In Friday’s blog, promised that I would do a positive blog on dolls.
Last year, I wrote about dolls for kids of different ethnicities in my blog Toys and Dolls for Multicultural Families. Yesterday I reminded parents that while it is good to have a doll that reflects your child, not every doll needs to “match”.
This year I can share with you some doll characters with different family constellations.
Jambo Kids are school-age dolls. They are soft-bodied dolls about 12 inches high. A book is available for each doll.
The website tells a little bit about each of the dolls. The site also has a coloring page available of each girl. The portrait of each girl fills and 8 ½ by 11 page and would be quite useful for teachers or others wishing to display some diverse pictures, whether or not the dolls and books are used.
I mentioned Jambo Kids in my blog Gifts for Multicultural Families Iast year because the “Rachel” doll’s information says that she was adopted from China when she was a baby. At the time I didn’t realize the other dolls’ storylines were planned to include adoption also, so I was presently surprised to revisit the site this year and learn that five other dolls are also adopted.
The stories accompanying the dolls represent different family units and different types of adoption as well. One of the dolls lives with a single mother; one with an aunt who is adopting her. The characters include city girls, country girls, and small-town girls; children who were adopted as babies, as toddlers, and at elementary school age; only children and children with many brothers and sisters. They are adopted from China, Russia, Guatemala, Russia and Liberia and the U.S., from foster care and by kinship adoption.
Anya was adopted from Russia when she was two years old. She now lives in Boston with her violinist mother and loves nature, especially animals. She dreams of being a writer, “to help people understand”.
Red-headed Tilly’s blurb says that she was “recently” adopted by a large and loving farm family in Montana. To me, that implies that she was adopted from foster care somewhere between ages 5 and 10. Tilly is described as lively but shy. She loves to sing but worries about singing in front of others.
Luz loves to learn about different cultures and different visual arts. She shares this love with her adoptive parents, archeologists who fell in love with her when they went to Guatemala to study the ruins of the great Mayan civilization.
Niecey is an African-American girl who is “quiet but notices everything”. When Niecey was seven, she went to live with her aunt in Mississippi, where her aunt has a famous pie shop. Niecey is extremely kind, [her creators tell us], and she wants to become a preacher when she grows up.
The site’s creators express their idealism in their blurbs for the dolls, as exemplified in this quote: “Rachel comes from a long line of brave and strong women, and will always carry a piece of China in her heart. She is beginning to understand that although people may seem different on the outside, we are much the same on the inside. Someday, she will help many people learn where they come from and why they are special.”
I was happy to see a diversity of skin tones—for example, the Liberian-born Jazzie’s doll is dark chocolate brown, African-American Niecy’s is a lighter brown. Each doll had different features and expressions, instead of one token dark-skinned doll. The Guatemalan, African-American and Chinese dolls actually had fairly similar skin tones. They would work for kids who are biracial as well as kids of different ethnicities.
(As the website creators point out, 45% of kids under five in the US are not white. All our kids will benefit from seeing that there is a real diversity within groups as well as between groups.)
The books which correspond to each doll illuminate certain aspects of her birth culture. (Rachel’s adventure involves a dragon at Chinese New Year; Anya’s, a snow leopard. Luz takes a trip to Guatemala with her adoptive parents.)
There is a discount in buying the doll and book as a set. Puzzles and posters are also available for each doll, as is a trading card and memory card game featuring scenes from that girl’s book.
The Jambo Kids site also offers a free downloadable publication for parents on activities to develop character traits in children.