I loved American Girl so much that I wrote a paper about the books for a class in grad school, which necessitated reading all the books and realizing all over again how wonderful they were - the range not only of ethnicities but of personalities and goals among the girls, the strong friendships between girls (indeed, strong relationships between female characters in the books as a whole), and also just plain old exciting stories.

It's been very distressing to watch the quality go downhill, not just in the (lack of) illustrations but in the books themselves.