AMERICAN GIRL: Nanea

I have not done an American Girl historical character review in a long time! My last one was Molly and that was way back in February 2017. I did have a ranking of them all, but I'm not going to continue all that. It's honestly impossible to rank some of these, considering the BeForever books don't have the nostalgic effect or the illustrations.

Nanea is a 9-year-old girl living in Oahu in 1941. Her mother is Hawaiian and her father is white. He's from Oregon, where his parents still live. Nanea is the youngest in the family. Her brother David is 17 and sister Mary Lou is 15.

Nanea's first book starts out in a typical way. She wants to be thought of as more grown up, but then does some good and some bumbling. It's the bumbling I didn't really care for. She accidentally muddies a floor and goes running off instead of just cleaning it up. Like she's 9, not 5. That felt out of character for her. I know the point of the book is to show how war makes kids grow up faster, but they didn't need to make her that childish in that particular moment. It didn't fit the rest of the story.

So then comes Pearl Harbor and everything changes. Nanea doesn't see her father for I think almost two weeks, while he works in the Pearl Harbor shipyard (he's a welder). He was at home during the bombing so he was safe. David runs off to go help and he stays away for a few days. Mele, Nanea's dog, disappears the morning of the bombing. Her friend Lily's father is taken away because he's Japanese. Her other friend Donna and Donna's mother are sent back to the mainland US because they're "non-essential civilians." Hawaii is under martial law and there are blackouts, air raid drills, gas masks and mandatory ID cards to carry around, and curfews to deal with. Basically, Nanea's whole way of life changes and she must adapt.

She does thankfully find her dog. I think Mele is the most important pet character ever in an AG series. The only one that might come close is Felicity's Penny, but Penny's not in every book and Mele's almost always there.

Nanea pulls herself together and helps her friend Lily deal with her father being taken (he's eventually freed, as they mixed him up with someone else), she starts the family decorating for Christmas, she comes up with the idea of doing a bottle drive for the Red Cross to collect blood donations in, and she finally gets to help in her grandparents' store, which is what she wanted at the beginning of the book.

The second book picks up almost right where the first left off. It's Nanea's first day back at school, which had been closed because part of it was on fire and damaged.

Nanea loves her teacher, so the first conflict we see is a new girl getting attention and Nanea's jealous. This is a throwback to the start of the first book, when she acts really childish and now it's even more out of character, because she matured so much in the first book. I understand that part of it comes from her being upset at the changes in her life, especially her friend Donna not being there, but still. As in the first book, this is the only part I really don't like.

Nanea spends most of the book with two worries. First, she's terrified her brother is going to enlist when he turns 18 in June. Second, she heard about a program called Dogs for Defense and is convinced David's Lieutenant friend wants Mele for the program. (Spoiler: He doesn't.) So aside from the fear of them being attacked again, Nanea's worried about losing her dog and her brother.

She manages to work things out with Dixie, the new girl, and the friend group becomes a trio again. She also teaches Mele how to hula, so she's got a dancing dog to entertain the troops during the USO shows. That's why the lieutenant paid attention to Mele, because she danced, not because he wanted her for the army. He helps Nanea start a program she calls Mele Medicine, which is basically Mele being a therapy dog. I think this is possibly quite a bit earlier than the idea of therapy dogs was actually thought of, but it's still a great idea.

Unfortunately for Nanea, the first thing David does do when he's eighteen is enlist. The book ends with him going off to boot camp.

I remember when AG fans first heard about Nanea and there was some bitching about having two girls from the same time period, but Nanea and Molly could not be more different. Nanea's way of life, even before Pearl Harbor, is very different from Molly's. Nanea's books are at the start of the war, while Molly's are at the end, so she gets to see her father come home, but we'll likely never know the fate of Nanea's brother. Molly gets to be mildly inconvenienced by the war during her daily life (with the exception of her dad being gone), but Nanea is right there worrying about way more serious things than Molly has to deal with. Nanea sees the destruction first hand. Nanea does far more for the war effort than Molly does and even with her minor incidents, she feels far more mature than Molly ever does. Nanea's books also tackle one very serious subject and they mention it multiple times and that's the Japanese internment. This is one of the most overlooked horrific things in American history and it needs more coverage than it gets.

