The Beacon Street Girls shop, play sports and have sleepovers. They also struggle with jealousy, competition, divorce and peer pressure.

There's klutzy, compassionate Charlotte, who wants to be a writer. Katani dreams of starting her own fashion-and-advice business. Athletic Avery was adopted from Korea as an infant. Fun-loving Maeve doesn't let her dyslexia interfere with her dreams of an acting career. Artistic Isabel is the new girl whose mother suffers from multiple sclerosis. "The idea was to capture the essence of real kids, not Britney Spears or Paris Hilton, blonde, thin and perfect all the time," Swartz says. "Those images are unattainable and unrealistic."

Swartz developed her characters specifically to speak to the needs and vulnerabilities of girls at this age. "Maeve, for example, is so full of life, but she's dyslexic," Swartz notes. "She's not good in school, her parents fight about it and they end up getting separated. She feels responsible. But, with the support of her friends, Maeve works through this. She talks about it. She's strong.

"That's reality, and we're trying to present it through characters who can speak to kids in a media-oriented environment. Because the media isn't going away. The question is, how can you use the power of the media to make a difference for girls?"

A brand that taps myths

One brand that has leveraged media exceptionally well - and which Swartz cites as an inspiration - is American Girl. The brand skews toward a slightly younger audience than Swartz's line and is a $380 million enterprise. Like the Beacon Street Girls, American Girl is rooted in literature. Each American Girl character is introduced through a fictional story based on American history. One American Girl, for example, struggles through the Great Depression; another escapes slavery via the Underground Railroad. "It's an amalgam of things girls are interested in - relationships and stories," says Mary Ann McGrath '73, who with Kellogg Professor John Sherry has been conducting an ethnographic study of the American Girl experience. The books have helped capture girls' imaginations, McGrath says, in part because they show girls overcoming challenges. "There isn't much of a mythology of strong girls in our culture," says McGrath, who earned her Kellogg PhD in 1988 and is now a marketing professor at Loyola University. "Without pushing them to grow up, these books say, 'As a girl, you're strong. You can manage a lot of difficult situations.'" But will such a message play to the middle-school crowd?

"There are a lot of expert marketers out there who say girls this age won't buy this because there isn't enough sex, violence or intrigue," Swartz says. "Yet, girls love our books. Since our launch in September, we've printed 180,000 books and we've gained a strong following.

"Certainly, there are seventh graders out there who wouldn't be interested in this, but that's OK," Swartz adds. "The market is big enough that I don't have to capture the attention of every girl."

That seems to be the case. The tween market is big and growing. Children this age spend about $11 billion a year themselves, while their parents spend an additional $176 billion on them, according to research cited by Swartz. The market is projected to grow by 15 percent each year. The venture is a calling for Swartz, who has spent much of her career focusing on the youth market. Her résumé includes stints at Disney, Reebok and Lotus Development.