Wednesday, August 7, 2013

A Paper Doll Legacy



I'm the first!  At least I think I am the first to design a Seventh-Day Adventist paper doll.  I can remember playing paper dolls as a child and thinking, as with most books and television characters, that paper dolls are secular.  They don't go to Sabbath School, they don't have Bibles.  And, of course, you don't play with them from Sunday Friday to Sundown Saturday because that is the Sabbath when we leave off the activities that we enjoy and toil over during the week.

With the paper dolls from Precious Jewels, A Seventh-Day Adventist Family Saga, one might possibly play with them on Sabbath, since Pearl and her girls, Ruby and Grace, spent a lot of time with Bible studies and various forms of ministry.  When and how they are enjoyed is up to you.

If you have read Precious Jewels, you will know that some of the characters in the book played with paper dolls.  My mother and her sisters cut their dolls out of old catalogs.  My mother told me that when they were small, they floated the paper dolls in paper boats down the canal.  The launching was a lovely image, but Mother was vague about what happened when the paper soaked through!  I imagine that the bottom of the canal is strewn with ancient paper doll Titanics.

When they were older, my mother and her sisters still played paper dolls, creating elaborate soap operas around them.  My Aunt Garnet was so much into the stories that she even enjoyed them after she was grown, and I confess that one reason I became a writer was because I was told that I was too old for pretend games!

As a child, I was fascinated with the old photographs of my great-grandmother Pearl and her family, so it was inevitable that sooner or later they got new lives as paper dolls.  I just completed the set of clothes for the young Pearl, and her daughters Ruby and Grace are now on my drawing board.  To learn more about them, visit the paper doll section of my website.



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