Book Blather Book Reviews: Happy Birthday Samantha!

Choo-choo, Sam, it's your muthafuckin' birthday.¹

So there I was, with a large pile of fabric to put together into doll clothes for pattern testing and a small pile of Megabloks to assemble for a review here.² And then I said to hell with that at present and decided that we're going to do another book review. Because it's Samantha's birthday in a week or so and thematically appropriate to discuss her birthday shenanigans. So let's do that, as I ignore morons that be stealing my dolly pictures and trying to pass Marisol, Otters, and Naomi off as their own. Seriously, if you're going to steal pictures--and you shouldn't you little shits, what the entire fuck are you--you should probably not steal a picture with one of my first customs. And with Otters--pentacle prominent as hell--from around 2007 or so. and with my backdrop of my apartment I'm still in. I took that picture before I got married. Get the entire hell out, children, no one has time for your mouthy bullshit. Moving on.

After the launch of the First Three Girls in 1986, the second sets of things and books came out in 1987--around the spring, setting the odd ways of releasing for a while where only half a collection came out to start and the second half came post holiday. Because reasons. So in early 1987, out came Happy Birthday, Samantha! Complete with exclamation point. Are you excite? You'd better be, every birthday book until Kaya has an exclamation point. Pleasant Company (well, Ms. Rowland), having gotten rid of Susan Alder post book two for all that subversive class discussion and capitalism hate and only using Maxine Rose Schur for Samantha's Surprise, needed to get a new author to cover the last three books. So they pulled in Valerie Tripp, who had written the Molly books, and had her do the last three books.

Valerie Tripp is probably the author who has written the most books for American Girl in, like, ever.  She's going to come up over and over again on these book blathers, because she wrote a lot of the books. In fact, I'm not sure if she's written anything major other than AG books.³ Her AG series include all of the Central Series for Felicity, Josefina, Molly, Kit, Maryellen, and--as it's coming up now--the second end of Samantha. Plus all the Hopscotch Hill Books and the upcoming WellieWishers series. Her writing is hit and miss for me a lot--some of it tends to be very formulaic, which is likely due to AG requirements. And I've been known to harp on the way she writes for AG. She's not my fave of the AG authors by any means,⁴ but in ways she is a fairly decent author. I'll be nice. First internal illustrations by Nancy Niles, second by Dan Andreasen. In the Beforever Volumes, this is Chapters 1-5. I will continue using the old numbering system until I get to Ellie's books, whereupon I will still break them up into "books."⁵

Just like Samantha Learns a Lesson, this is one of those books that gets overhyped when people don't actually go back and read the books and instead are going off Childhood AG Nostalgia. Into the book, and I shall pop the childhood bubble you've been carrying around for some time. Cause AG was never as radical as you want to think it was.  

Book Blather Book Reviews: Samantha's Surprise

Samantha's Surprise: A new author!

Seasonally appropriate greetings to y'all as we wrap up a--well, pretty up and down 2015. The end of the year approaches, and with that all the proper holidays, the big overwhelming one being Christmas. Or Giftmas, as I call it, what with the not being Christian and all. Did I do much for the holiday? Can't say I did. I did something though. Namely, ate. What do you want from me? Anyways. Vanilla Bean Buttercream/Grace is on the way out, and the new kid, Lea Clark, is on the way in. You can hear all about it in my new post after the year, "1/8th? 1/8th? Really, AG?" (Spoiler: That won't be the title, but that will come up.) And before I get into the book proper, a mini rant as posted to AGC and my Instagram account,¹ modified and expanded here.

Hi, AGIG! Which is full of teenagers. Let's have a little talk about how to conduct yourself on IG with communicating with AG on their account, @americangirlbrand. Every year, AG releases a Girl of the Year. (She's been problematically White, but I've so bitched about that. I'm getting my update to the grid ready as we speak.) And every year, AG doesn't reveal her until January first. They do little online teasers, videos, and hints to hype up the release. They've been doing this since Chrissa at least--I still have somewhere on my comp the image of Chrissa with three buttons over her face so we couldn't wholly see her. But they do that--the hints and teases. Today was the video one. And under it, all over, was the same shit.

