Happy Birthday, Kate! ... Analyzing Happy Birthday, Felicity ! My friend Kate asked me to analyze an American Girls book and point out things that are inaccurate or just plain misleading as a birthday present to her. Because the analysis is a birthday present, I chose a birthday book – Happy Birthday, Felicity! It’s the fourth book in a series following the life of Felicity Merriman, a ten-year old girl in 1770s Virginia. The Felicity books came out in the early 1990s, and while the American Girl empire keeps expanding, Felicity’s stories are one of the ones I remember from my own childhood. Before I begin, I just want to say that there are a lot of great things about the American Girl books, and I don’t mean my criticisms to be a condemnation of the books. Some things are not wrong but oversimplified, and in some cases I would have chosen to simplify them differently or not at all. Some elements of the American Girl books disproportionately represent girls with liv...
public historian ~ museum curator ~ writer ~ history of healthcare and science in society