About

About Islandshire and Our Blog

Hi! My name is Sarah, and I’m the identical twin sister of Elizabeth. We received our first American Girl dolls for Christmas 1995, when we were eight years old. We’ve always been crazy about dolls and have collected not only American Girl dolls but also Gene Marshall and a number of others. Having been blogging about our AGs on my personal blog, it feels like it’s high time they get their own online space.

Elizabeth (left) and Sarah (right)

Islandshire is the imaginary home of most of our AG dolls. It’s a tropical island paradise, sort of a cross between old Cuba and Hawaii! There is a large Rainforest House there (home to Nanea and Benny) and their Pearl stall, a rescue-pet stall belonging to Zaida and Bessy, a workshop under the direction of Mina, a fishing dock where Nachito rents fishing poles to tourists, a fruit smoothie stall belonging to Sun Ho and Masami, and more. Islandshire is also the vacation spot of choice for many travelling dolls who live elsewhere but just can’t resist a visit every now and then.

Someone needed to take charge of recording the comings and goings in the Islandshire world, so my doll Trudy became the one and only doll reporter for the Islandshire Gazette. Together we bring all kinds of fun doll news to this blog. (Hint: If Trudy wrote the article, it will always begin with “Trudy here.”) Other guest columnists may appear from time to time, but Trudy’s the voice of the AGs in our house. She’s very outspoken and opinionated, so the reporting profession suits her well.

Elizabeth and I are joined by our Mom in this fascination with 18″ dolls, and — between the three of us — there are more than 40 named AG dolls in the house! We have a real heart for “rescue” dolls and spend as much time as we can fixing up poor little dollies who were abused by former owners. Trudy gets very incensed on their behalf and is planning a full expose on the “meanness of little girls who should be grounded for a month and spanked every day” for the way they treat their dolls. Like I said, Trudy is a passionate little thing who speaks her mind. And her hair bobbles up and down in the cutest way during her outbursts . . .

There is always something fun happening here in the Islandshire world, so check back often, follow the blog and feel free to comment or contact us!

One of the perks of reviewing AG doll releases that aren’t fueled by American Girl freebies is that we get to describe what we see “as we see it”. Occasionally, we get to leave measurements and comparisons behind to write a review based entirely on our opinions. (No “incentivized reviews” here, since we use our own $$ to buy what we photograph in detail.) Our goal is always just to help people make a wise decision with their shopping $$. And everyone doesn’t have the privilege of being able to spend the day at a store, followed by another week of full-time work at home getting it all online. We take this very seriously (in case you hadn’t noticed) but love that we can help others like this. Of course, when we share our opinions, please remember that it’s just that. Opinion. And we’re always willing to agree to disagree.
We always have very strong opinions about every AG release. We’re absolutely dotty about these dolls! If you’d like to contact me with specific concerns about any AG products, I’d be glad to share our take with you. As long as you remember that it’s just our own biased view of things (as all views are biased), we’re good to go. We’re never here to bash AG, but neither are we compensated by them, leaving us free to share our opinions in an honest critique. Hope this helps. And, please, don’t hesitate to ask your questions.