"Its lea Clark ag we all know"
"WE ALL KNOW AG LOL U KINDA SPOILED IT."
"You guys are really bad at hiding stuff."
"I already know how she looked like 2 months ago"
"lol basically everyone on AGIG knows what she looks like and who she is"²

And so you are now getting educations. Sit down, children. I said sit down.

First of all, AG didn't leak or spoil anything. You all did, digging and searching and finding leaks all over the net. That I don't really bitch too much about, because I've seen images of Melody Ellison and my reaction can basically be boiled down to "give her to me and give her to me now." But going on their media and going "lol spoiled it" is as immature as you all are. They leaked nothing. They didn't leak about Ellie, they didn't leak about BeForever, they didn't leak about Grace, and they're not leaking about Lea. You are leaking about her.

Secondly, they hype like this because it's part of the marketing. They've been doing it since at least Chrissa--somewhere on my hard drive I have images of her but with buttons over her face because AG didn't want to spoil her completely and was revealing a button a day to get a peek at her over the course of December. And they do this. But that's what they do, for the hype up til the first of January. They don't just say, "It's Grace Thomas!" Or "Welcome Isabelle Palmer!" That's not fun for them, that's not amusing, and that's not what they want. So guess what they don't want to hear in their comments? "ha ha we already know we looked at all the leaks it's So-and-So!" Because you are ruining the fun for those that maybe don't go digging around Google and looking at Youtube and getting everything spoiled for them. Do you also go around spoiling recent movies?

I'm sure a lot of you are young--and by young I mean there's at least a 10-15 year age gap between me and you, if not more. And this is your first taste of social media. So you think that this is appropriate or funny or that AG somehow doesn't know that a lot of people know. But you would be wrong. AG wants to do this the marketing way, which is hints and flirting with info releases. Leaks don't please them even as they please us. And neither do massive spoilers.

So if you all could collectively stop being a bunch of little shitty immature children and spoiling the reveals in the comments of their posts? That would be super awesome! 

Fucking squealers.

Sincerely, A Grown Ass Collector.  

So, with that out of the way for a while, time to book it. 

Samantha's Surprise, unlike the two books before it, was not written by Susan Alder. She had quietly been put off the project--and never to write again, if the searches for her name are any indication. Too much class talk, too much about the poor, not enough happiness and rich people being rich. Not Pleasant Company, that topic.³ So she was booted out the door and replaced with Maxine Rose Schur, who not only is still writing but lists Samantha's Surprise on her webpage. Go her.  The book was still illustrated by Nancy Niles at first release and came out originally in 1986 with Samantha, like the two before it. If you have the BeForever versions, this is chapters 13-18 of Manners and Mischief. I'm still using the chapters from the original since I'm using my old collections that way. So, future ref, when I finally get to Maryellen's books, I'll be breaking her volumes into six "books" and giving them fan nicknames, because I'm cool like that, but reffing whatever chapter numbers they got. 

Book Blather Book Reviews: Samantha Learns a Lesson

Samantha Learns a Lesson, and so will you.

With the BeForever revamp, one of the biggest whines among parts of fandom was that the books no longer have illustrations included. You have the cover image, then the text of the Classic Series done as two volumes. No inner pics, and the Looking Back Section is cut down dramatically to only about the era, not about anything specific to the topic of  the book. That part doesn't thrill me, but I can live without illustrations. AG has officially stated on the FaceBook page--I'd look it up but eh--that the lack of illustrations is to help the books appeal to an older audience. Otherwise known as the people the books are written for, the eight to twelve crowd. This means that any other characters (like Vanilla Bean Buttercream) or any past Historicals that come back out who get books won't have illustrations, including our half confirmed 2016 Black BeForever Character who I will now be saving up for. Thank gods the illustrations are dead, though. While a lot of the illustrations are my thing, some are terrible and were clearly phoned in.¹ I don't know if I could have handled random art of Grace at every other Parisian tourist place of note wearing specific outfits in her collection. 

