20 Questions with American Girl’s Executive Editor Jennifer Hirsch

Spring 2021 • Spotlight • Expert Advice

Meet Jennifer Hirsch, Executive Editor at American Girl, as we discuss storytelling, creating beloved characters, and her typical day-in-the-life.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself! I have always loved children’s books. Growing up in Berkeley, California, I read and reread my favorites: the original versions of Bambi, Black Beauty, The Black Stallion, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and so many others. I studied English literature in college, and my dream was always to write children’s books for a living. (I also wanted to raise horses, but that didn’t happen.)

Now I live with my husband on an old farm outside Madison, Wisconsin. I have 3 kids, a dog, a cat, a horse, 12 chickens, and 16 huge goldfish that live in an old cattle trough.

2. How did you get started at American Girl? And why AG? I started out as the company’s copyeditor in 1995. I read all the books, magazines, and catalogues, finding and fixing errors and inconsistencies. I caught a lot of mistakes, but once I didn’t notice that our company phone number was wrong. A different company started getting our calls, wondering why so many people were calling to order dolls!

Now I do developmental editing, which is helping authors develop their plots and characters and turn their ideas turn into a fun and satisfying story.

Before I worked at American Girl, I was a writer and editor for the University of Wisconsin. But my heart was always in children’s books. AG is the only children’s book publisher here in Madison, so I feel very lucky to work here.

3. Your job is extremely creative. Growing up, was creativity a big part of your childhood? Definitely! I started drawing as soon as I could hold a pencil, and once I learned how to read, I began to write and illustrate stories for fun. (Most of them were about horses.) In high school, I wrote poetry and learned clay sculpting and how to make stained glass windows. I also played piano and guitar.

4. Today, as Executive Editor for American Girl, what’s a day in the life for you? A typical day usually includes a few meetings with other editors to talk about problems we’re seeing in stories and how to fix them. For example, perhaps a scene is boring, or a plotline just isn’t believable. I’ll help the author figure out why, and how to fix the story to make it fun, interesting, and plausible. I might call or email the author to discuss the latest draft and offer suggestions for improving it.

I meet with the designers who create the dolls and toys that go with our books, and with our historian, who makes sure that everything is accurate. I also meet with art directors to review illustrations for the books. If there are videos or games to go with the stories, I’ll review those as they are being created. It’s part of my job to make sure that our characters and their stories and worlds are presented accurately and consistently, whether it’s a book, a movie, a video game, or a doll-stop-motion movie for YouTube.

5. In addition to writing and editing AG stories, I read that you help develop ideas into finished products, like entertainment and education materials. What is that process like from idea to reality? For entertainment such as movies and musicals, we work with outside partners who produce the entertainment. The partners find the scriptwriters and actors, and my job is to review the scripts, help choose the actors, and make sure the end product feels true to the original character. Some aspects of the story might need to change to fit a different format, but the character’s overall personality, situation, and themes must stay the same. For example, Samantha must always be an orphan, and Julie must always stand up for equal rights for girls.

To create Teacher Guides, we consult with education experts. We look at what kids are learning in school in second, third, and fourth grade, and we focus on aspects of the story that tie into the curriculum—such as challenging vocabulary words or historical themes like immigration or the American Revolution.

6. How do you come up with and pitch your ideas to the AG team? How do you find inspiration for each story? Each year AG surveys girls and moms to find out what their interests, activities, and concerns are, and their answers help us decide what kinds of stories and characters to create. For example, we learned that the 1980s are trendy because it’s the era many parents grew up in, so we created Courtney, our 1980s girl. We learned that girls love cheerleading and want to know what it’s like to live with a disability, so our 2020 Girl of the Year, Joss, takes up competitive cheer and wears a hearing aid because she is partially deaf.

Our authors and editors often draw on personal experience. For example, the character Julie is growing up in San Francisco in the 1970s, which is very near where I grew up and the same decade that both the author, Megan McDonald, and I grew up in. So many of Julie’s experiences were inspired by things that happened to Megan or me. And some of Rebecca’s experiences also happened to her author, Jacqueline Greene—such as having to make Christmas decorations in fourth grade, even though she was Jewish!

7. I’d imagine the creating stories is very collaborative. What is the behind-the-scenes process really like? To create the new characters who will have both books and dolls, the editors collaborate closely with the product designers to come up with characters that will have both an interesting story and appealing products. We meet every week and share ideas back and forth, and we’re open and honest about what will work and what won’t. We also help each other find solutions. For example, once a product designer said, “We need a colorful dress for Kaya, not another brown leather dress.” The editor replied, “You can create a modern Powwow dress and sell it with Kaya, as long as we explain in the catalogue that it’s a modern Nez Perce outfit, not one Kaya herself would have worn.” Then the editor helped the catalogue copywriter write the caption with that information. So all the designers, editors, and marketing staff collaborate to ensure our books and products are both accurate and fun.

8. What makes a good story? What are the must-have elements to make it work? It needs a good conflict—something for readers to care about, so that they will root for the main character. Without that, stories are boring. The conflict must be believable within the world of the story, and it must be something that really matters to the main character. And the main character must solve the conflict in a convincing way.

9. Editing can be a tedious process, at times. How do you keep your motivation and positivity high on long days? I almost never find editing tedious, because developmental editing is so creative and analytical. It can be difficult, figuring out why a scene or plotline isn’t working and how to fix it, but it’s the kind of creative and intellectual challenge I love.

Once the writing is done and the book itself is being prepared for printing, it must be carefully proofread. Proofreading it can be tedious—and it’s not easy to catch tiny mistakes like a flipped apostrophe or a missing comma! Fortunately, we have an excellent copyeditor to handle that.

