be uncomfortable and problematic to the girl and her parents. But historical fiction provides an alternate yet coherent world where the characters resolve the tensions between rich and poor that still exist without criticizing those in the modern world who are in both positions. Dialogue, if not duplicity, ensues between the present and the past, and the alter-ego protagonist allows the girl-reader to access and absorb historical, human lessons that she can then apply to contemporary life.

In Kit Learns a Lesson, when Kit’s class discusses the soup kitchen, Kit does not initially think highly of the people that frequent it: “She knew that soup kitchens were for people who had been without work for so long that they had no money or hope or pride left, and who were so Hediger 16 desperate that they had to accept free food” (Tripp 23). However, soon her class debates whether these people are “bums” and “too lazy to work,” and Kit defends their struggle. Since Roger, “a show-offy boy” (18), makes the claim for bum and laziness, the reader naturally sides against him and with Kit, who understands from her own father how sometimes people can work hard but still cannot pay the bills. Kit feels embarrassed when she later finds her father at the soup kitchen, but she nonetheless sympathizes with the people who need to accept charity to survive

(43). She comes to understand her father’s reasons and helps him find a way to constructively use his time (by building a tree house) so that he does not need the soup kitchen any longer. Kit thus resolves her problematic relationship with the soup kitchen as she sympathizes with the people there, especially when she realizes that hard-working people like her father sometimes need charity. Her struggles show that the girls can successfully navigate through embarrassment and confusion, ultimately ending with a better appreciation for the less fortunate. Girl-readers can sympathize with Kit, understand her struggles, and thus learn important lessons for when they leave this past world and return to the present.

History is thus a form of moral instruction. As Peter Hunt notes, “There is also a long— and far from dead—tradition of didacticism, which holds that children’s books must be moral and educational” (5). The books clearly promote certain character traits for modern girls and use history to do so. In Grace’s diary, Survival in the Storm: The Dust Bowl Diary of Grace

Edwards, Grace’s father absolutely refuses any government charity and wants to rely on his own hard work instead (Janke 93-4). However, Grace writes that Mama “quickly jumped in to remind us that there will be folks we know who take relief to keep their families from going hungry, and that’s not a shameful thing” (97). Slacking is not acceptable but neither is criticizing people who genuinely need help. The “image of life” that this book proposes is one where Hediger 17 people work hard and, only if circumstances fail them, do they resort to accepting charity. It is a simplistic view, but given the “morally instructive” drive to sympathize with the poor, the book uses Depression history to do its ethical work. A complicated discussion about economics would not emotionally impact nine-year-olds. By hearing simple lessons from a mother that might resemble their own, the girl-reader bridges the past and present.

Seeing a girl like them interact with poverty also permits the girl-reader to emotionally access history’s lessons. Grace is at first very excited to make a new dress out of feed-sack material (95). This outfit is not extravagant luxury but rather a resourceful and creative solution common in this era. She is proud of her new dress and how even the snobby Sadie “will have to admit this dress is pretty enough to be from any shop in town!” (96). Grace does not totally spurn material goods, for she admits her jealousy at times at Sadie’s good fortune (51). Modern girls can sympathize with her, as commercials blare from the television and the latest fads sweep the classroom. But the author celebrates Grace’s good character for learning to be grateful and taking pride in simpler joys. Indeed, Grace reflects, “In a way, wearing a dress I sewed myself is much more satisfying than going to town and purchasing one from a department store—at a very high price, I might add” (103). Happiness does not follow from money, which is an important lesson overlooked in modern consumer society. Grace’s pride, however, soon faces a challenge when the government relief fabric is the same print as her dress (136). She now “struggl[es] with twinges of guilt for feeling mortified” and does not want to wear her dress anymore (136-7).

Even though she ultimately continues wearing it and gets teased, Grace concerns herself more with the shame her classmates must feel from wearing relief clothing (141). By seeing the protagonist celebrate her handiwork, struggle with public opinion, but ultimately end up fine, Hediger 18 modern girls can imagine their own historically analogous situation. Great Depression history becomes a compatible avenue to discuss an issue in our modern society.

In Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: The Diary of Bess Brennan, we see most fully how authors place the past in direct dialogue with present concerns. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall uses history in a very different way from the other Dear America and the American Girl books. Bess is a girl who becomes blind after a sledding accident and is sent to the Perkins School for the

Blind outside Boston. Her twin sister and teacher help her write her diary entries, and her sister even writes entries of her own within Bess’ entries. However, the Depression, introduced in the other eight books within the first few pages, receives no mention until page 53. Instead, the author focuses on social history and, more importantly, the history of a group that otherwise receives little attention—the blind, and more generally, the disabled. Authors traditionally did not tell handicapped children’s stories, but recently more children’s programs include handicapped children in order to make children comfortable with those that seem “different” from them. Sesame Street, for example, features a puppet in a wheel chair. Children’s series increasingly began to incorporate “crippled characters” in the 1980s (Deane 140), and even if those books tend to “make light of the afflictions,” they at least showed that “crippled persons can function in a relatively normal way” (141). By addressing the existence of such children and showing these children really are fellow humans, such books and programs demystify the strange and often misunderstood.

This logical question naturally follows: “Why bother to place such a character in the past?” Bess’ struggle drives the narrative, and the Depression history feels awkwardly inserted.

When author Barry Denenberg was asked why he “downplay[s]” the Depression history in this book, he answered: “The Dear America books are not, for me, necessarily about history.” Hediger 19

Instead, “The Dear America books are about ‘lesser lives.’ ” Such “lesser lives” include blind

Americans, who “are part of our history” and whose past is filtered through the blind experience.

By presenting a variety of past stories, girl-readers are prompted to acknowledge the same variety in today’s world.

