Pleasant T Rowland

To outfit little girls with fantasy wear, Pleasant T. Rowland has the most imaginative concept going. Rowland, a Wisconsin entrepreneur, author and former teacher, started her Middleton, Wis. firm, Pleasant Co., in September, 1986. As part of her business she included an American Girls Collection of clothes for girls ages 7 to 10, with matching outfits for dolls.

To outfit little girls with fantasy wear, Pleasant T. Rowland has the most imaginative concept going. Rowland, a Wisconsin entrepreneur, author and former teacher, started her Middleton, Wis. firm, Pleasant Co., in September, 1986. As part of her business she included an American Girls Collection of clothes for girls ages 7 to 10, with matching outfits for dolls.

* Barbie's boss, Mattel Inc.'s Adrienne Fontanella, is adding the popular American Girl brand of dolls to her collection of girls toys, boosting Fontanella's division to a $2.5-billion piece of the El Segundo-based toy maker. Fontanella, 41, president of Mattel's girls toys division, takes over Mattel's Pleasant Co. subsidiary, the maker of American Girl line. The promotion follows the previously announced retirement of Pleasant Co. founder Pleasant T. Rowland.

Herbert J. Allen Jr.'s male-dominated annual power powwow in Sun Valley, Idaho, is breaking with tradition. Not only are there more female executives on the corporate guest list this year than usual--a whopping six out of 104 or so--there will be a first-ever panel discussion led by and about women and business.

YOU CAN HAVE your power lunches at the Ivy. I say if you're serious about a closing, you've got to make the other guy uncomfortable: Take him to eat finger sandwiches with a bunch of little girls pouring tea for their dolls. I now take all my big meetings at the American Girl Cafe. I pulled a few strings to score the most difficult lunch reservation in town -- it's been booked for months -- just a few days after American Girl Place opened two weeks ago at the Grove.

"CRA-A-ACK!" The explosive sound of a bullwhip sets hearts pounding. A sneering slave owner stalks off as a pool of light reveals a young slave girl named Addy and her frantic mother, preparing to flee to the North. Scene shift: Here's Addy again, newly free and jubilant, encountering Northern white girls. Slowly, silently, they turn their backs on Addy, who realizes that the end of slavery doesn't mean the end of racism. Stage lights dim. A costume change.

As a novelist and college professor, Connie Porter had enough book ideas to keep her computer whirring well into the next century. So when Pleasant T. Rowland first telephoned, Porter told her that writing children's books was the last thing she could think about. She had never written for young people, Porter pointed out, and had never really wanted to. But Rowland persisted.