AMERICAN GIRL OF THE YEAR: Grace

Vacation is the perfect time to knock out some more book reviews. I brought a ton of books with me. I always bring way more than I can read. I'm starting with trying to finish off my American Girl of the Year reviews, including some I've never read before!

I left off with Isabelle back in...February? Isabelle was the last GotY to have the older book format with lots of illustrations. Grace's book begins the new style that are basically just chapter books. The only pictures here are the ones on the covers. 

Mary Casanova is Grace's author. She also did Jess, Chrissa, and McKenna's books, and a couple mysteries, as well as Cécile: Gates of Gold, one of my precious Girls of Many Lands series. 

Grace was the GotY for 2015.

Grace's first book is set mostly in Paris. Her mother has to fly over to help her younger sister, who's about to give birth. Grace comes along for the 5-week stay. 

Grace's aunt Sophie runs a bakery alongside her husband Bernard. Bernard has a daughter named Sylvie, who's a year younger than Grace. 

Grace and Sylvie get off to a rocky start, but manage to patch things up once they finally both communicate to each other that neither has a good grasp of the other's language. 

The fourth book in the series, which comes only in ebook form, is Grace & Sylvie. This was written by a different author, but it blends seamlessly with the first book. 

Even though it was the last one written, I suggest reading it second. It tells a lot of the story from the first book only through Sylvie's eyes, so you really can see what she's going through. 

So Grace fixes things with her cousin and gets into the swing of helping in the bakery. She also spends a lot of time with a stray French bulldog she names Bonbon. At the end, Bonbon ends up coming home with her!

The second book picks up right where the first left off with Grace only just arrived home from Paris. She struggles with training Bonbon, who's been a street dog for who knows how long. 

Then she struggles with her friends. The three had planned to start a business together before Grace learned she was going to Paris. While there, Ella and Maddy began a dog-walking business, which Grace felt very left out of. To her mixed feelings, that ended up not working out, but she returned to the US with the idea to start a French baking business. Both her friends are slow to get on board. Neither is into baking. Ella's dad just lost her job, so she has no money to help buy baking supplies. Maddy's just...kind of a brat. She only wants to do things her way and she only really wants to do what she's good at (the more artistic stuff). (I swear, there are a lot of girls named Maddy in books. This one is the redhead.) 

The three girls eventually figure everything out with the help of their parents, Grace's grandparents and her older brother. 

The third book finds the girls' back in school with their business doing very well. Unfortunately, the bad things start to come. Maddy's mom brings them bad news about needing business licenses and an approved kitchen, which would mean Bonbon could never set foot in the family kitchen again. Not likely. Grace gets the idea to work from the kitchen at her grandparents' bakery and it's going great, with supervision from Ella's dad who's still out of work, until her grandparents announce that business is so bad they're going to have to sell. 

Grace brainstorms and gets an idea to revamp the bakery into one that looks a bit more French. (Of course.) People start to believe the girls' business has taken over the old bakery and with the orders pouring in, Grace's grandparents realize they need to team up. So both bakeries join forces and that saves her grandparents from having to sell and the girls from having so many orders they can't possibly fill them all. Ella's dad is also hired on as a part-time manager with the potential to go full-time, so that works out, too. 

Grace's books are good, but not the most enjoyable for me. I'm not into baking. Or French anything really. I do love a good macaron and a Napoleon, but I don't want to read about baking prep for pages and pages. I like Grace and Ella a lot, but Maddy never grew on me after her obnoxiousness in the second book. 

American Girl of the Year: McKenna

2012's GotY was McKenna Brooks. McKenna's main thing is that she's a gymnast.

In the first book, McKenna has fallen behind with the harder schoolwork of fourth grade. Her teacher and parents decide she needs a tutor, so she meets Josie Myers, a slightly older girl in a wheelchair.

After her initial reservations, McKenna finds herself liking both Josie and her tutoring methods, though she ends up in trouble with her gymnast friends for not telling them she was being tutored.

