American Girls Collection

The American Girls Collection is a brand of dolls and other items catered to girls' interest. The American Girl line includes nine cloth-bodied dolls, each character representing a particular period and region of U.S. history and dressed in clothing representative of the time, place and social background of the character.

Although the books are written for the seven-to-twelve-year-old market, they cover child labor, child abuse, poverty, racism, slavery, animal abuse, and war, among other topics. The tone is gentle so as to appeal to a middle-class school-aged girl. In the back of every book is a "Looking Back" section that talks about the historical setting the characters live in, each tied into the theme of the book (the introductory book introduces the time in history, the birthday story talks about childhood and growing up, etc.)

Short stories in small hardback books were published starting in 1999 that gave more insight into the characters, set either during or after the events of the six central books. Some of these were published in American Girl Magazine before being released as small hardcover books. Different "Looking Back" sections pertaining to the story were given (e.g., Addy's Summer Place talks about Cape Island in 1864; Kit's Home Run discusses baseball in 1934.) The last group of stories was published in 2003 and the company discontinued the single books in early 2006, before releasing a 'Short Story Collection' for each character. Each book has five stories.

The first dolls in the American Girl/Historical line - Samantha, Kirsten, Molly - all share the same face mold. New face molds are noted with the individual dolls. Originally, the dolls were created with white muslin bodies. This was changed in 1991, in response to the low necklines of Felicity's gowns. Thus, earlier dolls are easily recognized and considered more collectible.

Each of the historical characters is given a historical year ending in 4, even though their stories roughly cover about two years each. The series more accurately spans a time from xxx4 to xxx6 (such as Felicity's covering 1774 to 1776); thus, two of the Best Friends books have different years on their books while being part of the same series. The "Best Friend" line of dolls - companions to the historical dolls - are set either during or after the events of her companion's series. Each of their books - one per doll - cover a different situation of the time that pertains to their looks and story.