The Scholastic website even provides a list of questions under the heading “Thinking

About the Book.” Here we see the adult and girl communities interacting, as the adult readers tries to shape a specific reading experience and interpretation. Some questions are designed to understand plot (“How did Bess become blind?”), while others involve understanding character reaction (“Why is Elin so upset when Bess gets her hair cut?”). The most interesting questions, however, from a historical point of view are: “Did Bess’s diary add to your knowledge about blindness? Did the book change or alter your attitude about people who are blind?” A major lesson, which the publisher not only acknowledges but foregrounds as an important benefit of this book, is understanding and sympathizing with blind people who may seem to be very different. The “Student Activities” section further stresses this lesson. In one prompt, it tells girls: “As you go about your week, list how many things there are in the community to help blind people be independent, for example Braille numbers on elevators or talking ATM devices.” The historical portrayal of blindness is a path on which girls can make sense of disabilities in their own world. This webpage stresses how adults want girls to learn not only concrete facts but also attitudes appropriate for modern society. The historical alter egos bridge the past and present for girl-readers, providing a distant but relevant setting to negotiate contemporary concerns.

While parents hope girls will acquire new knowledge and understandings, they cannot fully understand nor predict how the girl-reader interacts with her historical alter-ego. Janice Hediger 20

Radway’s work on reading communities can serve as an analogue for my study.vi Radway’s

Reading the Romance provides a perfect model of how one’s membership in socio-economic and gendered groups determines, to a certain extent, one’s interactions with particular genres.

Radway analyzes how Midwestern housewives experience the romance novel, a genre marketed specifically for this community of readers. She concludes that these women see the female protagonists as alter-egos for themselves and thus the romances as alternate versions of their own love lives. The readers can identify with the heroine’s struggles and vicariously work out their own problems. The Smithton readers, as Radway calls them, thus constitute a very particular

“interpretative community.” She explains this term:

whatever the theoretical possibility of an infinite number of

readings, in fact, there are patterns or regularities to what viewers

and readers bring to texts in large part because they acquire

specific cultural competencies as a consequence of their particular

social location. Similar readings are produced, I argue, because

similarly located readers learn a similar set of reading strategies

and interpretative codes that they bring to bear upon the texts they

encounter. (8)vii

The same theoretical approach can apply to American Girl and Dear America readers.

The girl-readers can emotionally react to and identity with these “interpretative codes” in a way that the adult readers cannot. Unlike Radway, however, these books are not encoded by authors who are also in the targeted reading audience, for, in her study, romance readers become romance writers. But with children’s literature, adult authors write for children and also for other adults who will buy these books for their girls to read. The “code” is not meant for adults Hediger 21 to decrypt as the child will, but the adult must be able to see what the “code” should do. In the

Dear America question guides, we see how the adults want the code to function. For the girls,

Kit’s, Minnie’s, Grace’s, and Bess’ lives engage their imagination as the characters become alter-egos for themselves. Just as Radway’s romance readers read about fictional heroines’ romances but really use them as alter-egos for their own romances, the girl-reader reads about a girl character who really is an alter-ego for herself. Girls have different “cultural competencies” from adults and therefore different reading motivations. But they do not see, nor analyze, their parents’ “reading strategies and interpretative codes” and therefore realize the complex context in which they receive the text. Such observations cannot be realized until they, like myself, become member of a new and older reading community that has acquired additional “cultural competencies.”

The adult community’s desires are even more complicated by the fact that not all child readers will react similarly to the text. To illustrate how different child readers will interpret and use the same text differently, Barbara Sicherman examines the reading communities of Little

Women. While celebrating the text’s “unusual permeability” and its ability to offer “something for almost everyone” (87), she nevertheless focuses on how two very distinct reading communities approached and used the text. The primary reading community is young middle- class females who see a independent female role model in Jo, who can identity with the social situation of the March family, and who “for the most part [take] for granted their right to a long and privileged childhood” (86). However, working-class, Jewish immigrant adults, who might seem far removed from the text’s natural audience, also have found the book enjoyable and useful. They “found in it a vehicle for envisioning a new and higher status” (83) and a way “for gaining access to American life and culture” (84). These readers—poor, outcast—approached Hediger 22 the text from a different social location and with a different psychological profile, and they therefore had different needs as a reading community. Little Women inspired them in their hopes for an American future in a way that the middle-class readers could not understand. Change the reader’s identification with the protagonist, even if the text remains the same, and the reading experience will differ.

Considering reading communities allows the critic to see that our cultural positioning and our internalized “images of life” shape the experience of reading fiction. A girl-reader will not consider the complicated cultural context within which she reads the text, analyze the motivations of parent readers, and then note the split reality within which the series function.

This framework is invisible to her, as it usually is to most adult readers. But adult readers when parenting and selecting reading materials are very conscious of the split visions of the two reading communities, even as they try to make the girl-reader experience the text in the way that they desire. Parents want to control the reading experience because it can expose children to ideas and situations not available to them in real life. But they cannot fully because, if Radway and Sicherman are correct, the text functions differently within the two communities. Parents and the adults that produce these historical fiction books thus have an educational and ethical motive in mind, and the books convey that desire for instruction, that adult “interpretative code.”

Adults, though, cannot understand how the protagonists will function as alter-egos and thus what girls will gain from identifying with the character. Parents cannot control the text—but this reality will not stop them from trying.

Cindy says that she would not want to live during the Depression because it would be

“scary.” But she suddenly becomes very animated. She tells how Kit “describes her world as an Hediger 23 apple in the bottom of a barrel and the barrel never ends.” Then she’s unclear if it was a bucket, but she’s pretty sure Kit said something about apples. Anyway, she “thought of that for weeks afterwards” and it “changed [my] perspective” and “I thought of it in school.” I didn’t expect her to be so animated about a metaphor, but she was. She really took the lesson about that time period to heart and reacted emotionally to it. It’s all that American Girl executives—not to mention parents and educators-- could want.