I think Nanea's main two books are very solid and a good read. She's an important addition to the historical lineup.

I'm gonna say it right now. I do not like Choose Your Own Adventure. I never have. I'm far too anal to enjoy them, because I have to mark every page with a choice and make sure I read every possible story. It's a pain!

But I got a good price on the Nanea boxed set, so I took it instead of the two classics alone.

I didn't really enjoy reading this for my OCD reason explained above, but it did have a lot of solid moments. A character is introduced who changed her name to appear less Japanese and her dad is being held on Sand Island, which was the Hawaiian place of internment. That was the best part. You also get to see Nanea expressing some of her feelings about David being gone, because this is set after her classics.

My biggest issue with it is that the character you play is kind of a chickenshit. She's a military brat, so she's been moved all over and she's not happy in Hawaii because her father is off in Iraq right now and she's not used to being away from him. She sees a dog digging in the sand (it's supposed to be Mele) and finds a shell necklace that takes her back in time when she puts it on. So the entire time, she knows she can just yank it off and go back to her home in the future, but she's still scared of EVERYTHING. There are a couple story endings that make the girls look bad, too, but I seem to remember that from Choose Your Own Adventure. There were always some bad choices.

It's an okay book and I'm glad I read it, but I doubt I'll ever reread it and I'm not going to read the other BeForever ones like this either.

Nanea's real mystery is who the hell is on her cover and what did she do with Nanea. This book is set three weeks after the end of the second classic, yet Nanea's hair is like eight inches longer. And straightish. Granted it's longer on the Choose Your Own Adventure cover, but that still looks like her. This one just doesn't.

So it took me a while to finish this one, because right away, something annoyed me. I simply despise when adults in these books treat children badly and that sets up the entire mystery.

You see, Nanea is working in her grandparents' store. She takes pride in straightening the displays, making everything look nice and helping customers leave happy. So when a lady asks for Carnation milk and Nanea doesn't see it, even though she'd just straightened the cans moments before, and when her display of oranges is suddenly a mess, she gets suspicious of a nearby boy. A boy whose canvas bag was empty-looking and now, as he leaves the store, looks rather lumpy. Nanea expresses her concerns to her grandparents...BECAUSE WHEN YOU WORK IN A STORE, YOU WATCH FOR SHOPLIFTERS. This is like Basic Shopkeeping 101. And what do they do? They make her feel like shit for not trusting the boy. Are you fucking kidding me?!! It would be one thing to say no one saw him steal so they can't accuse him, but keep an eye on him. That would be the logical thing. But to try to make her feel bad when she's just protecting the store and their money? COME THE FUCK ON.

Right away, this throws up red flags for me. The grandparents know something about this boy, but deliberately do not tell Nanea. They know he didn't steal, but don't tell her why. WHY THE FUCK NOT?!

Because this author couldn't write a better plot. I think very little of people that have such horrible gaps in logic just to make their plot work.

You see, it's not revealed until the end of the story, but Mano (the boy) trades fish he catches for food in some of the local stores, including Nanea's grandparents'.

THEY COULD HAVE TOLD HER THAT AT THE BEGINNING.

But no, poor Nanea spends the entire book freaked out about him being a thief and stealing repeatedly. As the story unfolds, some of the missing objects turn up and one really was him, stealing her father's heirloom spade. He borrowed it without asking. Well, why didn't you fucking ask? This plot element only works if you go out of character for Mano.

There are multiple subplots, including Lily's brother having a secret job and Nanea's sister getting secret letters. Everything works out in the end, but this would have been a much more solid book if the grandparents had told Nanea the truth at the beginning, which would have been in character, and she'd made a new friend, only to have to worry about what exactly he was up to. That's a better story than one that uses glaring out of character moments and a complete lack of logic as its foundation.

