American Girl Doll News

On American Girl's TikTok, a new American Girl Truly Me outfit was revealed. Here it is!

Felicity Merriman is the first Doll of the Month of 2024! Felicity Merriman is from Williamsburg, Virginia during the Revolutionary War in 1774. Felicity lives in a large family and is expected to do "sitting down kinds of things", but her true dream is to ride horses, which comes to a head when Felicity finds her own horse, Penny. As the war between the colonies and England rages on, Felicity is able to find herself - and her own independence. Felicity was released in 1991, made an online-exclusive in 2002, brought back to to catalogs in 2005, retired in 2011, rereleased in 2017, re-retired in 2019, and brought back for a limited time in 2021 for American Girl's 35th anniversary.

As we get closer to next month's rumored release of new Truly Me dolls, more rumors and information is coming out about the dolls. Here it is! DISCLAIMER: Posting leaked images of any kind before an item's official release date is against AGDN policy due to legal issues. Please refrain from commenting photos, links to photos or any other media with leaked items. Your support will keep AGDN running for years to come. Thank you! There will be at least four new Truly Me dolls, numbered 125, 126, 127 and 128. One of the new Truly Me dolls will be the revealed revamped Truly Me #88, with pink-and-blue colored hair. 128 is rumored to have the Josefina mold, medium skin, freckles, brown eyes and black hair. 128 is also rumored to have a new meet outfit - a purple dress.

Now that Kavi's year is over, American Girl is having a sale on Kavi and her accessories - if you buy a Kavi doll, you get her accessories for free, now until January 31!

Where do I start? Oh, that's right. American Girl Doll News turns 10 YEARS OLD today. No words can describe how proud I am of this site and what it's become. I was only 8 when I started it for fun, posting random stuff about my American Girl dolls. Some of you know the story, though. Posted something about the "Girl of the Year 2015" - predicted her name would be Grace Thomas - and then, it ended up getting more views than 9 Year Old Sydney could have ever imagined. So I kept going, covering the release of more new American Girl dolls and products. One year in, I got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Two years in, my parents separated and I graduated elementary school. Three years in, I moved to a new house and visited the American Girl headquarters. Four years in, I was gifted Luciana Vega and started my own doll company - which didn't work out too well, but at least I had fun! Five years in, I graduated middle school. Six years in, I made the longest American Girl doll stopmotion of all time - and came out to the world as a lesbian. Seven years in, I was on Good Morning America to ring in the release of Girl of the Year 2021, Kira Bailey. Eight years in, I was supposed to go to the premiere of the Corinne Tan movie - that didn't happen for obvious reasons, but the thought is what counts! Nine years in, I graduated high school, started college, and was gifted Lila Monetti when it looked like I wasn't going to make it to her release. (But I did go to her release ;). All this is to say, my life has changed a lot since I started this blog. However, despite everything else in my life changing since the day I started this blog in 2014, one thing has stayed constant - this blog, and my love for American Girl dolls. And even as I grow up, even as I start my grown-up career and go to college, I want to keep this blog alive for as long as I can. Because it makes me so happy, and I honestly can't imagine my life without it. And I have you all to thank. Whether you've been here since the beginning, grew out of American Girl sometime throughout this journey and stopped checking, or have only been checking for the last year or two (or even shorter) - thank you. Thank you for letting me talk about the dolls that I love so much. Thank you for letting me update you on everything going on in the world of American Girl. Thank you for letting me give you first looks at Grace Thomas, Maryellen Larkin, Lea Clark, the WellieWishers, Melody Ellison, Gabriela McBride, Tenney Grant, Logan Everett, Z Yang, Nanea Mitchell, Luciana Vega, Blaire Wilson, Joss Kendrick, Courtney Moore, Kira Bailey, Makena Williams, Evette Peeters, Maritza Ochoa, Corinne Tan, Gwynn Tan, Claudie Wells, Kavi Sharma, Isabel Hoffman, Nicki Hoffman, and Lila Monetti. Thank you for letting me take you through a Truly Me rebrand, and then the revamping of the entire line. Thank you for letting me take you through the rise and fall of BeForever, the cubing and retiring of several dolls, the release of numerous American Girl books and seven movies, two American Girl Live tours, the opening and closing of numerous stores, countless releases, two go-arounds of featuring every American Girl doll as Doll of the Week, and then letting each doll have their own month so we don't go through them every 3 years, the shift of the Girls of the Year from January 1 to October 4, countless collaborations, and so, so much more. I love American Girl. I love this blog. And I hope I can share the love with all of you for as long as I can. Thank you, for everything. -Sydney

