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This spring marks the 20th anniversary of the popular Amelia's Notebook series by Marissa Moss. The first book came out with Tricycle Press after bigger New York houses turned down the handwritten notebook format as “too odd.” Not a picture book, nor a middle-grade novel, publishers worried that libraries and booksellers wouldn't know how to handle such a strange hybrid. Long before The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Dork Diaries, and the graphic novel explosion, only a small press like Tricycle was willing to take a risk on such an innovative book.
The gamble paid off with rave reviews and awards. More than five million copies have been sold and the series has been translated into five languages.
After an excerpt from the first book garnered more reader mail than anything in previous magazine issues, American Girl bought the backlist from Tricycle and set about publishing two new Amelia books a year, as well as including “From Amelia's Notebook” as a regular feature in their magazine. After 10 years and 14 books, American Girl was sold to Mattel and their publishing plans changed. The Amelia backlist was again sold, this time to Simon & Schuster, where Amelia graduated to middle school. Throughout the publishing changes, Amelia's Notebook has remained a standard used by teachers to encourage students to write in their own journals.
Girls who grew up with Amelia are now young women, many of them artists and writers themselves who credit Amelia with sparking their creative interests:
“I am now graduating from college, and since third grade I’ve averaged a little more than
one journal each year totaling seventeen. My style has changed dramatically in how I write and what I write, but they have always been composition notebooks.”
“My name is Gina, and used to fervently read your books when I was a young girl. I am
21 now, but I have made sure to keep all of my Amelia books to pass on to my future
daughters. They mean that much to me. I always felt that I really identified with Amelia,
and her stories helped me maintain my own passion for journaling throughout my life.”
“I was able to mimic what Amelia had done. I drew pictures; I taped and glued things in
it; I even decorated the cover in the exact same way as Amelia had. Most importantly though: I wrote. A third grader doesn’t have all that much to write about. But because of
your series, the seed was planted.”
The next (and last) Amelia caps off the middle school years with Amelia's Middle-School Graduation Yearbook. And the series returns to its small press roots. After 16 middle school books with Simon & Schuster, the 20th anniversary spring release will be published with Creston Books created by Amelia's creator, Marissa Moss. It's only fitting that Amelia ends up back where she started, at a small quirky press, willing to take chances on unusual books that kids will love.
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