| Amy Noelle Parks is the author of the YA romantic comedy The Quantum Weirdness of the Almost-Kiss and the middle-grade realistic fiction novel Summer of Brave, both of which we absolutely loved! We were thrilled to interview her for this month's feature! Rapunzel Reads: Middle-grade books often focus on a single issue or topic, or become waylaid by too many plot threads--but Summer of Brave does neither, instead painting a beautiful, nuanced portrait of the many layers of one girl's life. How did you go about weaving together the many aspects of Lilla's life in such a balanced, realistic way? Amy Noelle Parks: Thank you so much for the kind words. I really wanted to write a book that captured—for me anyway—what it was like to be twelve or thirteen. And for the most part, that means many things happening at once. I don't really love issue books in part because they can be heavy handed but also because issues don't tend to wait neatly on the sidelines until we can give them our full attention. The rest of our life doesn't stop because we get catcalled. For Lilla's story I really wanted to explore themes of people-pleasing, introversion and bravery so I tried to think about all the ways those might come up in a girl's life and then weave them together—hopefully in a way that made sense! RR: Lilla constantly feels the pressure of how she's 'supposed' to be a girl, particularly when she struggles with wanting to do things that are seen as 'girly', or not do things which would be groundbreaking for her gender, and I loved how she slowly realizes there is no one |   Author photo credit: Katie Murray |
right way to be a girl. What inspired this subplot?
ANP: I actually think this is something I continue to struggle with as an adult and something I was working through in Summer of Brave. I've always liked things that are feminine—dresses and make up and romance novels. But I'm also a mathematics education professor and I think sometimes I've felt like I had to keep these two parts of my life separate, in part because liking girly things can be read as shameful or even as unfeminist. Actually, my most recent YA, Lia and Beckett's Abracadabra, takes up a lot of these same ideas. I guess I'm still working on this...
RR: The characters in Summer of Brave are all sympathetic while remaining realistically flawed. Do you have a favorite among them? If so, why?
ANP: Lilla is the most self-insert character I've written in any book of mine. I'm terrified of anger, want everyone else to be happy, feel continually pulled between mathematics and humanities, and want to be left alone a lot more than almost anyone else I know. (This is one reason why reading reviews of people who don't like Lilla is tough!). But in terms of favorite characters...probably Knox. I love writing all those awkward I-like-you-do-you-like-me scenes and Knox is so sweet and fun in them.
RR: What are you planning on writing next?
ANP: My next book is another middle grade. This one's called Averil Offline and will be out in Spring 2024. The story was inspired by The Mixed Up-Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which I loved as a child and is a weaving together of my concern about the way parents are constantly tracking their kids through apps like Life 360 and my desire to write a billionaire romance—only middle grade!
ANP: I actually think this is something I continue to struggle with as an adult and something I was working through in Summer of Brave. I've always liked things that are feminine—dresses and make up and romance novels. But I'm also a mathematics education professor and I think sometimes I've felt like I had to keep these two parts of my life separate, in part because liking girly things can be read as shameful or even as unfeminist. Actually, my most recent YA, Lia and Beckett's Abracadabra, takes up a lot of these same ideas. I guess I'm still working on this...
RR: The characters in Summer of Brave are all sympathetic while remaining realistically flawed. Do you have a favorite among them? If so, why?
ANP: Lilla is the most self-insert character I've written in any book of mine. I'm terrified of anger, want everyone else to be happy, feel continually pulled between mathematics and humanities, and want to be left alone a lot more than almost anyone else I know. (This is one reason why reading reviews of people who don't like Lilla is tough!). But in terms of favorite characters...probably Knox. I love writing all those awkward I-like-you-do-you-like-me scenes and Knox is so sweet and fun in them.
RR: What are you planning on writing next?
ANP: My next book is another middle grade. This one's called Averil Offline and will be out in Spring 2024. The story was inspired by The Mixed Up-Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which I loved as a child and is a weaving together of my concern about the way parents are constantly tracking their kids through apps like Life 360 and my desire to write a billionaire romance—only middle grade!
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