Gotta wrap this up quickly, but I really do like Nanea. I think she's an important addition to the lineup of girls and I hope to see her get some more mysteries in the future that are much better written!

SLEEPOVER FRIENDS: Cover By Cover!

One of my friends did a Sweet Valley 30-Day challenge recently and some of the posts were about covers. So I decided to look at all the covers for my favorite series ever, the Sleepover Friends!

I actually scanned my full set of books years ago when I planned to review them all for the original incarnation of this blog, so that saves me the time of locating images of all of them. You'll notice the black dot that appears frequently, too. (It's on Stephanie's face on this first cover.) That was a bit of damage on my old scanner.

So Book 1. Stephanie is on the left with her long dark hair. However, Stephanie is not wearing her signature red, black and white. There are several covers like this, even though she almost always had her signature colors on in the text. Kate is the blonde. I think she's the best depiction on this particular cover, except for the Betty Boop PJs. I just can't see her in those. Patti and Lauren look quite similar, both being tall, athletic brunettes. Thanks to the text though, you know that Lauren is on the bed by Stephanie while Patti is getting the spikes from Kate.

Same artist, but the girls have taken a step closer to their more typical looks. Patti on the left looks like her cute, shy self. Stephanie looks good, too, except for again not having the right colors on. Lauren's hair has darkened, which helps distinguish her from Patti. And Kate is just cute.

Each of these poses is quite appropriate for the characters, too. Patti looks unsure and nervous. Stephanie looks confident. Kate looks bossy. Lauren looks kinda done with everything.

Kate looks cute here, too, but her hair's grown a lot. I think the shorter look from the first two books is more her. This artist just loves pink on her. I don't remember Kate loving pink.

Lauren's kept her darker hair and you can see how long it is now that it's down.

And Patti looks about the same.

I believe that's Lauren's older brother Roger inside and I think the girl he liked was Linda? It's been a little while since I've read these, so I'm doing this very cold! But I want to say this is the only time we'll see Roger, even though he appears a lot.

Ah, I love this cover. Stephanie may be for the third time in the wrong colors, but she's so pretty, who cares? Well, I care a little, but still.

Patti looks bizarrely cute in an outfit described I'm pretty sure quite exactly the same in the text.

Then we've got Lauren looking amused and Kate whose hair grew even longer.

Stephanie totally steals the cover.

How does Lauren manage to look cute with her tongue out? She just does. Eating is her thing. That's one of her better outfits, if I remember correctly.

Poor Patti is dressed well, but doesn't look nearly as good as anyone else at this table.

Stephanie got a tan. For a while, I thought this was supposed to be Steph's friend Tiffany, but she's finally wearing the right colors, although the black from red, black and white is missing.

Kate got a wardrobe boost like Lauren, but she's also randomly gorgeous. This just is not Kate. Her hair is too long and wavy. Cute, but inaccurate.

  

Now we've got the mystery of which girl is Stephanie and which is Lauren? Both have dark hair. Neither is wearing Stephanie's colors. We just got the red and white correct last book, Conway. Come the fuck on. I always figured Stephanie was the one on the left, because she's prettier. Not that anyone looks attractive doing flashlight face, but I think that one's Lauren.

Patti's the only one who looks right and she's mostly covered by a blanket.

And Kate once again looks really pretty, but not like the Kate established on the first two covers. Her shirt is adorable though and something I could see her wearing.

Ignore the blotch on poor Kate's face. Yeah, I think that's Kate. Looking completely different for the 3rd book in a row. At least she looks cute, but I'm not sure Kate would wear such a voluminous yellow top.

Stephanie once again is not in the right colors. And just doesn't look like herself.

Lauren looks cute though. And Patti looks good.

Hey, they finally remembered Kate's hair is shorter!

But Lauren looks terrible. Poor Lauren.

Wait, what is this? Stephanie wearing RED?! She resembles the girl in blue on #6's cover, so I'm fairly sure I was right in assuming that was Stephanie.

