LET’S CALL HER BARBIE: Renee Rosen in conversation with Melanie Benjamin
February 12 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Free
She was only eleven-and-a-half inches tall, but she would change the world. Barbie is born in this bold new novel by “USA Today” bestselling author Renée Rosen.
Join Renee Rosen at Blue House Books on Wednesday, February 12th at 7 p.m. to celebrate her newest historical fiction novel, “Let’s Call Her Barbie”! Renee will be discussing her book with fellow Midwest author Melanie Benjamin (“The Children’s Blizzard”), where she will go into detail about her research into American’s feminist icon, answer questions from the audience, and sign books!
This event is free, but registration is required. Get all the details and RSVP here: https://www.blue-house-books.com/events/1603520250212
About “LET’S CALL HER BARBIE”:
When Ruth Handler walks into the boardroom of the toy company she co-founded and pitches her idea for a doll unlike any other, she knows what she’s setting in motion. It might just take the world a moment to catch up.
In 1956, the only dolls on the market for little girls let them pretend to be mothers. Ruth’s vision for a doll shaped like a grown woman and outfitted in an enviable wardrobe will let them dream they can be anything.
As Ruth assembles her team of creative rebels—head engineer Jack Ryan who hides his deepest secrets behind his genius and designers Charlotte Johnson and Stevie Klein, whose hopes and dreams rest on the success of Barbie’s fashion—she knows they’re working against a ticking clock to get this wild idea off the ground.
In the decades to come—through soaring heights and devastating personal lows, public scandals and private tensions— each of them will have to decide how tightly to hold on to their creation. Because Barbie has never been just a doll—she’s a legacy.
About RENEE ROSEN:
Renee Rosen is a “USA Today” bestselling author. Her novels include “Let’s Call Her Barbie”, “Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl”, “The Social Graces” and “Park Avenue Summer” as well as others. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages. She lives in Chicago and is currently working on a new novel. To learn more, visit her website at www.reneerosen.com
About “THE CHILDREN’S BLIZZARD”:
The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats—leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as sixteen were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: Keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn’t get lost in the storm?
Based on actual oral histories of survivors, this gripping novel follows the stories of Raina and Gerda Olsen, two sisters, both schoolteachers—one becomes a hero of the storm and the other finds herself ostracized in the aftermath. It’s also the story of Anette Pedersen, a servant girl whose miraculous survival serves as a turning point in her life and touches the heart of Gavin Woodson, a newspaperman seeking redemption. It was Woodson and others like him who wrote the embellished news stories that lured northern European immigrants across the sea to settle a pitiless land. Boosters needed them to settle territories into states, and they didn’t care what lies they told these families to get them there—or whose land it originally was.
At its heart, this is a story of courage, of children forced to grow up too soon, tied to the land because of their parents’ choices. It is a story of love taking root in the hard prairie ground, and of families being torn asunder by a ferocious storm that is little remembered today—because so many of its victims were immigrants to this country.
About MELANIE BENJAMIN:
Melanie Benjamin is the author of the “New York Times” and “USA Today” bestselling historical novels “The Swans of Fifth Avenue”, about Truman Capote and his society swans, “The Aviator’s Wife”, a novel about Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and “The Children’s Blizzard”, a gripping tale of survival and forgiveness amidst a devastating, real-life blizzard that hit the Great Plains on the afternoon of January 12, 1888. Other historical novels include “The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb”, “The Girls in the Picture”, “Mistress of the Ritz” and “California Golden”. She lives in Chicago.