Not that I'll even get to Grace's books if I don't pick it up and get to book blathering. Better rate than one book every unexpected month, Neth. I'll still do illustrations on my book reviews all I want as long as they're available. On with the show. 

Like the first book, Samantha Learns a Lesson was written by Susan S. Adler, with the first edition books illustrated by Nancy Niles and the second release by Dan Andreasen. Unlike Ms. Alder, Ms. Niles got to do the whole series before getting replaced in 1998. Part of the deal with Mattel taking up AG was insisting the images in the books be done uniformly; this resulted in all of Samantha's books, and all of Addy's books being re-illustrated. Molly's had already been fixed in 1989. There were a few years where the older white parchment books had the newer illustrations, but they are a little harder to find.² The book came out originally in 1986 with Samantha.

Book Blather Book Reviews: Meet Samantha: An American Girl

Meet Samantha: She started it.

Every blog in the AG blogosphere--and on one notable messageboard to be torn apart later--tend to carry themselves on item reviews. They will go on and on and on about AG clothing, accessories, and dolls to draw you in. This ranges from really crappy reviews that don't tell you shit to good, detailed closeups on each component. Item reviews are everywhere. Throw a rock at a PC Molly, you can find people waxing and waning about everything from her tiny lunchbox to her saddle shoes. And I do carry a lot of my blog on item reviews. However, I also pride myself on being crazy about books. What can I say, Libras love books.¹ And when I say I love books, I mean it. I have, for example? Every Central Series, every short story, every paper doll, All-in-One collections for most of the ones that got em, every History Mystery, the old Craft and Cook Books...

I have so many AG books they won't fit on a shelf alone.

That's just one snapshot of my shelf. I can't get them all in one shot.

I've been meaning to add on to Magazine Monthly by adding in Book Blather, also known as Book Reviews. A few points about my reviews before we jump in:

• You're not getting a point-by-point summary. Summaries are for the AG Wiki. Go buy the damn books or check them out from the library. This is more like liveblogging. I grab a book, read it (they take me like a half hour at most), and say how I feel, including sprinkings of lesbianism and snarky character names. You know me by now. If you've ever read BSC Snark?² It's more like that.
• I'm going in semi chronological order. That is, according to character release. I'm starting with Sam, Kirsten, and Molly, and then moving through the others as they arrived. This way if someone new shows up, I can add them to the end and keep going.  
• I will do a full Central Series for a character before going into the next. It's easier that way.
• Illustrations will be added here and there, either scanned by me or sourced by the AG Wiki.³ In the case of Sam and Addy, I will pick the one I like better. (Chances are with Addy this will be Melodye Rosales and Dahl Taylor, cause Buford Brown's art is shit.) With Sam, it will vary depending on which picture I like better.
• I generally like the second ed book covers for the Historicals that ran from about 2000-2004. While I can't get these for anyone after Kaya, if I can find them for the others I will. 
• I'm an adult. I look at these books like an adult. Comments that these books are aimed at children don't matter. Children don't like dumb books any more than adults do. Plus, I'm writing for people over the range. 
• This won't just be AG books--it'll also cover other AG-style books that I have. 

On to the book.

As it has come up on the AG fandom (and like some babycakes anon tried to "inform" me on an older post, like I had no idea, hah that's cute piss off), Samantha is coming back to AG Availability this fall and she'll likely be bringing a full frontal Historical revamp with her. Might as well start with the heaviest Historical Face they've got.

Meet Samantha: An American Girl was written by Susan S. Adler. Google searches don't show any other books written by her other than Book One and Two of Samantha's Series. The first ed books were illustrated by Nancy Niles; the second release was done by Dan Andreasen. Like Sam herself, the book came out in 1986. Trivia! Until the reillustrations, the only place to see Sam's meet dress was on the cover of the book. It wasn't in the inner pictures.