She gets sidelined with a broken ankle near the end of the book.

McKenna's second book has her recovered from her broken ankle and caught up on her schoolwork. She doesn't even need tutoring anymore, but she and Josie remain friends.

McKenna goes along with Josie on her first horseback-riding lesson, because Josie's afraid. There, McKenna learns about the place, which works with children with all forms of disabilities. She loves it and wants to volunteer there by the end of the book.

The big conflict in this book is really Toulane, McKenna's supposed best friend, but really, she's borderline frenemy. Toulane is just not a very nice character. She comes into her own by the end of this book, but she's one of the least likeable "best friends" for the GotYs. Toulane is struggling with no longer wanting to do competitive gymnastics. She wants to do rhythmic instead, but is afraid to tell her overly dominant mother about it. Near the end of the boo, both she and McKenna make the competitive team only for Toulane to hand her medal back, saying she wants to do rhythmic instead and giving her spot to their third friend, Sierra.

 McKenna's books are all right. They're on the dull, slow-paced side, which is why it took me so long to slog through them again. Josie is by far the best character. She's the one who really should have been GotY. I love her. McKenna isn't horrible but she's not spectacular either, and Toulane is 99% unlikeable. Not the best efforts from AG.

American Girl of the Year: Chrissa

Chrissa is 2009's Girl of the Year. She's the anti-bullying one. Chrissa was a bit different in that her doll was released alongside two best friend dolls, something that's never been done since.

I really wish we'd gotten some of the other girls' friends. I don't mind Sonali and Gwen, but I would have loved Sarita from Jess's book, for example.

Chrissa has just moved in with her grandmother, who claimed her house was too big for just her after her husband's death. So here come Chrissa, her older brother Tyler, their doctor mom and potter dad.

Chrissa immediately has to deal with bullying in school. It happens directly to her when her valentines are stolen and it happens to Gwen in front of Chrissa.

Things only get worse and even take on a physical form. Chrissa is stabbed in the back by someone's mechanical pencil and she has to push the lead out of her skin in the girls' room. Gwen has her bangs chopped off by Tara, the queen bully.

Throughout the book, Chrissa is afraid to tell anyone what's happening. I understand this lesson, because it can be hard to tell, but at the same time, JUST FUCKING TELL SOMEONE. One of those little bitches friggin' stabbed you with a pencil, for fuck's sake.

Chrissa finally tells the truth, turns bully-lite Sonali into a friend, befriends formerly homeless Gwen, and the three get the bullies separated into different desk "clusters" at school.

Gwen's homelessness is a very minor plotline I wish they'd spent more time on.

I like both of Chrissa's parents and her grandmother, but her brother is not going to win any sibling awards anytime soon. He doesn't listen when Chrissa tells him Tara and Jadyn are mean girls. He even goes along with one of their plots and snaps her goggles on her face, leaving red marks behind. And his apology for that is not nearly sufficient enough. He's a dick.

And he continues to be kind of a dick in the second book. This time Chrissa faces off against him though and even becomes involved in some minor bullying herself, although it culminates in a more major accident.

Set in summer, Chrissa, Gwen and Sonali have become fast friends, but Tara is also showing signs of changing and Chrissa wants to give her a chance. The other two do not and they basically cut Chrissa out of their lives because she's willing to give Tara a chance to change. Dick move, you two. I can understand not wanting to hang with Tara, but don't cut Chrissa out because she's willing to let people change and you're less trusting.

There are instances of text bullying and cyber-bullying, both of which Gwen and Sonali think Tara is behind. Chrissa points out there's no evidence and they really turn against her. Chrissa turns out to be right though! Jadyn is the culprit, so they both have to suck it up and apologize for jumping to the wrong conclusions.

This book is more about how people can change and move forward in their lives, and how we need to try to give them a chance to make things right. But it's also about how easy it is to become caught up in bullying behavior, whether it's minor or not.

