Dear America

In May I learned that I have at least one Dear America fan among my followers.  I can't say as I was a fan myself, though I had three of the books in my kiddie bookshelf.  Margaret Ann Brady was a passenger on the RMS Titanic, and I was hoping for a good disaster story, but Margaret spent so much time setting up her life story that I lost interest before she even boarded the ship.  I usually skipped ahead to the actual sinking, which was indeed interesting...and tragic, since Margaret lost a friend/love interest in the sinking.  The final pages included some images and descriptions of what like was like for the various classes on the Titanic, and what the sinking was like, and that was the part I liked the best.  So yeah, my experience with the Dear America series was brief and not the most positive, but...well, to each their own.  I did learn that Mary Pope Osborne wrote a couple of the books, and I happen to be very fond of her Magic Tree House series.

Now to the dolls.  Madame Alexander took a stab at a line of Dear America dolls in 1999 and 2000.  There were four dolls in all, versus thirty-six books, so this line didn't get far.  Remember Patience Whipple is a passenger on the Mayflower, meaning that she dates back to 1620.

Catherine Carey Logan is a Quaker girl who got kidnapped by Native Americans.  Her story begins in 1763.

Abigail Jane Stewart witnessed the Patriot troops try to survive the winter at Valley Forge.  This began in 1777 and lasted until the next June.  Abigail would thus fit in nicely with Felicity's timeframe.  

Lastly, there's Margaret Ann Brady, the aforementioned Titanic passenger.

Margaret doesn't look a thing like her book's portrait, by the way, and neither does Remember.  Margaret is on the left and is an obvious brunette (her doll is blonde), and Remember has even darker hair (her doll is even blonder than Margaret).

Just Magic says that these four dolls have "bland" faces that follow the typical Madame Alexander aesthetic.  Their hair isn't great quality, but their clothes make up for it by being both detailed and authentic to the doll's era.  They can also wear American Girls' clothes with flying colors, meaning that I could throw Abigail in Felicity's threads and vice versa if I so wanted.  But I probably won't since I've already got a full house of eighteen-inch dolls, and I'm not a big fan of these dolls' faces.  They remind me of Alissa's overly smug visage.

At first I liked Alissa's expression, but as time passed she looked more and more like the pompous intelligentsia that I sometimes had to deal with in college.  I eventually gave her away.  My other AG-sized Madame Alexander dolls don't look as self-important as Alissa or as cherubic as the Dear America dolls.  But for my Dear America fans, there's y'all an option.  eBay has 'em for relatively cheap, and some of 'em are still in the box if y'all are the NRFB type.  Even the ones that are out of the box appear to have stood the test of time well.

Stay cool,
RagingMoon1987