Fun Facts About American Girl Dolls Kirsten, Julie, Addy, Kit and Josefina
- Admin
- May 2, 2024
- 3 min read
American Girl put up webpages for Kirsten, Julie, Addy, Kit and Josefina, each with never-before heard facts about these dolls! Here they are:
One of the outfits that was sold for Kirsten was a housecoat and sockor, or wool slippers. The sockor for the Kirsten doll were handmade by a woman in Sweden beginning in 1987 for twenty years.
In Pleasant Rowland’s original business plan, Kirsten was named Rebecca, and was a Norwegian immigrant in 1865.
The team who created Kirsten did a lot of research with the Minnesota and Wisconsin Historical Societies, who had a lot of information about the Swedish settlers who came to these states in the 1800s.
To learn more about what Josefina’s life would have been like, author Valerie Tripp spent two summers in New Mexico. She visited living history museums and interviewed elderly New Mexican women about the daily lives of Hispanic families and children in rural New Mexico.
The models for Josefina’s home were la El Rancho de las Golondrinas near Santa Fe and Hacienda de los Martinez near Taos, NM. Both are former ranchos from Josefina’s time and now living history museums that you can visit today.
Josefina’s first and last names are drawn from the New Mexican censuses of 1790 and 1823.
Although Josefina is actually a Mexican citizen, the advisory board felt comfortable calling her an “American girl” because her story presents a history and heritage that’s an integral part of America today.
By the end of her series, Josefina has a new mother. This plot element symbolizes the change for the Spanish settlers of New Mexico and the Southwest, who lost their mother country of Mexico when they became citizens of the United States, their new mother country.
Researchers on Addy confirmed when the full moon would have been during Addy and her mother’s escape from enslavement in 1864 to ensure historical accuracy in the timing.
The museum program, Addy at Ohio Village, debuted in 1998.
The dialect used in the Addy books was created by author Connie Porter to be a balance between what speech of the time would’ve sounded like and what is accessible for young readers and was reviewed by two dialect experts at Jacksonville State University in Alabama.
Addy was the first American Girl character to have an advisory board. Addy’s advisory board was made up of Black historians, educators, and museum curators who ensured the depiction of Addy’s life and times was historically accurate.
Addy’s first three books sold more than a million copies in the year they were released.
When Julie launched, in 2007, American Girl historical characters’ years had always ended in 4, so Julie’s year was set as 1974—even though her stories begin in 1975.
When Julie debuted, some customers felt American Girl should not depict a girl with divorced parents. But since about 50% of kids today live with divorced parents, the creators of Julie felt it was important to have a character and doll who represented their experience.
Author Megan McDonald has four sisters who inspire many of her stories. Quite a few of the scenes between Julie and her teenage sister Tracy were inspired by Megan’s experience growing up with her sisters.
Illustrator Walter Rane used himself as a model for the grumpy grocery store owner in Kit’s stories.
Like Kit’s dad, author Valerie Tripp’s grandfather paid his staff out of his own pocket as long as he could, but eventually had to close his hotel during the Great Depression.
After the launch of the Kit doll and books, Valerie Tripp received a letter from a woman named Kit Kittredge who had grown up in Cincinnati during the Depression and was very excited about the coincidence!