Nana Star

A package! Is it for me?

We open the big box that was left on the front porch and find Nana Star, her Moonman, and the first two Nana Star books. I extract the dolls from their packaging, and hand them over to my four year old.

I love her! I love her braided hair! I love the Moonman but he's sort of for Tiny. I want to give him to Tiny.

The doll, Nana Star, is sweet - a soft doll with hidden wires for structure. Her hair is braided, and tied with a bow, and she wears a blue dress and blue ballet slippers.

She has a heart on her hand and she has a tree sun - she's going to shoot something. She's shooting a poison flower! Look, I put the star in her hair.

Nana Star comes with a branch and baby star, both attached to her arms by elastic bands, so they're removable, and easily repurposed to hair ornaments. Or poison-flower-shooting weapons, as the case may be. [After a couple of weeks, the branch split open at the seam - I think it may have been chewed on by my co-reviewer.]

Her name is Nana Star? I want it to be Princess Lucy. Can we take her clothes off? Look, she doesn't have underwear!

Sure enough, her dress comes off, revealing a feature-less figure with no belly button. Her white gloves (white gloves!) also come off - they have long since disappeared. We read the first book, Nana Star. The book is about a girl who finds a lost baby star. She realizes that she needs to help him find his way back to the sky, and becomes his Nana Star. The branch turns out to be a plot device - an olive branch to help lift up the star.

I want to read the next one!

The second book is Nana Star and the Moonman. It continues the travels of Nana Star and the baby star, and introduces the Moonman, who watches over her even when she can't see him.

I like his pajamas. I turned him off!

When you push the right button on the Moonman doll, his head lights up and he plays a little music. It isn't like one of those baby sleep aids that plays lullabies or heart sounds for 20 or 30 minutes - it only plays a little folk rock fragment. [I did have a little trouble figuring out how to turn it on - it helped when I actually looked at the packaging which said "press center star for lights and music".]

The moon's watching over her by his singing. She has to fall asleep on him.

All in all, it's a pretty charming package. The doll is sweet and perfect for my four year old. An unexpected benefit is that she's the same size as the Groovy Girls - so their clothes fit Nana Star. Miss M. was pretty adamant that the Moonman was a "baby toy" which she wanted to give to her three year old cousin Tiny. But that didn't stop her from playing with it, and turning it on over and over and over, until its batteries ran down. The books are a little sappy, but gently impart reasonable lessons. The illustrations are lovely, and have a slightly vintage feel about them. Each book comes with a two-track CD: the story narrated, and a related song. While the CD is nice enough, it seems extraneous - if the child can't read the book, shouldn't an adult be reading it to the child?

I want to bring the Moonman and the girl to my school.

The kid liked it. What more could you want?

[I reviewed this for Mother Talk; the books and the dolls were provided by the publisher.]