PLEASANT ROWLAND FUNDED THE COMPANY HERSELF. “My pen flew as I tried to capture the idea that was just given to me-whole,” she said. She spent a wintry weekend creating a detailed outline of the concept. She dashed off a postcard to her friend Valerie Tripp: “It said, ‘What do you think of this idea? A series of books about 9-year-old girls growing up in different times in history, with a doll for each of the characters and historically accurate clothes and accessories with which girls could play out the stories?’ In essence, I would create a miniature version of the Colonial Williamsburg experience and take it to American girls using the very playthings-books and dolls-that girls have always loved.” “My Williamsburg experience and my Christmas shopping experience collided, and the concept literally exploded in my brain.” “Here I was, in a generation of women at the forefront of redefining women's roles, and yet our daughters were playing with dolls that celebrated being a teen queen or a mommy,” she said. She wanted to get them each a doll-but she found that her only options were Barbie and Cabbage Patch Kids. ![]() Was there some way I could bring history alive for them, the way Williamsburg had for me?”Ī few months later, Rowland went Christmas shopping for her nieces, then 8 and 10. “I remember sitting on a bench in the shade, reflecting on what a poor job schools do of teaching history, and how sad it was that more kids couldn't visit this fabulous classroom of living history. ![]() “I loved the costumes, the homes, the accessories of everyday life-all of it completely engaged me,” Rowland told CNN Money in 2002. In 1984, textbook author, TV reporter, and teacher Pleasant Rowland accompanied her husband on a business trip to Williamsburg, Va. ![]() THEY WERE INSPIRED BY A VISIT TO WILLIAMSBURG-AND A TRIP TO THE TOY STORE. Here are a few things you might not have known about the dolls. Whether they had Kirsten, Molly, Samantha, Felicity, Addy, or Josefina, these wildly successful, historically accurate dolls defined the childhoods of many girls in the '90s-but if their creator, Pleasant Rowland, had listened to anything but her gut, American Girls might never have existed.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |