All The New News...A Little Late

If you follow American Girl at all, and I am assuming that is why you are here, then you have probably heard all the new news that was released on Valentine's Day! It was a huge day for AG, releasing some information that people were already well aware of (Tenney and Logan), and some that surprised most...Including an all new face mold!!!

The title of this post is actually slightly misleading, as I'm not going to include all of the new information in this blog. I will write a second blog to include everything I miss in this one, but this post is going to be full enough as it is as I share with you the news, and my excitement about, American Girl's newest historical doll in their BeForever line: Nanea Mitchell! (I swear, Tenney, Logan, Z, Felicity, panties, collections, I'll cover them all in my next post. Cross my heart.) 

Just in case you somehow haven't seen Nanea, brace yourself! Here she comes!

Why, yes. That is a new face mold! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! (Which is exactly how I woke my poor husband up the morning of February 14th. poor guy must really love me to put up with that.) After that initial, extremely enthusiastic, reaction my first thought was that her face mold, a beautiful new face mold, made her look younger than the other girls to me for some reason. This is not a negative, but she just looks so stunningly different than any of the other girls, and her face just looks so sweet and innocent to me!

I was also a bit thrown by her eyes. I don't mind hazel eyes. Several of my favorite people have hazel eyes. Why in the world does every second doll released have to have hazel eyes though? I think Nanea would look amazing with deep brown eyes! In the days since her reveal they have started to grow on me, but I am still considering braving my first eye swap when I get her, just because I think she'd look so damn cute with brown eyes! (But eye swaps scare me a bit, so who knows?)

We can act like she wouldn't look amazing with brown eyes, but we all know that's not true. 

It was last August when I first wrote about Nanea Mitchell being trademarked by American Girl, and at the time all we really knew was that Nanea is a Hawaiian name. Sure enough, Nanea, who is going to be this years historical/BeForever release, hails to us from Hawaii...1941 Hawaii.

I fully admit that this news disappointed me a little at first. One of the things that I've loved about American Girl since I was a child is the history and how it is covered. The 1900s have an extremely generous representation already, and imagining a girl from Hawaii I wasn't hoping for yet another girl from the 1900s, much less a time period already covered by another doll. However, after the initial disappointment, I started really thinking about some of the amazing, and difficult, topics that could be covered by a little girl in Hawaii at the time of Pearl Harbor and our country's entering into World War II. 

It was addressed briefly in Molly's stories how very out of touch much of American was during the War. (When Emily Bennett came to live her family from war torn England and didn't find blackouts as fun as Molly and her brothers did.) Yes, there were hardships, rationing, fear of losing a loved one, but for the most part Americans were safe here on the home front. Blackouts were considered a fun game by many children Molly's age, children who had never actually had to live through the horrors of listening to bombs being dropped onto their cities and homes, children who might never see an actual soldier outside a movie reel or their own family member returning home to them. This would not be the world that Nanea knew growing up in Hawaii. 

Everyone knows that Hawaii was attacked on December, 7, 1941, and from that moment on Hawaii was changed. After the attack by Japan, Japanese-Americans were viewed with everything from suspicion to outright hostility. There were internment camps set up on the mainland where thousands of innocent Japanese-Americans were imprisoned, but due to both the size of Hawaii's Japanese population (around 40% of the population was Japanese-American at the time), and the fact that the economy would have completely collapsed without them, internment camps on the islands were impossible. Instead, all of Hawaii was put under strict martial law within hours of the Pearl Harbor attack. For years the residents of Hawaii lived under the rule of America's military and were forced to see a much more up close and personal reality of war than those living in the rest of the country. (Hawaii was not a state at the time.) 

Nanea will be a chance for the spotlight to be put on a very different, and very difficult, time period than what Molly was experiencing in 1944, and my biggest concern now is that you will get parents who, like they did with Melody, declare that their precious little ones simply aren't old enough to read or learn about such unpleasantness. *stepping on my soapbox for a moment* We are doomed to repeat history if we insist upon acting like it didn't happen, ladies and gentlemen. Look around you. The evidence is very much there. Your children are not to young to learn about the very real history of our country when there are children who were actually forced to live it and come out the other side. Give them more credit than that, and step outside of your comfort zone, because it really isn't your children who can't handle these topics. *stepping down now* 

But, seriously, isn't she pretty?!

American Girl revealed Nanea in a live video on their Facebook, and we also were able to get a sneak peek of her book and what might be some of her accessories. 

By this time last year they had already released Melody's first book, but there is no date that I have heard yet for Nanea's first book release. I can not begin to tell you how frustrating this is to me, but I am trying to be patient and hopeful that it will be soon. As of now, her release date is rumored to be August 24th, which would go along with AGs theme of August BeForever released that last couple of years. At least I know where I'll be on August 24th this year. 

And just because I really can't get enough...

I'll get to those other dolls next time. (The other's have now been covered in their own post.) Just look at Nanea though! 

~Mrs. D