But this use of the past has its critics, who argue that the history American Girl and Dear

America present is inaccurate and overly simplistic. Daniel Hade is one of many critics who argue that the American Girl books fail to present an accurate vision of life in America. After establishing Pleasant Company’s overt goal of intertwining education and entertainment for its customers, he criticizes the series for misrepresenting the past and thus impressing on girls a dangerously positive image of American identity. He details “five historical errors” in Kirsten’s

“A Peek Into the Past” section (156-7), arguing that these inaccurate details “put forth a romantic

America” and therefore “fail in showing an accurate and authentic view of the American past”

(162-3). His analysis of wealthy Samantha and working class Nellie’s relationship makes a similar point. Historical fiction thus fails to create a useful and truthful connection between today’s girls and yesterday’s history. Moreover, for Hade, these misrepresentations are closely associated with the series’ commercial nature: “Popular culture is being sold under the guise of history and literature” (163). Therefore, the entire Pleasant Company enterprise aims to

“connect American girls, not with their history, but with the ultimate American goal— consuming stuff” (163). For Hade, this historical fiction is thus more fiction than historical, and Hediger 24 the series’ larger meta-narrative and “image of life” (American is good!) damages children more than it benefits them.viii

Hade’s analysis criticizes the series partly because it fails to fairly represent history’s complexity. He does argue beyond “These books are wrong” to say why such inaccuracies matter. However, historical fiction’s only goal is not only to present “accurate history” –in fact, the theoretical sticking point with historical fiction is exactly that such concerns maybe be totally irrelevant to the historical fictionist. Historian Edward Carr states that history is “an unending dialogue between the present and the past” (35) in which we use the past to understand and to address present concerns. ix Hade makes a valid argument that cultivating naivety is undesirable and that narrative can enhance true social understanding at an early age. But the millions of parents who buy American Girl books do not criticize them. Even if they want their girls to become competent citizens, parents can endorse this simplified vision. A “romantic America” is a coherent America, a coherent world understandable to girls with limited experience, and moreover a world where they can make sense of life and are encouraged to feel that they may make a difference. Parents want this “image of life” because it empowers girls, even if it is a fantasy.

This fantasy, according to historical novelist E.L. Doctorow, produces “instructive emotion” for the girl-reader as the books use history to achieve a certain narrative and “image of life.” He writes:

[Fiction] gives to the reader something more than information. Complex

understandings, indirect, intuitive, and nonverbal, arise from the words of the

story, and by a ritual transaction between reader and writer, instructive emotion is

generated in the reader from the illusion of suffering an experience not his own. Hediger 25

A novel is a printed circuit through which flows the force of a reader’s own life.

(16)

Specifically, the girl-reader’s developing self is the life force behind these novels, especially as the adult writer attempts to create “instructive emotion” by using a historical time period.

Ultimately, then, history and fiction are “a mode of mediating the world for the purpose of introducing meaning” (24). Critics are correct in criticizing the meaning that certain inaccurate or incomplete historical representations convey to girl-readers. Both American Girl and Dear

America books could, in fact, be more instructive, both in the historical facts and in their moral implications. But to parents, the narrative is more important than the basic historic facts because the presentation of these facts leads the girl-reader to extract certain moral lessons from her alter ego and thus a positive “image of life.”

Lancaster City’s Reynolds Middle School Library currently holds a variety of Dear

America books. When I asked librarian Merry Phillips what other series the school offers, she said not many because there are not many good series for middle school students. She said they offered Dear America, the Royal Diaries, some trilogy sets, and some Hardy Boys. Then I asked the question that I shouldn’t have asked: “What about Goosebumps?”

Mrs. Phillips looked a little disgusted and replied, “R.L. Stine? No.” Why? “They’re not real good.”

Later, she described the RIF (Reading Is Fundamental) program, a government sponsored program for K-8 that provides students with free books. Three times a year, the Reynolds students can choose a free paperback book, most of which come through Scholastic. Mrs.

Philips explained that while they can get Goosebumps through RIF, the program also supplies Hediger 26

“good books.” Her disdain for the series was clear. As a child reader, I had made no distinctions between series; I loved American Girl, but I also loved Sleepover Friends, a series that narrated the weekly sleepover adventures of four best friends. Dear America is a series.

Goosebumps is a series. A child may value both equally. But to the adult reader, the two series are miles apart.

American Girl and Dear America possess a greater status than most serial fiction. Serial literature historically has been looked down upon, even as it has been very popular with the child audience (Inness 1). Think Goosebumps, The Babysitter’s Club, Sweet Valley High. Educators and librarians have actually debated whether resources should be spent on providing these books to children in libraries (Deane 25), even though most public libraries do now (29). Series books are often criticized for being poorly written, unrealistic in character and plot, sentimental, unimaginative, sensational, mass-produced, and unable to “elevate or inspire” children with their

“false values” (24). Some adults excuse these books with the common saying, “Well, reading something is better than reading nothing,” implying that these series books are not far from

“nothing.” But American Girl and Dear America typically are not considered “nothing.” They are even more than “something”; they are something good for children to read. Both series have won awards and received praise. Scholar Paul Deane argues that if we criticize series, it should be not “for their literary qualities, but rather for the image of life and its elements which they offer to their young readers” (70). Of course, both series have their critics precisely due to the

“image of life” they offer, but compared to the usual assault on serial fiction, these complaints are much less severe. Hediger 27

Children and adult reading communities have a different relationship dynamic with

American Girl and Dear America than they usually do in serial literature. Given the educational and historical worth that many adults see in the series, adults are more involved in the decision to purchase and promote these books than they might be for other series. Scholars Sherrie A.

