A Fresh Face from American Girl
by Sally Lodge, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 6/14/2007
Samantha, Molly, Felicity, Addy and the rest of the American Girls will have a new colleague come September. That month, American Girl introduces Julie Albright, a lass living in San Francisco in the 1970s who is coping with significant changes in her life, including her parents' divorce and a move to a new neighborhood. Julie will make her debut in six novels by Megan McDonald, author of the bestselling Judy Moody tales, who previously wrote a History Mystery and The Sisters Club, a stand-alone novel, for the American Girl imprint.
Illustrated by Robert Hunt and Susan McAliley, the new books will be published simultaneously in hardcover and paperback; the titles are Meet Julie (176,000-copy first printing), Julie Tells Her Story (90,000 copies), Happy New Year, Julie (92,000 copies), and Julie and the Eagles, Julie's Journey and Changes for Julie (85,000 copies each). A seventh novel due in September, Good Luck, Ivy! by Lisa Yee, which has a 127,000-copy first printing, centers on Julie's best friend, the middle child in a bustling Chinese-American household.
Julie's introduction comes five years after that of the last American Girl character, Native American Kaya. Explaining the timing of Julie's arrival, Jodi Goldberg, editorial director for fiction at American Girl, explains that her department's focus has in recent years been on creating American Girl movies. Three made-for-TV movies aired in successive fall seasons, from 2004 to 2006, and a feature film, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Mystery, is due in theaters in July 2008. After those ventures, Goldberg notes, "it seemed that it was a good time to introduce a whole new character. We are not on any kind of set schedule for creating new characters, but we'd rather do it when things fall into place and it feels right for us."
The era in which Julie lives also feels right to the editor. She observes that the mothers of many current fans of American Girl dolls not only grew up in the 1970s themselves, but also grew up with American Girl products. "For the first time in our more than 20-year history, we have a kind of mother-daughter relationship, as those early fans are now having children of their own," Goldberg says. "The mothers are passing down their interest in the dolls and books to their daughters, which was always the vision for American Girl. And mothers who grew up in the '70s now have the opportunity, through Julie, to share the history of their childhood era."
The simultaneous introduction of a character's best friend is a first for the company. Like Julie, Ivy will also appear in doll form, with sideline products, as well as in future books. Goldberg anticipates that both Julie and Ivy, like their predecessors, will be featured in activity and paper-doll books, mysteries and short story collections.
To herald Julie's launch, McDonald will embark on a national tour in the fall and the publisher has created a retail floor display, a display promoting Julie doll drawings and an in-store event kit.
And who might young American Girl fans next meet? Goldberg is understandably mum on details, but notes that the company is constantly developing possible characters and testing ideas on girls and their mothers. American Girl taps into a number of research vehicles, including on-line mother-daughter panels and feedback from youngsters who visit the company's Middleton, Wis., headquarters. "We are always looking into new potential characters and our process is to keep a number of irons in the fire at all times," she says.
And with book sales topping 117 million copies, American Girl Place stores thriving in Manhattan, Los Angeles and Chicago, and a new retail concept—American Girl Boutique and Bistro—set to launch this year in Atlanta and Dallas, it appears that that fire is hot indeed.