In American Girl's marketing materials for the new Pet Spa and Daycare, there is a doll that resembles the Truly Me #88 that is now on clearance. At first, I looked, and I was like "why promote a doll that's soon to be retired?" And then? I looked at her eyelashes. They were the revamped ones. My brain immediately went, "A NEW TRULY ME DOLL!", and took screenshots of every image of her on the website. So, blog readers disappointed that no Truly Me dolls came out this month, be patient - this confirmed that they're coming!

The new American Girl items for January 2024 came on the website today! (Well, more like last night, but I was already about to go to bed when I realized they came out. I'm sorry guys!)

An American Girl Little People set was supposed to release in June 2023, but has been delayed multiple times. Here's an update on the production of the set: "Thanks for checking in with us to see when we’re going to release the American Girl Collectors Little People Set. I apologize for the delayed response, as we’ve been receiving a high volume of requests. I appreciate your patience. I’m excited about it, too! Regrettably, the production process can change at any time, so we aren’t able to specify a release date. I’m truly sorry for this disappointing news. Our website showcases a number of different products, some of which aren’t available in stores right now. Please keep checking retailers in your area." Not so fun fact: Corinne's movie was delayed seven months to July 2023 after being scheduled for December 2022. This set has also been delayed seven months, but if it's delayed for one more month, the excess time waiting for this Little People set will be longer than the excess time we spent waiting for Corinne's movie to come out!

The last 2 Mondays being holidays have been making me forget when to post the Doll of the Month stuff, but now that they're over, I should get back into the swing of things soon! Anyways, here's the Doll of the Month poll for 2024 - the choices are Mia St. Clair, Felicity Merriman and Nicki Hoffman! P.S: Tomorrow is the 10 year anniversary of AGDN! I'm having a party with my family tomorrow night to celebrate - we're making cake and watching at least one American Girl movie! I'll make sure to post pictures on Saturday!