Inness and Paul Deane both give children a great deal of agency with serialized texts because children want to read and buy them, even when adults frown upon them. Deane notes that “it is not expected that adults will read such books to children” but rather that children will buy, read, and trade these books amongst themselves (5). Deane lists “cost” as a “major factor in the widespread reading of series” because they are cheap enough so they “can be bought by children themselves” (5). American Girl books, however, are $5.95 for paperback, $12.95 for hardback.

Dear America books are only available in a $10.95 hardback, unlike the My America books that are also produced in paperback. The price is cheaper on Scholastic’s website, but only adults can buy books online. Due to expense and access, adults are more likely buy the American Girl and

Dear America books than children are. The girl-reader accesses these books mostly through adults who frame her reading experience, just as Grace’s mother framed her child’s reading by presenting her the novel. This increased adult role suggests that these books are desirable in a way most series generally are not, and parents feel this way because of the educational and character-building stories that the historical fiction provides. The books provide an ideal “image of life,” and adults, in turn, literally buy into the ideal that these books will have the effects they desire on the girl-reader. No such guarantee exists since adults cannot know how exactly the main character will serve as an alter-ego to the child. But compared to the alter-egos seen in cheap mass-produced series, parents believe that the American Girl and Dear America heroines offer a better role model to the impressionable girl-reader. Hediger 28

When I was eight or nine, my Aunt Margie, cousin Katie, and I attended an American

Girl tea party in Medford, NJ. I had completely forgotten about this event until I began working on this project, and the memories I do have are vague. I must have received a goody-bag because for many years I used a gold-plated American Girl bookmark that I received there. But my only distinct memory is that they held a drawing for a free doll—and I didn’t win.

It’s hard now to explain my desire for an American Girl doll, to articulate how crucial it appeared to be to own one. But it was. Originally, I wanted Samantha—beautiful, rich,

Victorian-era Samantha, who wore sateen bows and patent leather shoes and a pink-striped birthday dress. Yet after the Felicity line began in 1991, my desire switched to the fiery

Revolutionary War redhead. In a recent conversation, my aunt told me that the tea party was basically a promotion for the recently debuted Felicity; the organizers read from her books, played games from that time, talked about Williamsburg, and chanced her off at the end. I wonder now how much that tea party, of which I remember little, factored into my changed desire.

What I do remember clearly is the day Felicity arrived in the mail. I actually had to save up fifty of the eighty-two dollar cost on my own. She arrived one Wednesday in the beginning of fourth grade, and I just couldn’t stop smiling as I opened the white box. There she lay in her printed floral dress and buckled shoes, her copper hair pulled back except for a few short tendrils that curled around her face. My sister immediately wanted to hold her, and I immediately said no. She would eventually get her own (Kirsten), as would my other younger sister (Samantha), as would many of my other cousins who, at this point, were not even born yet. Hediger 29

Shannon is one of those cousins. She owns Kit but has yet to read the two Kit books that her parents gave her. Strangely, even if she isn’t a huge reader, she appreciates the series.

American Girl dolls are good because “they aren’t just dolls that you can play with, but they have books and you can learn facts.” When I pressed and asked why it’s important to have books and learn facts, she replied, “I don’t know. I guess they’re more useful. They’re not just dolls you buy at the store and do their hair—they’re more useful.” She brushes Kit’s short hair, the doll’s blonde bob glinting in the late afternoon sun. Even as she personally emphasizes the entertainment element, she seems to understand the educational importance. American Girl’s executives would probably love if Shannon shared that message with all parents—the dolls are both useful and fun. But her personal motivation for having Kit has nothing to do with education or reading; she wanted Kit because Kit “looks like me and had freckles on her nose like I do.”

The books and history had, and still have, no weight in her decision or desire to engage with the franchise.

For Cindy, the doll provided the “hook” into the books. She desperately wanted

Samantha and had been “begging for her since like I was two.” Note that she doesn’t beg for the books, for stories, but for the physical toy. Reading now prominently factors into her

American Girl experiences and life overall; she claims to have read 264 books and wants to beat the guy who has read 3159 books (her source for this fact remains vague). And yet when I ask her what she likes more—reading the books or playing with the doll—she surprisingly answers,

“I don’t know. That’s a hard decision.” The playing and commercial tie-ins crucially shape the

American Girl experience. If anyone would vote for the books, it would be Cindy. If she’s not even sure which activity she likes better, what kind of relationship do less avid readers have with

American Girl? Hediger 30

This strange marriage of education and enterprise can be found in the American Girl text itself. I argue that the girl and parent communities ignore or cannot see the irony, but the book’s role must necessarily diminish since girls have other factors and desires that shift their focus from absorbing the book’s messages to indulging in the American Girl commercial culture. The commercial stage completely frames the reading experience. Dear America does not have this same problem since, except for a few videos, girls lack other avenues for access. The book receives the focus “on stage” and thus the coherent image of life it presents is comparatively unaffected by the ironies that surround American Girl.

This ironic staging clearly emerges when the critic contrasts American Girl material culture with American Girl book lessons. In Happy Birthday, Kit!, Kit’s Aunt Millie bases her

Penny-Pincher Party on “ ‘lots of ways to save money and have fun at the same time’ ” (Tripp

51). Activities include feeding chickens, picking beans, making dandelion greens salad, sewing bloomers out of feed sacks, enjoying free horse rides from the rag-man, and planting sunflower seeds (51-2, 59). Kit’s comparative poverty, however, causes her great shame. Kit hides her home lifestyle from her peers, and she increasingly feels embarrassed by their public poverty.

