ITHACA, N.Y. -- If you're looking for a holiday gift for girls 8 to 12 -- and can't face buying yet another Barbie -- take a look at http://www.girls-explore.com . There you'll find realistic-looking dolls that are active role models for girls. They are shaped and garbed to look like aviator Amelia Earhart, painter Mary Cassatt, softball Olympian Dot Richardson, black abolitionist Harriet Tubman and four other female achievers, with more to come.

"These women were determined, overcame obstacles and gave back to society in many different ways," says Randy Allen, who launched Girls Explore&tm; this fall after discovering no appropriate items on toy-store shelves for her nieces. A former executive who is now consultant-in-residence and senior lecturer at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management, she added: "The purpose of the line of dolls and their accoutrements is not only to give girls positive role models based on contemporary and historical women but also to provide historical information and recommended books to the girls and their parents."

Each doll comes with her own biography -- a hardcover book 100 to 140 pages long -- and an accessory that girls can use, such as a paint set with the Cassatt doll. The girls-explore.com Web site also suggests such books as Gutsy Girls and Women Astronauts, and it links to such information sources as the NASA Web site. The idea is to show young women what they can aspire to and to counterbalance the looks-over-brains image so prevalent in American culture and media today.

Allen is a woman of achievement herself. Most recently an executive vice president of Kmart, she rose to become partner at Deloitte & Touche at a time when few women made it past the glass ceiling at major corporate consulting firms.

Allen, Cornell Class of 1968, said her Cornell education gave her the confidence and skills to aspire to more. Not surprisingly, she chose several Cornell alumnae of achievement to use as models for her dolls, among them 19th-century naturalist Anna Botsford Comstock, the university's first female professor. Cornell MBA students have helped develop Girls Explore dolls and books. Products are made by manufacturing firms in China led by Cornell alumni. And Allen's son, now an undergraduate at Cornell, helped with technical aspects of the Web site.