As a little girl, I used to be obsessed with the American Girl Doll franchise. I have such fond memories of my grandparents taking me to the American Girl Doll store in the Grove. I loved the store so much because the dolls weren't just their to look pretty--each doll had a historical background and story to go along with her. The dolls all had their very own little section of the store; which showed historical artifacts about what they wore in their time, what was popular in their time, and the issues that were going on while they were alive.

   Besides the interesting museum-style design of the store, the American Girl Doll franchise also sold books and movies about each doll. I recently read one of these books just for nostalgic reasons.

    The book is called "Happy Birthday, Samantha" and it centers around an American Girl named Samantha, who is growing up in the early 1900s. Samantha, a young girl turning 10 years old, is going to New York with her immediate family: grandmother (nicknamed Grandmary), Aunt Cornelia, Uncle Gard, and Cornelia's sisters Agatha and Agnes.

   The first thing naive Samantha sees in New York is a suffragist protest, with women holding up signs saying stuff like "It's Time For Change" and "Women Have the Right To Vote." Samantha, wondering what these signs and these women mean, asks Grandmary who they are and why they want change. Grandmary, an old-fashioned women, puts down the suffragists and says how they are only causing a "ruckus."

   Little does Grandmary know that her own daaughter-in-law, Aunt Cornelia, is a strong suffragist who in fact is speaking at that day's suffragist meeting.

   Grandmary, still strong in her beliefs, keeps putting down suffragists at the lunch table. Aunt Cornelia, feeling insulted, secretly tells her husband Gard that she refuses to listen to his mother's insults about suffragists, and will still continue to speak at the suffragist meeting that afternoon.

  Later that day, Grandmary stumbles over to Madison Square Park--the exact place where Cornelia is giving a strong-willed speech about how women deserve the rights to have a say in the laws and vote on what's right.

  Finally deciding to confess that she was the speaker at the suffragist meeting, Cornelia almost stands up to Grandmary by telling the honest truth that she does think women should have the right to vote. Grandmary admits that she saw Cornelia speak, and in fact has changed her old-fashioned ways and also agrees that women need change. Moral of the story: Because Grandmary had an open mind and decided to listen to a different opinion other than her own. Grandmary realized that being closed-minded in her old-fashioned opinions doesn't help her decide where she stands as much as also listening to opinions other than her own.

   These are the lessons we should be teaching today's youth. With the amount of controversial problems regarding gun control, abortion, LGBT+ rights, and many more...these are the best books to share with young children about the debates of the past, and how people dealt with them. Thank you to American Girl for teaching me and other children so many valuable lessons. Even at 17 years old, I'he never forgotten those lessons and never will.