May 15, 2015
Twenty years ago, a little book hit the marketplace with a simple premise: an elementary school girl writes and doodles in a journal, and we get to see it. That little book turned into another one…and another one…and another one…and the Amelia’s Notebook series became one of the most beloved in children’s literature.
Now that the 30th --- and final (!) --- book in the series is coming out and Amelia is graduating middle school, we wanted to talk to this spunky protagonist’s creator, Marissa Moss. Read our interview below to learn about her inspiration, her writing process and some intriguing pieces of fan mail, and be sure to check out AMELIA’S MIDDLE SCHOOL GRADUATION YEARBOOK!
Teenreads.com: Where did you first come up with the idea for Amelia’s Notebook?
Marissa Moss: I got the idea a long time ago, in 1994, when I was buying school supplies for my son and saw one of those black-and-white composition books. It reminded me of the notebook I kept when I was nine.
TRC: Did you write any of your own experiences into your Amelia’s Notebook stories? Can you give a specific example?
MM:Amelia is based on me, so most of the things that happen to her really happened to me, from small things --- like the game of squashing marshmallows between your fingers until they get sticky and then throwing them up on the ceiling to see whose will stick the longest --- to big things, like the fire in Amelia's school in AMELIA WRITES AGAIN.
TRC: You’ve written about Amelia for two decades at this point! How does it feel to spend so much time with one character?
MM: Since Amelia's basically me and my childhood, I'm right at home with her!
TRC: The Amelia’s Notebook series is heavily illustrated and has lots of fun notes, speech bubbles and quizzes throughout. Do you draw or write first, or do both together?
MM: I do both together. The main reason I started the notebook format was so I could go back and forth easily between words and pictures since that's how I think (sometimes in images, sometimes in words). I make all the notebooks in composition books, from messy first drafts to cleaned-up revisions.
TRC: Did you keep a notebook (or journal or diary) when you were growing up?
MM: Yes! It was heavily influenced by the snarky satire of Mad Magazine, so that's mostly how I wrote (and illustrated).
TRC: Amelia is incredibly close with her friend Carly. Did you have a best friend like that growing up?
MM: Carly is a composite of a lot of different friends, but she's heavily based on my middle-school best friend (except, honestly, Carly's even cooler!).
TRC: Amelia doesn’t always get along with her older sister, Cleo. Do you have any siblings, and what was your relationship with them like when you were in middle school?
MM: Cleo is based on my real older sister --- she doesn't like these books. But, Cleo actually has some good moments. She's notall bad.
TRC: Did you have to do any research when writing AMELIA’S MIDDLE SCHOOL GRADUATION YEARBOOK? What was the most interesting thing you learned?
MM: The research I do for the Amelia books is just remembering my own childhood, and then revising my many messy drafts to make a clean, tight story. However, the whole graduation ceremony is based on the ones I've sat through for my three sons.
TRC: Do you remember your own middle school graduation? Can you tell us about it?
MM: Unlike Amelia, I moved a lot as a kid, so I only went to the school I graduated from for 8th grade. There was no graduation ceremony. You just started high school the next year, the way you went from elementary school to middle school. With my own kids (and kids today) finishing middle school is a big deal, but it wasn't in the dark ages when I went to middle school.
TRC: If you got to spend the day with Amelia, what would you do?
MM: Draw and write!
TRC: Do you get a lot of fan mail? What’s the funniest comment or question you’ve ever received?
MM: I do get a lot of fan mail and the funniest comment was from a girl who felt I'd been disrespectful of the Bible because in AMELIA’S ARE-WE-THERE-YET LONGEST EVER CAR TRIP, Amelia finds a Gideon's Bible in the hotel dresser, which gives her the idea to stick funny notes in the drawers for the next guest to find. I'm not sure how that was insulting to the Bible, but this reader thought so.
TRC: You’ve written a lot of different diary series, including Max Disaster, The Blood Diaries, Daphne’s Diary and more. Why do you enjoy writing in the journal form?
MM: I like the intimacy of reading diaries, of feeling like you're looking over the writer's shoulders. And I like being able to mix in art whenever I think in images.
TRC: Why did you decide to have the Amelia’s Notebook series come to an end?
MM: Since this is the 20th anniversary of the series, it seemed like a good time to take stock of the books (hence the idea of a yearbook, which is a nostalgic overview of middle school). Amelia's made it through more than 30 books and 20 years. I wanted her to end on a high note and finally graduating felt right. I'll miss her, but she's still out there in all the books and I hope she'll stay alive in people's imaginations for a loooooooong time.