10. As an editor, how do you keep a story clean and concise, while preserving the heart of the story? I look at every single scene and sentence, and ask: “Is this interesting and compelling? Is it fun to read? Is it believable? And does it advance the plot?” If the answer to any of those questions is no, then revisions are needed.

Hopefully, the author asks the same questions before turning in each draft! Sometimes we have different views on the answers. Then we get on the phone and talk through it together.

11. I read that you like to talk to kids in your stories, rather than down to them. I so admire that about you. How do you ensure all of your stories have that kid-like quality?  It’s essential to respect your audience. Kids are smarter than most adults realize, and much more honest than adults are. Children are also more in touch with their gut feelings—they know when something isn’t right, even if they don’t always say so out loud. If a writer is talking down to them, kids will know it.

I look for children’s authors who write with intelligence and honesty, and who can “channel” a child’s voice and viewpoint in a convincing way, so that to the reader, it seems like the character having the experiences in the story is a real person. Writers can only do that if they respect kids and understand—or remember—what it’s like to see the world through a child’s eyes.

When I’m writing an essay at the back of the book, my goal is always to write something I would want to read, as a child or as an adult.  

12. What is your favorite part about working at American Girl? My favorite part is the constant creativity. Whether it’s creating new characters, new stories about old characters, or new types of content such as quizzes or musicals, or movies, I’m never bored and always challenged. The characters we create feel so real to me, I can hear their voices in my head. I know them so well that it’s easy for me to tell an author or scriptwriter, “Julie would never say that!” or “Felicity wouldn’t do that—but she might do this.” I know my characters as well as I know my own kids! 

13. What would you suggest to those looking to get started as an editor or creator for a company like American Girl? To become an editor, you’ll need a college degree in English, history, journalism, psychology, or a similar field that teaches you how to research, read deeply and write.

To become a writer, you should write often and try writing a lot of different things: stories, nonfiction, quizzes, and plays. Then find publishers who publish that kind of writing and submit your work or apply for a job. If you’re rejected, don’t give up! Most of us were rejected at first, but if you have talent and love what you’re doing, keep trying.

Any time you have the chance to write for a school paper, yearbook, or writing contest, do it. If you don’t, then just write your own stories. You will get better and better the more you write. Also, think about why you love your favorite books and authors. Could you write like that? Try it!

14. What advice would you give to your younger self? Listen to other people’s advice about your writing. Try doing it their way. Only then can you decide if it’s good advice or not. But even if you decide their way isn’t right for you, you’ll still learn something that will help make you a better writer or editor.

In 10th grade, I had a teacher who would not allow us to use the verb to be in any form in our essays. No is, was, are, or were in any sentence! He would cross out those verbs and make us rewrite the sentence another way. It was very difficult and annoying, but it made me realize that those are lazy verbs that most writers overuse. Without them, my writing was much more active and vivid, although it took longer. His method was extreme, but I learned a lot and I’ve never forgotten it!

15. What has been the hardest thing about your job? The hardest thing is getting good stories written FAST. We usually have only 3-6 months to write each book, so that it will be printed and ready to go when the doll is sold. That might sound like a lot of time, but it’s not! That’s one reason the editors sometimes have to help the author finish a story or write the final draft—because the author needs to start writing the next book in the series!

16. For a child at home who is learning to write, what advice would you give them on storytelling? What are the steps to creating a good character or story arc? To create a story arc, you need a beginning, middle, and end—and the main character, or protagonist, must change from beginning to end. The beginning is the setup, the way the protagonist starts out. The middle is what happens to challenge the protagonist: a problem or conflict that the protagonist must overcome in order to achieve or gain something s/he wants. This is the bulk of the story. The ending shows how the protagonist has changed because of these experiences.

For example: In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge starts out greedy and selfish at the beginning. In the middle, he has experiences and visions that force him to reflect on his greed and selfishness and the people he has hurt, including himself—and he vows to change his ways. The final scene shows how Scrooge has changed to become generous and caring.

17. My siblings struggle with ADHD and dyslexia, and prefer to read comic books and/or listen to audiobooks. What do you think is the importance of encouraging a love of reading – of all kinds? Reading and listening to stories takes you to other places—real and imaginary, in the past, present, and future. It takes you into the mind of another person, or even an animal! In short, reading and listening to stories exercises the imagination. For this reason, I believe that it’s the best way to understand our larger world—everything that’s out there beyond the world of our own personal experience.

18. What advice would you give a struggling reader? Try another type of book, such as a picture book or a comic book. There are some wonderful graphic novels and heavily illustrated novels like Captain Underpants that can make the transition to independent reading easier. My brother hated reading until he found the Peanuts comic books about Charlie Brown and Snoopy. These are legitimate children’s literature—don’t let anyone tell you they’re not!

19. We’re big picture thinkers here, so if you could change anything about the world, what would you change? Why? Everyone would have healthy food to eat, clean water, and decent health care. And good books!

20. Here at KidsRead2Kids, we believe our biggest struggles can also be our greatest strengths (or our real-life superpower!). What is YOUR superpower? Empathy. It’s not only important in making friends and getting along with others—it’s also really important in writing and editing fiction. You need empathy to understand how your characters think.

To see the American Girl collection, visit their website HERE.

Jennifer Hirsch is the Executive Editor of American Girl. She has over 25 years of experience creating a wide range of publications with a focus on children's fiction and nonfiction: middle reader series, tween mysteries, picture books, and digital content. In her free time, Jennifer loves gardening, travel, and riding her horse, Sawyer.