It’s so funny about Amelia Bedelia getting, you know, turning 50 because kids will always ask me, “Well, how old is she? How old is she?” And I say, “Well, you know, when she first showed up for work, she looked like she was around 34, 35. Now she looks like she’s 28.” I said, you know, that’s a great job. If you can work for 50 years and wind up like 8 years younger, whatever it is, take that job. And so she’s gotten a little bit younger in the classic character and kids would ask, “Well, was Amelia Bedelia always like that? Did she always take things literally?”
I say, “Well, yeah, she, you know, she was literal even when she was little.” So we started thinking about that and wondering well, what was that like the first time you’re in the first grade and you take something literally? And that’s what led to the Young Amelia Bedelia, a series of picture books of firsts, first day of school, first apple pie, first field trip with her class. And that then became sort of a springboard into a whole series of I Can Read books with her as a first grader.
And children were always asking us, they didn’t want to leave the character and so they wanted chapter books. And at first we were thinking maybe chapter books of the classic Amelia Bedelia, but then we thought, “What if the young Amelia Bedelia became a little older, like the third or the fourth grade?” An age where she could have all of her literal mistakes and yet still be sort of independent and get in a lot more trouble. And that’s really what led to the whole, you know, this new series of chapter books with the young Amelia Bedelia.