Hey everyone! Here's the summary and my review of Lila Goes for Gold, the second book in her series! This is a completely different story from Lila's journal, and picks up a few days after the end of the journal, where Lila is practicing for her first gymnastics meet. After practice, Lila has a sleepover with her best friend Katie, who shares with Lila big news: she's joining Aberg's Gymnastics and the competitive team! Lila is confused at first - Katie didn't want to join a competitive team - but Katie missed Lila enough to try it out. On Katie's first day at the gym, Coach McKenna tells the team that Lila isn't ready to join the Gold team yet and proposes a mock gymnastics meet in four weeks, where Lila will compete on Gold and officially join the team if she does well. However, Lila and Katie hang out together at practice and goof off, to the annoyance of Lila's serious teammate Avery. The next day, Lila and Katie visit Hollyhock at Honeycrisp Hill, but Hollyhock steps on Lila's foot and swells her toe, making her unable to practice gymnastics. Lila tries to practice and hide her injury, but McKenna notices after Lila hurts her toe while dismounting off of a beam and tells Lila she can't practice for a week. Meanwhile, while Katie practices her floor routine for the first time, Avery judges her. Once Lila gets back to practicing gymnastics, she struggles with her floor routine, specifically her round off back handspring, and getting her beam routine right. Avery gives her tips on her beam routine, which helps, but once the mock meet comes up, Katie is more nervous than Lila. Lila does her beam routine perfectly, but still needs a spot on her back handspring. Lila places in beam and floor, making it to Gold, but Katie doesn't even place, only gets a participation medal - and admits to Lila that she doesn't like competing on a gymnastics team. The practice after the gymnastics meet, Lila overhears McKenna telling an assistant coach, Sawyer, that she is homesick for Seattle and might leave. Believing that McKenna can't leave, Lila invites her and Katie to Honeycrisp Hill's Fall Fest, hoping that seeing horses and other animals will make McKenna feel less homesick. At Fall Fest, they meet a baby goat named Buttons, who Katie falls in love with, and try horseback riding, which Katie struggles with. Over the next few days, the differences between Lila and Katie, as well as Katie's problems with Avery, bother Lila a little bit, and she thinks their relationship will be different if they like different things. McKenna reassures her that people can like different things and still be friends, but Lila still worries, especially when Katie tells her that she believes that Lila only cares about winning and competition when it comes to gymnastics and doesn't want to do anything for fun. This boils to a head once Katie accidentally slips that McKenna might be leaving the gym. McKenna explains that her grandma is sick and needs her, and the next practice, she is called home for a family emergency. Sawyer takes over coaching the team, but Avery offers to help more, which bothers Katie, and gets Lila and Katie into another fight. At the practice before Halloween, Katie and Avery fight over a mistake Katie made, and after Katie shares her concerns that Avery only cares about winning, Lila tries to explain Avery's side. However, Katie cuts her off, saying that Lila has become too competitive, and leaves. Lila then trick-or-treats alone, while seeing Katie with another friend from school, her heart sinking. Lila tells her mom about what's been happening with her and Katie not enjoying the same things anymore, and she tells her that "you're not going to always enjoy the same things. And that's okay." Lila then tells her mom about what Katie does enjoy - Buttons - and then remembers that Buttons is going to be reunited with her siblings the next day after being separated from them. She asks Katie if she wants to see Buttons, and while they visit Buttons, the two friends reconcile - with only seven days left until the gymnastics meet. Throughout the next few days, the team bonds, and at the meet, Lila performs her back handspring without a spotter, places in her events, and Katie places in some events as well. To top it all off, McKenna comes back to witness Lila and her teammates's placing. MY REVIEW Wow. That's the first word that came to my mind after trying to write something profound about this book... just "wow". At first, the book started rather slow, and I was a little nervous that it wouldn't be all that good after being pleasantly surprised by Lila's Journal back in October. But then, everything started to pick up, and all the plot threads worked so well with each other that I couldn't help but be amazed. Of course, Lila and her world is as endearing as it was in the journal, but that wasn't the part that spoke to me the most, even though it really made the book stand out. I'd say the part that did speak to me was probably the conflict between Lila and Katie that built up throughout the book and then ended up resolving towards the end. Usually, I do rag on American Girl a lot for making Girl of the Years randomly fight with their best friends for absolutely no reason, but the execution of that concept in Lila's story, showing how it actually happened and how they were actually able to resolve the conflict, really did it for me. Showing readers that even though people might change, you can still be friends, did it for me too, in a sense - when I was around Lila's age, people didn't even want to hang out with me anymore because they grew out of American Girl dolls, and that really hurt. However, seeing that Lila and Katie could still be friends despite being different people - it made me want to time travel back to 2015 and hand this book to everyone who didn't want to be my friend anymore, lol! But that's not the point. The point is, after years of personal friendship troubles and half-baked friendship fights in the American Girl world, this book and how well it was written kind of healed my inner child. And that was pretty cool. 8/10

I visited the American Girl store in Charlotte, North Carolina today to pick up Lila Goes for Gold, and I got to see all the new Truly Me pet items, as well as a new beach towel for girls! First, the beach towel was right by the checkout. Then, I picked up my book! I already finished reading it, so expect my review later tonight! After I checked out, I rushed over to the Truly Me section to check out the new items, and I found quite a few! First, the Tropical Taffy Poodle that was spotted by one of my readers on New Year's Eve. Then, I saw a new big ticket item, the American Girl Pet Spa and Daycare! This comes with an exclusive pet, the Brioche Bulldog. The next item is a matching robe set for dolls and girls, the Comfy Puppy Robe Set for Dolls and Girls. Lastly, a new pajama set for dolls came out, the Waking Up Is Ruff PJs.

American Girl is offering 2.5x the amounts of points to AG Rewards members on purchases of books from now until January 31 to commemorate the end of the 25 year anniversary of The Care And Keeping of You, which released in 1998.