I've been lucky enough to get some paid work that I can't share yet so I haven't posted art in a while but I had to do something for the American Girl 40th anniversary. I have been reading these books since I was six years old and these girls have a huge place in my heart. All 20 historic girls in one place!
A very American Girl holiday! Probably my last major art for the year so I returned to something familiar and comforting to me. This year has been weird and long but I'm still kicking somehow.
I accidentally stumbled across American Girl's Instagram post celebrating Diwali. Nobody could figure out which doll this is and so the comments just went completely off the rails.....
Am currently scrambling to finish Inktober, and studying the cover of Samantha Learns a Lesson in the process (for Reasons Promptorial).
I've spent a good fifteen minutes looking at this in awe and delight.
Look at that. Look at the way her mouth isn't pulled into an exaggerated smile, but rather held in a small one that's still wide enough to push her cheek back. Look at how her eyebrow sits above her eye socket. Look at the way her hair spills down from where it's pulled up in the ribbon. Look at how she's sitting, so she can support her notebook with one hand and write with the other-- and look at how her right arm is angled, so her hand can really grip the pencil . . . almost as if she's nine years old and hasn't really mastered holding it yet, so it's still a little clumsy. Look at how she tucks her chin a little so she can see the page easily. Look at how her feet are crossed-- and how her right knee is visible because her left leg is straightened a little. Look at her proportions-- they're not that of an adult or a teenager, but they're not that of a small child.
Raphaela and I just got home from a week spent in central Colorado. One of our favorite places we visited was Tiny Town, outside of Denver. It's a miniature village and train that has been entertaining children for 110 years.
The park features beautifully crafted doll-sized houses and buildings. Most of them are designed where you can peek inside and see the dolls within living their tiny lives.
You can walk around at your own pace, or ride the little train around the town and over a bridge. Over the years, it has never stopped expanding as new buildings continue to be added right alongside the original structures.
I first heard about this place from someone here on Tumblr, but I can't remember who it was..... so whoever you are, thank you! At the time I thought it looked like fun, so I added it to the destination list. I think even if I were here without a doll, I'd still have enjoyed it, because it really is for everybody! I saw plenty of adults there without kids, just appreciating the exhibits. So don't be shy about visiting if you're by yourself, or just with a doll.
Everything is scaled a bit closer to Barbie size, so a little bit small for Raphaela. But she sure looked cute next to the houses and businesses. Some of them have empty interiors and rear entrances, so children (and dolls) can go inside.
The jail house was a favorite. I sent Raphaela to dolly jail for the crime of being just a bit too adorable without a license.
The church was also open on the inside. Look at the beautiful stained glass windows.
We loved the re-creation of the house in the iconic painting, American Gothic.
Also, check out Raphaela's shirt! It's from the American Girl Place location in Denver, a store we lost to the pandemic.
This cute little Alpine chalet made me want one of my own in my yard for my dolls. It's sized a little bit bigger than the rest of the buildings, so children can go inside. I thought it was sized perfectly for Raphaela.
Behind the cut, I've got a whole lot more pictures of individual buildings (including a miniature version of The Addams family house), so take a look if you like what you see here.
And my favorite, the interior of the library. Can you even believe this is 1/6 scale?
I haven't decided if this doll quilt counts as my June project (yay rainbow for pride!) or not, since I did specify doll CLOTHES every month and a quilt is not clothes.
I started it last fall because I got annoyed about the backlash to the new American Girl of the Year doll. I don't actually LIKE Summer but it really irritated me that so many people were complaining her collection was "childish" and "for babies", because it features rainbow pastels heavily. Oh no, the doll created for children looks childish. :( :( :(
one of my favorite things to tell people who aren't american girl fans about american girl is just "this is samantha parkington, her parents died boating and you can buy her a locket with photos of her dead parents in it"
i think some of them are a bit more cynical than people might want to hear, so here's a sillier one: there is one "correct" way to arrange ag books in a library, and many libraries don't actually do it (quotations around correct because there are actually many ways you can do it that are technically correct, but most of them are wrong in my opinion as someone who works in libraries).
this is actually on my mind bc @britishchick09 and i recently had a mini-convo about this that stemmed from her tags on a recent post of mine:) anyways, the 100% totally correct and perfect way to shelve the ag books is as follows:
their spine labels should have them be shelved under "american girl." we are not splitting up the books by individual authors, nor shelving them by the first name of the main character.
in this whole labelled clump of american girl books, we now sort them by the year in which the story takes place. once again, we are not ordering them by author, name of character, date of publication, or *shudders* by color--we are doing it by year in which the story takes place.
this makes it so we have our books starting at kaya and going to summer. you could pull out mysteries and short stories as separate categories that are shelved directly after the main series, but these new subcategories still should be organized by the story's date.
girls of many lands and history mysteries can be shelved under the titles of their series, but i do still think it's better to shelve them in the "american girl" clump, and just have them come come before or after the historical/goty series.
This is pretty much exactly how I organize my AG books. What I do is this:
I start the main series books together in chronological order, so it goes from Meet Kaya to Courtney: Friendship Superhero. Then those are followed by the historical character short story books, also in chronological order. Then the mysteries, same way. Then comes the Girl of the Year books, again in chronological order. They're followed by the WellieWisher books, who are obviously contemporary but don't take place in any particular year.
After that comes the Girls of Many Lands books, in chronological order. Then the History Mysteries. I group them separately because even though as a group they are a series, each character only has one book, so it's not a series within a series like the other books.