Honestly, this is one of the best covers. All the girls look in character, except maybe Kate's dowdy nightgown.

And this is so obviously Stephanie's room with the proper color scheme.

Stephanie is wearing the right colors again! Celebrate! This is the beginning of her illustrations with the giant poofy hair.

This is the book where the girls host students from another school, so the other two on the cover are those students.

The blonde is surely Annette, who's staying with Lauren.

The other one I think is supposed to be Molly, who's Stephanie's visitor. Except Molly wears glasses. Maybe they stuck them around Stephanie's neck. All I know is that short girl with a side pony is not Lauren, so it's got to be Molly, even with the brown hair instead of black and the lack of glasses.

Not one of the best covers, because it's really not clear who that girl is and it should be obvious.

Lauren's got all her hair in a hat again, while Stephanie's hat can barely contain hers.

Not an attractive cover for either.

Kate's hair has gone long again, but at least this is the face we'll be seeing her wear for a while.

I have no idea who that kid is. This book is the reverse of #10 with the Sleepover Friends being the ones staying as guests in the Walden kids' homes and Kate is stuck with a bunch of bratty children. I think this is one of them. Although who knows, she is wearing a shirt with food on it. Maybe it's Lauren.

Aha! Definitely one of the better covers. Patti is stunning here, but alas she will never look this good again.

Each of the others looks spot on. Even though Lauren's barely showing, that still gives off a good Lauren vibe.

I love the books in the window.

From stunning to weird. #14 marks the beginning of Patti's Shrinking Eyes. I don't know why she suddenly got these tiny little eyes, but it's a thing.

Lauren looks like Lauren, albeit much more childish than she should.

Stephanie's in the right colors and looks exactly like Stephanie on the last cover. Kate does, too. Continuity is good.

Ah, this one! Another great cover.

Patti's still got the small eyes, but they're not weird-looking at that angle. She looks cute in that outfit, too.

Lauren looks perfect and Kate looks good, despite her hair being too long.

Stephanie though. She steals this thing. Absolutely 100% perfection.

Patti with the small eyes still looks cute again. Kate also. And Stephanie looks great. But poor Lauren got some ugly ass bangs and that just does not look like her.

This was a period of consistency for the books, even if it wasn't the most attractive consistency. Poor Patti and Lauren just get the short end of the stick during this period.

Steph looks the best, despite the yellow. I think that should have been white.

And Bullwinkle! At last!

Lauren looks better from the side, but still not like Lauren.

Stephanie still looks good. Excellent earrings. I want to say we see those again.

And look, Robert Ellwanger! One of the only series regulars to get a cover!

Aha! I knew we saw those earrings again.

Everyone here looks pretty horrible. Patti manages to work her tiny eyes into a good skeptical face, so she looks the best, but man, wow.

Ooh, it's Ginger Kinkaid! Look at that sass face. I mean, Kate's outsassing her by a mile, but Ginger's pretty sassy. And actually looks like Harry Potter movie Ginny Weasley a bit.

Kate's hat from #19 makes a return appearance. 

Ah, Kevin DeSpain and his changing hair color. I'm pretty sure he originally had dark hair. Or maybe that was the Boodles guy.

Seriously, no one looks good here. Everyone's features are just a little off in some way.

What is it with Kate and baseball caps?

Stephanie looks ridiculous, but so does anyone making that face, so points for accuracy. Said points removed however, because Stephnie would not wear Mickey.

Lauren doesn't look bad aside from the bangs.

The less said about poor Patti, the better.

Everyone except Steph looks ridiculous here. Is it time for the new artist yet?

Oh, Lauren, I miss your early books.

Kate looks cute at least.

Stephanie's not bad except her shorts should be black.

Bitsy's one of the very few other female characters who got a cover.

THE NEW ARTIST!

Somehow they all look a bit better, even though Patti still has her tiny eyes and it's apparently contagious, because Lauren caught it, too.

The role of Kate will be played by Karen Brewer from the cover of Kristy's Big Day.