Initially, she eagerly welcomed Aunt Millie’s extreme thriftiness (22), but when other people watch them obviously scrimp at the grocery store, she “went hot with self-consciousness” (29).

Even after she shakes this reaction, she still hides her “waste-not, want-not” lifestyle from her peers (34). Children care about status—or more accurately, they care about the ramifications of low status. Kit’s embarrassment flares again when Aunt Millie visits her class and announces a

“Penny-Pincer Party” (50-2). With “eyes that were full of hot tears,” she later tells Aunt Millie,

“ ‘It’s … embarrassing. Why did you tell everyone at school about the things we do at home? Hediger 31

That’s private. I don’t want my friends to know how poor we are. I never want them to see it’ ”

(53). Of course, she soon realizes her bad attitude, and her classmates, in fact, love the party. So all ends well. But by legitimizing the feeling of shame that comparative want can prompt, even as the story shows that such embarrassment is not necessary and that material goods are not important, these books use history to address issues that today’s girl-reader can understand. The party is a great success (60), and at the story’s end, Kit equates “Having a Penny-Pincher Party” with “How to Have a Very Happy Birthday” (61). Kit, in fact, has more fun at this low-cost party than she imagines she would have at the movie-star-budget Robin Hood party she wanted at the book’s beginning (3). The story therefore values thrift and the happiness money cannot buy.

But the total cost of buying Kit’s Birthday Dress, Party Treats, Table & Chairs,

Glassware & Linens, and Basset Hound is $183 (Holiday Catalog 29). To the critic, an obvious and ironic doubleness thus exists between the lessons taught and the products sold (see Image 3).

Moreover, events hosted by American Girl also exhibit this rupture between nonmaterial happiness and child consumerism. Currently, following the links on the American Girl homepage will lead to a page devoted to American Girl events across America. Fashion shows and tea parties are a staple, generally costing twenty-five dollars a head—and no child discounts.

A November 12-14th, 2004, fashion show at Lancaster’s Hands-On House cost $25 per ticket.

Proceeds benefit local and national charities, though it is unclear on the website how much (if any) American Girl earns. These events are planned with a middle-upper to upper class audience in mind, since a mother and daughter would spend fifty dollars for a two-hour fashion show— and that figure assumes only one girl attends. These events are primarily fashion shows that highlight “historically inspired clothes… just like the popular American Girl characters might Hediger 32 have worn,” moderns fashions that correspond with the American Girl Today dolls, and dresses to match Bitty Baby (“The American Girl Fashion Show”). One assumes, then, that most of the audience already owns the dolls and is not attending simply because they enjoy the books. Some do, no doubt. The cost and atmosphere, though, best suit an audience that has already spent money on American Girl merchandise. These events are thus a far-cry from Kit’s Penny-Pincher

Party and undercut the book’s simple moral. The scene of reading results in a double-vision where thrift and materialism are simultaneously celebrated.

Reading Kit’s books on their own presents the girl-reader with a single vision, a clear-cut message endorsing thrift and the non-material joys in life. But when the books are read within the context of the American Girl culture, a double reality arises. This irony between what the books celebrate and the context within which girls receive that message may not be apparent to the girl-reader or to the adults buying these books and products. These reading communities have specific motivations that do not rely on recognizing and resolving irony. Girls want to play with pretty dolls or read about characters they like. Parents want to present a morally instructive, historically educational (even if overly simplistic), and engaging “image of life,” and they are willing to pay for this experience.

Dear America books present the same moral lesson that the American Girl books endorse. At the end of Christmas After All, Minnie’s father returns with store-bought gifts for everyone since he sold his radio script. She lists the necklaces, bracelet, lace gloves, and hair comb as “the most wonderful gifts” (Lasky 147). But except for noting who got what, Minnie provides little other detail. In contrast, she elaborates on the homemade and creative gifts that the family members exchange, gifts whose making Minnie described throughout her diary (147-

9). She especially describes the picture books that Willie Faye (the orphaned relative who came Hediger 33 to live with the family at the diary’s start) makes for each family member. A long paragraph occurs at the end of the gift-giving entry, and the last sentence before a section break is: “Mama says these books are ‘absolute treasures’ ” (149). The storebought gifts are “wonderful” and exciting, but they are not as important as the thoughtful gifts the family made or carefully saved for, as seen in the space and energy Minnie spends describing them. Later, Minnie dwells on their creativity and how, like the Magi, they all “have sort of reinvented this art of giving gifts in the year of the Great Depression, in the year 1932” (151). These creative gifts symbolize their greater accomplishment of “reinvent[ing]… belief” (152) in a way that Papa’s more expensive gifts do not. Just as Happy Birthday, Kit! de-emphasizes commercial joys, Christmas After All also celebrates the happiness that the simple things in life bring.

Yet Dear America does not engage in the same ironic doubleness that American Girl books and culture prompt. The Dear America series lacks the crucial doll component.

Consumers cannot stumble onto the books after buying the dolls because Scholastic does not produce Dear America dolls. Scholastic is a book publisher, not a company specifically devoted to multiple doll product lines. It sells a few videos, but none of the Great Depression books are available in that format. Without the doll “hook,” the company faces a greater challenge in attracting girls to their series. The girls who read the series, then, may be more interested in the historical element than American Girl readers might be. Not that American Girl readers do not like reading about the past, but those girls might follow the adventures of Kit or Addy or Kaya because they own the doll. The Dear America series does not fit into such motivations. Of course, just like American Girl, adults may buy these books for educational reasons, which do not fit what the girl-reader wants. But if a girl actually reads the Dear America book, she has different motivations that are not filtered through a greater commercial force. Hediger 34

Not so with American Girl—the book is clearly a material object, yet another commodity in the American Girl warehouse or little girl’s bedroom. With 105 million books sold, eleven million dolls sold, fifty million catalogs mailed per year, eight million visitors to the Chicago store, and two million hits on the homepage per month, American Girl is a commercial success

(“Fast Facts”). Girls therefore do not read the American Girl books in a vacuum. Instead, they know which products they can buy and which ones they already own. Unlike Dear America, the book is not center-stage, spotlight. The American Girl book becomes just another one of these products, yet another prop on the stage as girls play with the doll.

