AMERICAN GIRL: Kirsten

I've been suffering a nasty allergy attack the past few days and when I couldn't sleep last night, I grabbed Kirsten's books. I've been meaning to get back to my AG rereading and reviewing, and I zipped through her six books and the short stories last night, then tackled the mystery today.

Kirsten is a likeable character who journeys from Sweden to Minnesota with her parents, older brother and younger brother. Her books have a Little House on the Prairie feel to them, just with added moments of immigrant difficulty like learning English and teaching her cousins Swedish customs. She isn't so much developed as a character with likes and dislikes and a strong personality, because we mostly see her reacting to what's happening around her. She's definitely a loyal girl who wants to make her family proud, but what are her interests? No idea.

Most of the characters around her are equally likeable, except her father. He's supposed to be stern, I get it, but trying to get a nine-year-old girl to stop crying moments after she's learned her friend has suddenly died doesn't convey stern as much as cold-hearted asshole. I also always get annoyed when she has to put her doll in the trunk and leave her behind not long after her friend's death. The girl needs comfort and one soft doll would not have been difficult to tie to her or the junk she had to carry instead. The father's nice in the winter book, but he definitely has several moments where I just plain don't like him and think he's a shitty parent. The other characters are mostly decent. I do love Singing Bird and wish we'd seen more of her, although I'll always be slightly annoyed that Kirsten just figures out her name in English when she barely knows English at that point. Maybe if there'd been a scene where Singing Bird pointed to a singing bird and then patted her chest or something, but no. It's just briefly mentioned that that's her name with no explanation.

The books tend to leave out information like that frequently. Like all of a sudden they have a dog. Where did the dog come from? No clue. When did the mother find out she was pregnant, because that appeared out of nowhere, too. At least the mystery explained how they got the black horse.

They're still enjoyable books, but they pale in comparison with Samantha and Molly's as well as the other older series, yet they're still better than a lot of the later ones.

AG Best to Least Best (they're too good to be called "Worst") Historical Ranking:
-Josefina
-Felicity
-Kaya
-Kirsten
-Marie-Grace and Cécile
-Caroline
-Maryellen