Common Sense Note
These games encourage players to solve puzzles, navigate mazes, and use their heads in many different ways. Along the way they will learn about history, culture, and perhaps a little bit about themselves. Keep in mind, however, that there's a store here as well, so you may receive some requests for American Girl dolls, books, and accessories.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Jean Armour Polly
The American Girls book and doll series features dolls and stories from various periods in American history. The product line has expanded to include dolls from other countries living in a wide array of other historical settings. This site offers all the dolls, books, and accessories for sale, as well as subscriptions to American Girl magazine.
From the main page, you can find and purchase dolls from the various series, or select "Fun for Girls" to participate in the games and other activities. Various games are featured, but if you want to get a quick list of them all, click on the "site map."
There are character pages for each doll, offering a game or two, downloadable wallpaper, and an interactive introduction to the girl's "world," family and friends, and more. Unfortunately, the time period is not always pinpointed, so users have little idea if the various stories are all contemporaneous or not. This important time frame information should be consistent across the site, and it would help if all the dolls were located on a massive meta-time line of sorts.
The games are first-rate. Here's one example: in "Kit's Railway Adventure," set during the Great Depression era of the 30s, you travel across country from Ohio to Montana, stopping at landmarks along the way. At each locale there are interactive games to play (such as Chinese tangrams at the Chicago World's Fair). If you succeed at the game, you'll be give a clue necessary for solving the final puzzle at Glacier National Park. Oops, you can't solve it yet, because the game isn't quite finished ("Coming in 2004!"). Is this a clever ploy to get kids to make repeat visits to the site, so that they can be exposed to the brand over and over? Or did Mattel simply want to serialize the story?
Some of the games are aimed at younger girls, such as "Coconut's Day in the Park," where players listen to relaxing music and romp in the park with a cute, playful puppy. There are points for every toy Coconut catches, and it never, ever rains.
Other sections of the site are aimed at parents, and how they can help their little girls dream big dreams.
Reviewed: 05/06/2004
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