LET’S CALL HER BARBIE by Renee Rosen-review
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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date January 21, 2025
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.
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.
Includes a Readers Guide and Exclusive Vintage Barbie Photos!
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REVIEW: LET’S CALL HER BARBIE by Renee Rosen is a historical and somewhat fictionalized account surrounding Ruth and Elliott Handler, the creators of Mattel’s Barbie Doll.
NOTE: The novel is in no way connected to the Barbie movie. Renee Rosen began her research and writing years before the movie went into development.
Told from several third person perspectives LET’S CALL HER BARBIE follows the rise and fall of Mattel and the Barbie doll; the inspiration behind the iconic, fashionable and oft-times feminist yet unrealistic plastic toy who in reality could not exist.
Renee Rosen takes the reader behind the scenes in the making and development of the Barbie doll-a journalistic novel written with creative license and professional interpretation as both real and imagined people bring Ruth Handler’s vision to life. We are up close and personal as Ruth struggles in both her personal and professional life, working in a misogynistic industry ruled and controlled by men, and at her lowest, must hide the fact that her own femininity is threatened by the Big C.
LET’S CALL HER BARBIE follows several pathways to success and failure; focuses on the power and control, the secrets and lies, and the ultimate betrayal by the people at the top. A novel of historical fiction blended with fact, LET’S CALL HER BARBIE is an entertaining, intriguing and edgy tale of success that ultimately falls to corporate greed.
Copy supplied for review
Reviewed by Sandy