The Fall 2004 catalog is sixty-three pages. Twenty-five pages are dedicated to the historical American Girl dolls. The company could not fit all the historical products for all the dolls in a sixty-three page catalog, at least based on the layout of previous catalogs. But Felicity never even appears in this catalog, and the other dolls get little coverage. This issue focuses on

Nelly, a new historical doll based on a character in the Samantha series, and the upcoming WB television movie that features them. This television movie marks a major commercial step as the brand expands to a new media. The Holiday2004 catalog then sells the movie on DVD or VHS

(2). The interface between books and dolls is no longer the primary concern, as the American

Girl Today dolls and Bitty Baby dolls combined receive more page coverage than the historical dolls. The historical dolls, though, still are first in the catalog. The company’s reputation of quality is based on those dolls and this “seamless blend of learning and play we call ‘putting vitamins in chocolate cake’ ” (American Girl). The historical dolls are still important and integral to the American Girl franchise and its identity. But girls who buy these dolls and read these books do so with other motivations and experiences than reading historical fiction.

Hediger 35

Both Shannon and Cindy own American Girl Today doll clothing for their historical dolls, showing how these dolls are general dolls before they are a historical representation.

Shannon’s aunt did not like Kit’s pajamas and so, instead, bought her the cute modern ones.

Shannon also says that Kit needs clothes from the American Girl Today line because she “needs sweatpants and stuff.” Even Cindy, who involves herself well with the history, owns several

American Girl Today outfits, such as the gymnastics leotard that Samantha wears during our interview. And these girls are not wrong for wanting to play with their dolls. But with brand expansion, history becomes an optional focus instead of the defining characteristic. This shift does not belittle the experience that such girls have with the products; they obviously love them and keep going back for more. It simply shows that their motivations are not always what the adult audiences’ are. The girls are not always seeking the educational benefits, and even when they do enjoy them, they seem unaware of the irony between learning from resourceful protagonist Kit and outfitting pretty doll Kit.

Just like the catalog, the American Girl books are physically beautiful—all the pages are glossy, and several pages feature full illustrations, while many others feature small illustrations of scenes, people, or historical objects. The physical book suggests that the text itself is detail- oriented and carefully considered to create an educational and therefore quality reading experience. The object is to be a deliberate aspect of the reading experience. For example, since Kit makes a daily newspaper on her typewriters, Meet Kit features an actual reproduction as the illustration (complete with typesetting errors!). No wonder the back cover proudly notes that “Meet Kit [replace title as necessary] is the first in a series of beautifully illustrated books about growing up during America’s Great Depression.” The look of the product is very Hediger 36 important, both for commercial reasons (an aesthetically pleasing book to buy for one’s daughter/niece/etc.) and for the books’ “educational” purpose. The book materials further reveal the product’s quality—I mentioned the glossy pages, but we should also note that the pages are not solid beige or white. Rather, they are beige with a wide white boarder. This subtle feature reflects the company’s conception that they produce quality products that are worth a parent’s investment.

We therefore cannot forget the commercial nature of series books. The first page of the book is not the title page, but rather a list of the American Girls, with their portrait, date, and brief character description (“spunky, spritely”; “strength and spirit”; “courageous”; “bright

Victorian beauty”; “clever, resourceful”; “spirit and determination”). Another American Girl, perhaps, may catch a girl or adult’s eye and prompt the purchase of other products. The physical book then serves as an advertisement for the company, an extension of the catalog itself. The last page describes the other books about Kit, complete with illustrations of the front covers—a reminder that there is more to read (and thus buy). However, the “last word” is actually the perforated page facing the last page, which includes a postcard to rip out and send for an

American Girl catalogue. Why do so? Because “While books are the heart of The American

Girls Collection, they are only the beginning.” The book itself reminds the reader (and, more importantly, the reader’s elders) that this book is part of a commercial franchise.

The Dear America book similarly presents a physical quality book that prompts the reader to buy more, but its marketing is less severe than American Girl’s. Consider the cover for

Christmas After All. “Dear America” is written in a calligraphy-like font on an unfurled scroll, which again produces an authentic, historical feeling (see Image 4). These books must be true and trustworthy. The two other hardcover books, similarly, feature textured beige paper for the Hediger 37 inside cover and first and last pages for the same effect. They also have a satin ribbon bookmark attached to the top of the spine. This extra detail seems historical accurate in its suggestion of the days when books more rare and therefore precious items. Again, the book aims to win the

(adult) purchaser’s trust. These books, however, seem less aggressive with marketing on the books themselves than American Girl is. Some of the books have one or two pages at the end listing other books in the series, but this list is all the advertising on the physical book. They do not have American Girl’s catalog request postcards or colorful illustrations of other protagonists.

The physical book thus does not prompt the same irony that American Girl books do between the thrifty message inside the book and the commercial social context outside the book.