I remember liking these more when they came out, but now a decade later, I wasn't really feeling either. I like the characters okay, but not nearly as much as past GotYs. I actually ended up with the Chrissa doll, but it wasn't long before I sold her.

WTF is up with the illustrations for Sonali, too? She's way lighter in the art than her doll. The darkest she is is right there on the second book cover and that's still way lighter than the doll. SIGH.

So yeah, important message in these two books, but the execution hasn't held up, in my opinion. Kind of wondering why I liked these enough to buy the doll back then. Maybe I liked the movie better...

American Girl of the Year: Jess

Ah, Jess. I really almost caved and got this doll in 2006. I ended up starting my adult AG collecting in 2007, once I moved to NYC and had access to the store, but I just missed Jess. My first doll was Ivy, who shares the same mold, and my second was a Girl of Today that looked almost exactly like Jess (who's still my favorite).

Loving the doll aside, Jess is one of my favorite GotYs, because her parents are archaeologists and her entire book takes place in Belize, some in the jungle and some on a dig site.

Jess is part Japanese and part Scottish/Irish. She wouldn't be the first multiracial Asian AG character. Kanani and Nanea, the Hawaiian American girls, are both part white as well. Ivy and Z are the only fully Asian AG characters. Ivy's a best friend and Z wasn't an official GotY. So as of yet, we have no full Asian Girl of the Year. I'm still waiting, AG.

Jess is a fun character. She's one of those that reacts more to what happens to her than shows a lot of her personal character. Like we know she likes soccer, but she doesn't show us that much of herself when it comes to personal details. We know nothing about her friends, for example. Which is fine, because going along with her on her adventures is great by me. She's certainly in a more interesting setting than California or Chicago, so I like seeing her react to her environment and its experiences. And boy, does she ever have experiences! 

AMERICAN GIRL: Kit Mystery

Kit looks really weird on this cover.

Second AG BeForever mystery of the day, second by Mary Casanova.

Once again, she provides multiple suspects that are meant to throw you off the trail, but the culprit isn't quite as obvious as in Rebecca's book.

And once again, Kit's in Kentucky and the locals don't cotton to outsiders. A bit of this is part of the plot, because they're having their land eminent domained out from under them to create the national park, but there's also at least one incident of it being said about a thing that was trivial.

This was decent, but not one of Kit's best. She seems too easily frightened and that's not the Kit I know.

Points though for them not dumbing down or sugarcoating any of the bad business going on here.

AMERICAN GIRL: Rebecca Mystery

I strayed from the AG historicals for far too long! I finally read Rebecca's mystery from this past February's mystery releases.

It's not a bad story. Very Rebecca. Her cousin Michael is working as a painter for a theater that has a rooftop farm, which was based on a real thing, so that's pretty cool. Ana and Rebecca take Michael his lunch and stumble into a job opportunity, which they sorely need, because this is set right after Rebecca's sixth book, where her uncle and other male cousin lose their factory jobs.

Being Rebecca, she thinks they're going to be performers, but no, they're farm chore girls. While she's disappointed, Ana gets along swimmingly with their supervisor, a woman named Flora. Rebecca is thrilled, however, when an up and coming Ziegfeld Girl named Olivia ("Ollie") visits the farm for her daily milk. Ollie manages to get the girls to deliver her glass of milk to the theater across the street every day.

Their employer forces Rebecca and Ana to use this opportunity to spy on the rival theater. Neither girl is happy about it, but the asshole theater owner holds Michael's job above their heads.

Rebecca is taken in by Ollie and the theater world, while Ana remains more loyal to Flora and doing what they're told.

As the story unfolds, it becomes clear someone is trying to sabotage Ollie and it's up to Rebecca to figure out who.

It's a fun story, even though the culprit was pretty obvious. There are enough red herrings that I'm not sure the target age group would figure it out as fast as I did though. I always love Beckie, so I'm pleased she got another decent book.