American Girl Ivy
American Girl Ivy Ling is the best friend of Julie and lives in the midst of the bustling Chinatown in Sanfrancisco. But even though there are so many people all around her she battles with loneliness and feeling like no one sees her. Her parents are very busy. While her mother is busy going to school during the week, her father is working 2 jobs to try to pay the bills and keep food on the table. All of this makes it tough on Ivy as she finds out that her best friend Julie is moving a few miles away and so they will not be able to see each other as often. However, Ivy loves gymnastics and finds a place of solace there.The Ivy AG character was released to the public in 2007 and is apart of the Julie Albright series. Ivy is the first Asian doll from American Girl as well.
Ivy Ling, 1974
Ivy Ling grew up
in San Francisco as a Chinese Girl who went through her own share of
conflicting while growing up. Through her trials she learned a lot of
new things about life. This included but not limited to; how to life
it, why, how, and with who. Ivy Ling underwent a lot of different
changes, but not half as many as a lot of the other American Girl
dolls. This of course not making her any less significant than the
others by any means.
Ivy has one of her own books called "Good
Luck, Ivy" which is a children's book and was created by Author
Lisa Yee, a children's author. The book itself was actually focused
on Ivy's conflicts with gymnastic competition responsibilities, along
with the problems she had with her family feeling like they had the
right to tell her which family traditions and responsibilities she
also had to put up with.
Another great benefit of purchasing
Ivy, and or her accessories is that you even get a "Looking
Back" section in her book that reflects and informs you a good
bit about Chinese-American history and what it's really all about to
the fairest extent. To understand her culture will most likely enable
you to also understand and further enjoy her character, what shes
about, and why.
Ivy Ling was by far the first "Best
Friend" doll to be released with the main Character and actually
strangely had a lot of correlation with Julie, believe it or not.
Julie and her consisted both of a lot of common things, primarily
looks and build methods, not including some mildly similar
characteristics or outlooks on life. This most likely being due to
them being the first few American Girl dolls to come out. Ivy also
according to the records was the first Asian doll in the historical
collection of American Girl dolls. This making quite the ideal
starting mark for future additional races of American Girl dolls,
including more Asian American Girl dolls
Interestingly it is
also recorded that Ivy has Jesse's main characteristics as mentioned
earlier, this including; face mold, shoulders hair length with bangs,
removable earrings, and brown eyes. Why this is, we are not
completely sure of yet. She unfortunately has a very limited
collection to date, and only consists of one extra outfit as of so
far with the still remaining possible opportunity for more as time
goes by.