A trip to the American Girl Place stores in Chicago and New York highlight these commercial motivations. Tickets to the American Girl Revue show-- $30 each. The Deluxe

Birthday Package, where a girl can have her birthday party at the store’s classy café, runs $58 per guest. A “normal” party costs $30 per guest. Just to eat brunch costs $18 per person, lunch is $20, afternoon tea is $20, and dinner is $23 per person. The website proudly announces:

“Accoridng to the New York Times, ‘American Girl Café has become the destination of choice for 4- to 12-year-old girls from all over the United States.’ ” Not all visitors will splurge for the show and meal, but most guests will probably buy something—and most likely all guests will want to buy into the American Girl allure even if they financially cannot. The stores do feature a free historical “Peek Into the Past” exhibit, which shows what life was like for the various

American Girl characters. This educational component, however, is secondary to the merchandise. The Life article mentions the theater, café, doll hair salon, girl clothing, and doll merchandise in the Chicago store. But the historical section receives no attention, and the

American Girl books get only a passing reference. Hediger 38

Interestingly, the Life article does note, “At times, the company’s homespun values seem at odds with the items’ price points” (9). It then lists Kit’s accessories as an example. The article seems to acknowledge the irony that an outside perspective would notice, the clash between a world that celebrates thrift and one that endorses material consumption. But ultimately it resists any analysis or greater understanding that might arise from considering these clashing worlds. Immediately after it lists Kit’s costly accessories, the article continues:

“Clearly, parents are willing to pay a premium for the emotional and educational merit of these purchases” (9). Parents dismiss this potential uncomfortable irony as unimportant because the products provide a positive “image of life.” The article does not debate whether these products have “emotional and educational merit”; it assumes they do, just as parents assume. Daniel

Hade’s argument that American Girl books promote commercialism more than any useful educational benefit would be blasphemy to this author. Parents thus see a singular vision where

American Girl products are quality merchandise that promote the good girl that they want to raise. And so they ignore or disregard the dramatic irony produced from the commercial stage that may concern an outside critic. The values in Kit’s thrifty “image of life” can only now be accessed through a consumer reality. So a strange double vision emerges but is generally downplayed in order to fulfill the parent’s main motivation: raising a good American Girl.

Kit, Minnie, Grace, and Bess are characters. Characters in a series. Characters in a girls’ series. Characters in a children’s literature girls’ series. Characters in a historical fiction children’s literature girls’ series. Understanding how these books operate requires us to acknowledge the multiple factors that influence the scene of reading, which range beyond genre to adult expectations, child access, and commercial motivations. I could have critically analyzed Hediger 39 the series in many ways, as scholars and educators already have done, and noted where they fail as useful historical and, by extension, moral tools for today’s girls. I, instead, focused on why the parent and child reading communities continually reach for these books, even when adults cannot understand the child’s reading experience and disregard the series’ critics. For American

Girl books, one criticism would be the ironic, commercial framing that shapes the scene of reading. For both series, criticism includes the implications of their historical representation.

However, for parents, the “image of life” that these books present redeems the books, despite the simplistic history and split reality in which they operate.

To end, I return to the texts themselves, texts that are very conscious of fiction, story- telling, and its power through historical alter-egos to effect the modern girl-reader. Writing empowers the protagonists by allowing them to pursue and create their own “image of life,” and they give the girl-reader that same option and power for her to shape her own modern world. In fact, Katelan Janke, author of Grace’s diary, was fifteen when she wrote Survival in the Storm, which won the Dear America Student Writing Contest (as selected by adults). A former girl- reader thus becomes a writer. Girls reading Dear America and American Girl in 2005 can begin a lifetime of writing their own “image of life”—and, like Janke, no doubt some of these girls will be the future authors and parents who create and rely on children’s literature to present their daughters with a similarly desirable image.

Bess Brennan, the diarist of Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, physically does not write her diary. After losing her sight, her twin sister and later her teacher agree to write down her thoughts for her. At Perkins, she tries to learn Braille, but the subject greatly frustrates her:

“Unfortunately it’s impossible to learn and incredibly tedious to do. I don’t think I will ever be Hediger 40 able to read and write that way” (Denenberg 45). But she slowly makes progress as she learns to identify the letters and write sentences (91). Her final diary entry simply reads: “It’s nice to be home”—first in normal print (which we can assume her sister writes) and then in Braille by her

(114). This accomplishment implies that she can now write her own diary. The girl-reader thus ends the story feeling that Bess has adapted and succeeded in reclaiming her voice. This feel- good ending does not accurately represent the profound struggles that still loom ahead for a disabled girl in the 1930s. But a complicated understanding of the past is not necessarily the goal for parents. While she before happily let her sister write her entries for her, Bess’ ability to finally write for herself restores her power and symbolizes how girls can resolve the adversity they face. Writing empowers her, and Bess’ success suggests that the girl-reader also can empower herself through writing. Bess is therefore an overtly inspirational narrator for the girl- reader, a model for how optimism and perseverance can lead to a much happier ending—of their own telling—than originally anticipated.

Near the end of Book 6, Changes for Kit, Kit writes a letter to the local newspaper, asking that people donate coats and shoes for hobo children. Her growing understanding of and sympathy for hobos began in Book 5 when she met the hobo Will, who took her to a hobo

“jungle” and let her see the great suffering there. Since then, she wanted to do something about the situation, and Book 5 ended with the implication that maybe she actually could do something as a child herself to help other children. Right before she writes the letter (and the novelist allows the reader to see the completed letter), Kit muses over the people and situations that have taught her during the Depression:

And Uncle Hendrick was not the only one helping Kit. As she wrote, she thought

of Dad’s dignity, Mother’s industriousness, and the cheerful good nature of the Hediger 41

boarders. She thought of Charlie, who’d come back from Montana with his

‘muscles grown hard, back grown strong, and heart grown stout,’ just as it said in

the CCC booklet. She thought of steadfast Stirling, funny Ruthie, and how kind

and neighborly Ruthie’s family had been to hers. She thought about thrifty,

ingenious Aunt Millie, who saved their house with her generosity; Will, the young

hobo who had taught her about courage; and the little girl in the soup kitchen

who’d brightened with hope when Kit gave her the old coat. Thinking about the

way each one battled the Depression, its losses and fears, gave strength to what

Kit wrote. (Tripp 40)

