Amy Noelle Parks has always loved reading.
"I've always been a reader and have always loved books," Parks said.
Because of that, she knew she was going to be a professor at a university.
“I am a professor at the College of Education at Michigan State," Parks said. “I did always know that I wanted to do it. From the first time I was on a college campus, that was where I always wanted to be.”
But, being an author kind of wrote itself into her life.
“I was going through a really hard time, like, politically, personally, and just writing happy books felt like an escape," Parks said. "Once I was writing them, I thought, well, maybe I can publish them.”
So in 2021, she published her first novel.
“My first young adult book was 'The Quantum Weirdness of the Almost Kiss,' and it is about a STEM girl falling in love for the first time,” Parks said. “I really wanted to write a book that showed mathematics, because I work in math as a professor, as something that wasn't scary or far away or boring, but that could be exciting and even a little bit romantic."
Over the course of the next year, Parks got to work on her next young adult novel.
“My next book is 'Lia and Beckett's Abracadabra,' and it is the story of a girl, who is also very mathy, but uses her math to do magic,” Parks said.
Parks took a memory from her own life as the idea for this novel.
“My parents live in a resort town in Wisconsin, and there's like this goofy magic show, and it just made me really curious about magic,” Parks said.
Parks said she wanted to write a different personality for her main character in her second novel.
“Also about writing a character who was really different from the girl in my first novel," Parks said. "Lia is like very bubbly and sparkly and maybe not your traditional math girl, but I want to show that STEM girls can be all different kinds of ways.”
Parks also added a dash of magic.
“As I read about it, I was really interested to see how much mathematics is really behind a lot of the tricks that magicians use," Parks said. "I got excited about reading a book like that.”
The book is set to be released on July 5, which Parks says is the perfect time.
“'Lia and Beckett's Abracadabra' is a summer read set over July in this resort town. Very lovely and beachy and lakey," Parks said. "I think people of all ages would enjoy it.”
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