Along with creating collections for displays and playing with for the historical characters, and my own original characters, there have been occasions when I've wanted to similar things for books that have really meant a lot to me and that I thought would come across well in the medium of an American Girl doll. It can provide an opportunity to further explore the character and their world, or even just act as a visual representation and reminder of what you took away from that author's world and/or character.

As of now, I myself have two dolls from another person's work, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, both from Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials. I also created a doll based on the character of Delirium, from Neil Gaiman's graphic novels The Sandman, and The Little Endless Storybook, written and illustrated by Jill Thompson, for my friend Amy Haynes, who bought me my very first American Girl doll as a present. Also a Neil Gaiman fan, I later created a custom doll for my daughter Riordon, of Coraline (though I gave Riordon the choice of having dark brown/black hair as the book, or blue as the stop-action film character, and she chose the blue, claiming to have not developed a strong visual of the character whilst reading/prior to the film, and also the reasoning that blue hair was least like the dolls she already had).