It's December, which means a bunch of holidays, winter break and, for American Girl fans around the world, the new American Girl of the Year doll! Here's what we know about 2022's addition to the Girl of the Year doll line, who will presumably debut on December 31:
First, we'll start with her name. Her name is rumored to be Corinne Tan. Corinne is pronounced "ker-in" and is a Greek name that means "beautiful maiden". Corinne, however, probably isn't Greek. Her last name, Tan, is of Chinese origin, and it's character is 譚. (Fun fact that I didn't know about until researching this: Tan is the 56th most common last name in China!)
Corinne will have 2 books, like every Girl of the Year starting with 2019's Blaire Wilson. While the covers of the books haven't been revealed yet, the author and illustrator have been revealed.
The book series will be written by Wendy Wan-Long Shang, who is a Chinese-American author. Wendy writes about the experiences of Chinese-American adolescents in middle-grade books. Her characters are also usually Jewish.
If these trends continue in Corinne's series, Corinne will be the first Girl of the Year of any Chinese ancestry, the first fully-Asian Girl of the Year (2006's Jess McConnell was 1/2 Japanese, and 2011's Kanani Akina was 1/4 Japanese and 1/4 Hawaiian) and the second Jewish Girl of the Year (after 2001's Lindsey Bergman, the first Girl of the Year).
The illustrator of Corinne's series is Peijin Yang, a freelance illustrator who resides in Munich, Germany. One thing to note about Peijin is that she has 267,000 followers on Instagram where she showcases her art.
Now, we'll get to the good stuff. A big surprise for the AG fandom back in April was when, not one, but TWO names with the same last name were trademarked by American Girl. This led to many theories about the two names, but it was then rumored that the second name, Gwynn Tan, was actually Corinne's little sister, who would be produced as a doll the same size as the WellieWishers.
Her story description hasn't been revealed yet, but many things can be assumed about Corinne from Amazon book categories and other factors.
Obviously, since Corinne and Gwynn are sisters, the books are categorized in "Siblings". But book 2 of the series has an interesting category: "New Baby". This probably means that in the second book in her series, Corinne will get a new baby sibling. The Caring for Baby set in the Truly Me line is wildly successful, so I can imagine that a new baby set will be available in Corinne's collection.
Another category in the books is "Dogs", which means a dog will play a role in this series. We could probably have guessed that, since every few years, the GOTY has a dog, and Kira, the 2021 GOTY, had Australian animals in her collection and no dog. Speaking of dogs, here's a picture of Corinne's dog from the GOTY 2022 release party invitations!
The dog is so cute!
Also in this picture, we can see that Corinne has light skin and has a white sweater, lilac leggings, and blue winter boots. This brings us to our next topic: winter!
Corinne and Gwynn both love winter activities. While Gwynn is rumored to have an interest in ice skating, Corinne likes to ski and will have a ski outfit and skis in her collection, as shown in an advertisement for the GOTY 2022 Release Party.
(A cropped version of this image is my screen on my school laptop. That's how excited I am for this doll. Anyway, back to the post.)
American Girl also shared an image of Corinne's ski boots in the same advertising email:
The last rumor about Corinne that I am sharing today is that she is rumored to live in Aspen, Colorado, which is a ski resort town. (It's also a town full of extremely rich people. The cheapest house is like three million dollars. Interesting.)
So, yeah! We are only a few weeks from Corinne Tan's release! Who's excited? I'll be at the store on release day and getting my Corinne, Gwynn and hopefully some of the collection!