I found it difficult to connect with the content. I like that the author brought her children into the conversation around gender but I struggled to stay interested in the story. Overall, it is an important topic and worth reading about, it's just not easy to engage with the author who I have no prior knowledge of. She talks about her motivation to create this doll, but I guess for me, I can connect more with a story if I have some prior knowledge of the author or topic.

Jodi Bondi Norgaard, More Than a Doll How Creating a Sports Doll Turned into a Fight to End Gender Stereotypes, Post Hill Press, January 2025.

Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.

Jodi Bond Norgaard begins with numerous examples of the sexism that drove her to create a sports doll. These include personal and friends’ anecdotal accounts of the sexism they experienced at school, work and socially. These accounts are augmented by published reports, and one unpublished report - Equal Play? Analyzing Gender Stereotypes, Diversity and Inclusion in Advertising and Marketing for the Most Popular Toys of 2022 for The toy Foundation. Bond Norgaard’s aim to produce a sports doll arose from the detailed information in the first section of the book.

Comparing Bond Norgaard’s first entrepreneurial experience, producing baskets of baked goods and chocolates, with that of producing Go! Go! Sports Girls is instructive. While both enterprises depended on the positive responses and assistance from other women, the latter required her to deal producing a product that conflicted with traditional responses to girls and dolls and the cultural environment. The practical features of production, for example where could the dolls be produced at a reasonable cost; legal issues; safety standards; marketing; competition from other brands; the role of large toy companies; changing doll images to meet demand; testing girls’ preferences; the importance of social media; and dealing with sexism, personal and public are canvassed.

The book is in three parts: ‘How Creating a New Sports Doll Turned into a Fight for Women and Girls,’ ‘Disrupting the Pink Aisle on Representing Girls as they Are’ and ‘Dream Big, Go For it, and Don’t Give Up.’ It is filled with anecdotes, information from reports, a lengthy bibliography which includes secondary sources – books (non-fiction and fiction), podcasts, Ted Talks and documentaries. Jodi Bondi Norgaard was part of the Biden-Harris initiative, Gender Policy Council and appeared on Greta Carlson’s Fox and Friends panel, suggesting that she can communicate in a range of environments – a plus for the cause of women and girls. The minor flaws, sometimes going over old ground (a great deal of work on the depiction of girls in fiction was undertaken in the 1970s) and some repetition are outweighed by the value of this work in publicising the challenges and successes in producing the Go! Go! Sports Girls and this intrepid businesswoman’s role in defying sexism in the toy aisle.

this was a really interesting and worked in the nonfiction genre, I enjoyed learning about these sports dolls. I was hooked from the first page and thought the research was wonderfully done and was glad I got to read this. Jodi Bondi Norgaard wrote this well and I could see the research being done.