KARITO KIDS: Piper

Ah, our final Karito Kid! Piper is the only one of the group that was not in the original set. She came later on. Her book isn't written by the same author as the first set, but by the same author as Gia's second book.

Thankfully, unlike Lulu and Pita's books, there are no terrible parents in this one! Piper's mom's only fault is that she might want her daughter to be more girly than sporty.

Piper is a junior lifesaver, which is apparently a big thing in her part of Australia. She's into rescuing people or trying to, surfing, and saving the world environmentally.

I run into any character like this and she's automatically compared to Dawn from Babysitters Club. Is she early series Dawn or later Dawn?

A good thing for Piper and for me is that she's really not all that obnoxious about her Earth-saving side. Her best friend seems to be like turbo Dawn though. I didn't care for her or her obsessive need to tell Piper what happened to her first and never let Piper share her story first.

This book is a nice blend of mystery and stuff about Australia. I loved that they traveled to the Great Barrier Reef for a couple days to show off even more of the country, even though that's not where Piper lives.

Piper is a likeable character, even though I have absolutely nothing in common with her whatsoever.

Although I do subtract points for her wearing stupid uggs all the time! I hate those hideous lumpy things.

Granted, they were more in style when this was written, so it made sense for her, but still. Hideous.

Like Lulu, my doll is not wearing her stock outfit, which is the outfit on the book cover. I don't care for sporty stuff much, so she kept her swimsuit, but took the other pieces from a different Karito fashion pack.

Piper's doll looks older than the other girls in the line, although not too much older than Gia and Lulu, which suits her because I think she's a bit more mature than most of them. Maybe all of them. She's impulsive, reckless and single-minded, but that seems to go with the territory in this series, and her book isn't super unrealistic like others were.

KARITO KIDS: Gia

I knew about Karito Kids in 2007, but didn't fall for them until summer of 2008. I was living in New York City then, attending NYU, and had just moved into a teeny tiny single room ("apartment") in their newly-acquired Brooklyn dorm. I'd been living in that building for the entire 2007-2008 school year, but I'd used a combo of luck and connections to keep my super spacious double apartment all to myself, but that came to an end when summer semester began. I wasn't taking classes, but I was working for the school at the time, with plans to relocate to a different dorm in the West Village for fall semester.

So you know, it was the perfect time to start collecting a 22" doll line!

I decided to start by getting the set of five books, one mystery for each character, and using them to choose which doll to buy first.

I ended up with Gia from Italy, the fashionista of the bunch, which seems a bit of an unusual choice for me, but her doll is still one of my favorite larger-scale dolls of all time.

You might be able to see why from the picture below. She's just stunningly gorgeous.

Each book is a mystery set in each character's country. Gia is from Florence (Firenze), Italy.

Florence Fiasco is about how Gia's family runs a small pensione (hotel). She hates her job and the drab uniform she has to wear, because she has dreams of becoming big in the fashion world.

When an older designer decides to stay in their hotel while preparing for his big comeback at Fashion Week, a pair of expensive diamond-decorated shoes go missing. The blame falls on Gia, so she takes it upon herself to solve the mystery. The designer ends up believing her and even prepares a dress for her to wear to his show. Gia gets help from a brash American rich girl and the two try to solve the mystery.

However, Gia's hypotheses are way off until she realizes, while at the fashion show, who the culprit is and races back to the hotel to get the shoes and save the day.

These books were originally released as hardcovers with names based on the locations. When the dolls got a revamp with new clothing, the books became softcovers with new titles that included the girls' names. These are the same books though! They are not new ones.

Each Karito Kid got a single book...except Gia.

Gia's second book takes place after the first, when she wins a design contest in a kids' fashion magazine. She gets to see her designs made real and even gets to model in the photo shoot. Gia insists that the skinny models from a certain agency that the magazine wants to use don't represent her vision. She manages to get the lady in charge to agree with her and replaces the scrawny models with two friends that she met at the hotel and one of her Italian friends.

However, someone's got it out for Gia and her friends. They keep receiving threats, having near-misses with a crazy lady on a motorbike, and one girl's hair even gets temporarily dyed green.

Gia struggles with asking adults for help, because she doesn't want anything to stop the photo shoot, but also whenever she tries to tell someone, no one believes her. So of course things escalate and come to a head with no one seeing the truth until Gia outs the culprit at the end.

My only real complaint about the book is that some of the minor characters seem off. Her mother was the one who supported her dream in the first book, only to be the stubborn one in this second book. Her older sister has a sudden interest in cooking that I don't think was mentioned in the first book at all. And the entire sequence where they go out of town wasn't very well-written or believable.

Still, I liked both of Gia's books a lot. They're a fun ride and while she's obsessed with fashion, Gia also sees a lot of beauty everywhere around her. She gets inspiration from art and anyone who loves museums is excellent in my book.

I just wish they'd made the outfit on the cover of her second book! Her updated doll outfit was nowhere near that pretty and not as good as her original outfit either.