American Girl Historical Book Format History!
- Admin
- Sep 10, 2019
- 2 min read
The Historical book covers have been through a lot of changes lately. Today, I decided to highlight every cover change here while I wait for the new Miraculous episode to come on!
The first covers from 1986 to 2000 showed the featured doll in front of a cream background illustrated a certain way. The 'Meet' books showed her walking, the 'Learns A Lesson' books showed her at a desk, the 'Surprise' books showed her with a Christmas present- usually a doll, the 'Happy Birthday' books showed her with some sort of animal, the 'Saves The Day' book showed her doing some sort of important action in the story, and the 'Changes' book showed her waving.
From 2000 to 2004, the covers mostly stayed the same, but the backgrounds changed.
From 2004 to 2014, the covers lost their 'structure' as the pattern started shifting away from 'Meet X', 'X Learns A Lesson', etc. They could be literally ANYTHING!
In 2014, things got crazy. Six books turned into two with the launch of BeForever, and things changed- a lot.
In 2017, the cover design shifted slightly from featuring the BeForever branding to the character's branding.
In 2019, things changed- A LOT. BeForever was dropped entirely and there were brand new illustrations for the covers.
What's your favorite book cover set for AG? The 2000-2004 covers take me back to elementary school, when that's all they had for AG books and I checked out as many as I could and read them instead of listening to my teacher's rambling, but the 2004-2014 ones are iconic too!
P.S: Before you ask me about my new doll things, the girl forgot the bag and will give them to me tomorrow, so I'll post them on here then.
The earliest version is my favorite book cover. It looks clean, crisp, and makes the cover figure pop. This earliest version of covers is also how I came to know and love the series. I found them at the library and promptly read them all. I was so impressed at how they taught history within the story, and I loved the historical section in the back. Decades later, while living in Europe, I sought out the series in online bookstores to make sure my daughter also learned American history. I was always drawn to the earliest covers and bought those when I had the option. I was even able to buy the original Josefina series in hardback.