I will forever give points to the new artist, because he finally made Patti look as tall as she always should have. I could see her wearing that outfit, too.

Lauren? In pink? With hearts? Not so much.

And obviously, Kate's all rebellious in this one.

I feel like this cover is sorely missing a sarcastic look from Stephanie or Jenny Carlin in the background laughing.

This is one of Kate's best covers. She's super adorable here!

Actually, everyone but Patti is and Patti's not even hideous. It's just the tiny eyes working against her.

Lauren looks really cute for the first time since...well, she's never looked this cute, but she last looked really good on #15.

Stephanie doesn't quite look like Stephanie, but she's rocking that outfit, so I'll let it slide.

Yessssssssss, the sweaters cover! I love love LOVE Stephanie's entire look here. I love Lauren's, too, and she looks super cute all sad, but a skirt? Try some jeans. Kate looks passably cute and Patti looks odd, but it doesn't even matter because Stephanie is rocking it so much and Lauren is still cute from the waist up.

Cutest. Stephanie. EVER. I'll even forgive the pink clothes, because she's painting, so why would she wear good red, black and white clothes? Her expression is just the cutest thing!

Kate's rocking it, too, showing off her bossy side. I love her outfit. And the baseball cap is back, but she's doing it way cuter this time.

Patti is perfection. She hasn't looked this good since #13. That Patti, while gorgeous, didn't really look like Patti though, but this awkward giraffe is exactly how I picture her in my head.

Lauren in head to toe purple? I actually briefly thought this was Ginger back again, because she's a key figure in the story, but based on the covers that come after, this is definitely Lauren.

This is definitely one of Stephanie's best outfits. She looks so perfectly Stephanie here!

Pissed off Kate looks like Kate should. And there's bratty Melissa, who was the Karen Brewer of the series.

These covers are on the right track.

Nope. Spoke too soon.

Stephanie's in the wrong colors. Patti looks okay, but the small eyes...just ugh. And Lauren does not look a bit like Lauren.

Alas! We were doing so well.

Okay, that's a bit of redemption.

Stephanie looks perfect.

Patti looks cute. When she makes certain expressions, she can make the tiny eyes work in her favor.

Lauren is cute and Kate looks like Kate. Not the best cover, but pretty solid.

This is one of my favorites. It hits all the high points.

1) Kate looks sassy. Her hair is "short and neat," like it's typically described, if I remember correctly. She's wearing an outfit that fits her personality.

2) Stephanie is perfection. Her expression is priceless and her outfit is one of her best.

3) This is the prettiest Lauren will ever look.

Although Lauren really doesn't look bad here either.

Stephanie looks great again. Kate looks good and even Patti looks good and is leaning forward to emphasize her height difference with tiny Kate.

Well done.

See what I mean about Patti's eyes working with the expressions? She looks great here.

Stephanie is adorable again.

And Kate is looking just like Kate should, except I'm not sold on the ponytail.

And here we have properly tall Patti again. And Lauren's almost as tall as her, which is also accurate.

Also again with Patti working the expression.

Lauren looks cute, although I don't think those are her colors.

Kate's got the ponytail again, but it looks better this time.

And Stephanie looks great.

And we're back to no.

While Lauren's outfit is great, her face is off. Kate looks bitchy, but just not quite right. I could see Stephanie in that outfit, but something is really wrong with her face.

The final book in the regular series! Lauren manages to look really cute while shivering. This is oddly one of her best covers. And Patti looks good, too.

I sadly no longer have my images of the Super Sleepover Guide or the Super Beach Mystery, but the guide was kind of a mess. Kate and Patti were the only ones that looked halfway right. The beach mystery was a super tall Patti in a terrible pink tee/giant orange shorts combo looking perplexed. Stephanie looked pretty, but she was wearing tie-dye. I think her suitcase got lost? Lauren all "gasp" and Kate's concerned or bitchy. I can't recall which and I'm too lazy to get it off my shelf. I maybe someday scan these covers and add them to this post!