Jimmy Baby Is Famous

Jimmy Baby! Check out my favorite childhood toy's appearance on USA Today's Happy Ever After feature: Romance authors 'bear' their souls about favorite childhood toys. With Rhoda Baxter, author of Doctor January, Linda Grimes, author of Quick Fix, Alexa Grace, author of Profile of Evil, Kathleen Eagle, author of Sunrise Song, Susan Vaughan, author of Twice a Target, Tara Mills, author of Caution: Filling is Hot, Patricia C. Lee, author of Destiny's Past and Destiny's Present, Judith Arnold, author of Dead Ball.  http://usat.ly/1rPpawm 

Alethea Williams, author of Walls for the Wind

I still have my favorite childhood toy, an Ideal boy toddler doll I named Jimmy Baby. Jimmy Baby is a "magic skin" latex-bodied doll. Magic skin turned out to be not so magic after all, it deteriorates badly from sunlight and exposure to oils — even those on a little girl's sticky fingers. Both of Jimmy Baby's arms tore at the shoulder many years ago, so he sports non-museum quality plaster casts under his little yellow polo shirt. Jimmy is lucky to be a boy: Born in 1951, Jimmy still has his original shirt, jacket, and pants. If he had been born a girl it's certain his clothes would have disappeared in favor of my little sister's dresses. Perhaps the only one of his kind in existence, Jimmy has been rated rare by a doll appraiser. But there was never any question that he's always been valuable to me!