This passage fits perfectly as the series nears its end. The admirable qualities remind the reader of different moments and situations earlier in the series, which reinforces the positive messages that they conveyed. Dignity, industriousness, strength of all forms, steadfastness, humor, kindness, thrift, ingenuity, generosity, courage, hope—this list of adjectives is a huge range of virtues to promote in a mere paragraph. Yet this passage’s main point relies on the abundance of positive adjectives; the paragraph’s culmination, like the series’ culmination, is positive, hopeful, worthy. And the hope comes from Kit’s writing, from the power that the written word can give to Kit—and, by extension, to the girl-reader. The last sentence especially highlights how the author used the historical era; the Depression is useful because it provides a logical context to approach certain problems, endorse particular values, and thus provide girls with an instructive and coherent “image of life.” By the paragraph and series’ end, Kit is a strong, independent girl who takes action to improve life for the less fortunate. She has learned, much as adults hope girls learn what type of person they should be and, even more so, should want to be.

Hediger 42

i I did not underline “American Girl” in order to signify that the article focuses primarily on the company’s entire product line and image, not just the books. The article’s focus is the American Girl stores, but these overall statements would include the books as one commercial product and conveyer of this positive image. Throughout my essay, I underline “American Girl” when I refer to the chapter books, and I do not underline it when I refer to the entire product line. ii Sherrie A. Inness’ article “ ‘Anti-Barbies’: The American Girls Collection and Political Ideologies” takes as a starting point this positive role model image that many parents celebrate in the American Girl series and the highly commercial nature of the company. Her article, in its reading of both the text and consumer context, thus shares some similar observations to my own research as she struggles to answer: “As for the American Girls themselves—what cultural work do they perform?” (169). She examines the books’ political and gender ideologies (both obvious and hidden) and their implications for girl-readers. She observes that American Girl, as liberating as it may market itself to be and actually is at times (177), nonetheless continues to suggest “numerous traditional ideas about how girls and women should act, behave, and look” (170). iii Just as the dolls expanded, so did the book series. The American Girl Today, Hopscotch Hill, and Angelina Ballerina toy lines also sell books, though these books seem to be a mere prop to or extra toy in the play experience. Several other books series have no toy tie-in: Amelia books, which look just like notebooks kept by the fictional character Amelia; History Mystery books; Wild at Heart books, which follow modern girls volunteering at an animal clinic; American Girl Fiction books, which explore the “everyday challenges and more serious problems” that more contemporary girls face; Girls of Many Lands books; and a substantial line of activity books. Only a small percentage of these books can be advertised in the catalog that the company mails out several times a year. Last, but not least, the company also publishes parenting books. These books reflect a self-conscious tie, at least in the way American Girl advertises, between ethical parenting and book reading, especially historical fiction books. “Good” parents will not only educate themselves to better raise their daughters, but they will also provide their daughters with “quality” reading materials. iv Angela E. Hubler’s critical article “Girl Power and History in the Dear America Series Books” would argue, however, that while the series projects itself as a medium for unheard girl voices, Hediger 43

individual books themselves fail to truly provide realistic and useful voices from the past, even when the fictional girl diarist is a minority. v Jeanne Brady, an Education Professor at Penn State, supports this targeted audience in her critique of the series and would further add that the company specifically targets a “white and upper middle class adults” who can buy such products for their girls. vi Julia Bates Dock suggests about reading communities: “Individuals may read in solitude, but they don’t read alone. They read as members of communities of readers” (16). These communities can be defined by language, immigration, geographic location, religion, age, ethnicity, race, gender, educational level, socio-economic class, and family dynamics. My differing past and present reading experience of these books is one example of how the reading experience and interpretation change when the reader’s motivations and position change. vii She uses a similar strategy in A Feeling for Books to investigate middlebrow culture and reading habits, especially in contrast to academic reading. viii Jeanne Brady similarly criticizes the American Girl series, primarily because the conflicts fail to connect modern girls with history’s complexities and instead “view the world within simple dichotomies, such as good or evil, right or wrong” (3). Moreover, the national identity promoted is “Eurocentric and sexist” (3), the history is “narrow” (4), and the overall narrative one that “conforms to a modern middle class morality which blends the past and present to narrate a dominant version of national identity” (4). This simplistic and nostalgic view of the past is dangerous not merely because it deceives girls but, more importantly, because history should be viewed as complex and girls should “see themselves as historical beings who can challenge the present and create a more democratic future” (5). American Girl’s “sugary view of history” (5), therefore, is problematic because it does not truly engage and empower the girl-reader. The books are not educational in the way that American Girl would lead its audience to believe. ix Some critics of both American Girl and Dear America criticize this use of the past for present motivations. Huber, for example, praises the books that “avoid modernizing the past” (102). Even if some books are “motivated by contemporary political concerns,” they are acceptable as good historical fiction if the author does not “tak[e] her clues not from the urgencies of today” but from actual documents from the past (102). These books should be relevant to modern girls, but modern concerns should not dominate the representation of the past (102). Like Hade and Hediger 44

Brady, she then similarly proceeds to argue that such representations do not empower and educate modern girls as they potentially could. Parents, however, are motivated by “the urgencies of today,” especially the pressing urgency of raising a good girl. Even though they do not ponder the theoretical arguments about historical fiction, they know what “work” they want such texts to do and might therefore overlook flaws that a critical audience would spot.