Prequel notes

exclusive author notes - spoiler alert!

On this page, I give away information about how I wrote Allisen's Notebooks: The Prequel. This includes sensitive information about the plot as a whole, so if you haven't read the book yet, PLEASE don't scroll any further down this page! Instead, buy the book on Amazon, read it, and then you'll be welcome to explore this page :)

stories behind the stories

I started writing the Allisen’s Notebooks series when I was eleven, and at the time it just made sense to have Allisen be the same age as I was. I don’t think I really gave it much thought. I did plan for it to be a series, but I’m not sure how long I intended the series to be at that time—probably nowhere near as long as it ended up being!

The problem with a series that spans so many years in a character’s life is that the content tends to mature along with the character. The 9-year-old who loves the 6th and 7th grade books might not be ready for the ones that take place in high school. When I realized how many elementary-aged readers were enthralled with the earlier books in the series, I decided it would be fun to explore Allisen’s elementary years and give those readers one more book to enjoy. So I created The Prequel, drawing from both my imagination and my own childhood.

The hardest part of writing The Prequel was making sure that there were no contradictions with events in the main series. For instance, I almost had Allisen take a plane trip when she was ten, but then I realized that in the 7th Grade book it says that she hadn’t been on a plane since she was five. I read through each volume of the main series very carefully before finishing The Prequel, to make sure all the details lined up.

0-3 Years Old: The Family Grows

Obviously, I wanted to start at the beginning. I thought it would be cool to explain the reason behind the unusual spelling of Allisen’s name, and to paint a picture of what the day of her birth looked like, even though she herself wouldn’t remember it.

Since I’d mentioned in the main series that Pete was adopted when Allisen was one and a half, I knew I had to include his arrival. I’d also mentioned in the 6th Grade book that Allisen’s family used to have a dog named Goldie. I decided to have her originally be Pete’s dog when I realized that the timeline of Goldie’s death matched up pretty well with the time Pete started becoming more rebellious.

Of course, it was important to include Mirisen’s birth, and I wanted to address how she got her name as well. Nothing had ever been mentioned in the series about Leelee’s age or when the family got her, but I always had it in my mind that they’d had her for a fairly long time, so I figured this was a good place to put that story.

4 Years Old: Baby Blues

The age difference between Allisen and Harrisson is big enough that Allisen would probably have at least a couple memories regarding him being born, so I decided to make the arrival of Harrisson its own story rather than combining it with the 0-3-year-old section.

The idea of Allisen taking gymnastics classes at the YMCA came from my own childhood, and from the fact that in the main series, Allisen is pretty good at cartwheels. Her misconception about the baby being born while she’s in her class, as well as her decision that Babies Are Annoying, were just details that I thought would be realistic and entertaining. A few of the details from the morning of Harrisson’s birth, such as the scene at home with Grandma and the banana popsicle at the hospital, were taken from my memories of when my brother Cody was born (I was seven).

The part where Allisen holds Harrisson for the first time so that she can time her mom’s running is based on my first time holding my brother Cameron. I was only three, but I wanted my mom to run up and down our big hallway, so she let me sit on the floor and hold my baby brother while she did so. Weirdly, I actually still vaguely remember this.

5 Years Old: "I Can Do It Too!"

When I first started writing the Allisen’s Notebooks series, I didn’t give much thought to why Mirisen was a genius or how she ended up in the same grade as Allisen. When I thought about it later, though, I realized that there was actually a pretty reasonable explanation.

I’d mentioned that Allisen was homeschooled when she was little (this is a detail that was in the books from the beginning, probably because I was homeschooled when I was little). It made perfect sense that her sister, only two years younger, would want to follow along with everything she was doing. And even though Mirisen would probably learn more slowly at first, if she was a naturally bright child who loved to learn, it was reasonable that she would eventually be able to catch up in most aspects.

When I first wrote the series at age eleven, Allisen’s late September birthday was simply so that she could be a little young for her grade while still being considered “normal.” I wanted her to be young because I’d always been young for my grade and I liked it when characters in books were too. I actually didn’t know about Nashua’s September 30 cutoff date back then, but once I found out about it I realized that was perfect! It worked out well for the prequel too, because it provided a reason for Allisen to take a kindergarten readiness test.

Allisen’s parents’ reason for homeschooling her is the same as my parents’ reason for homeschooling me, and the way her early homeschooling goes is similar to how mine went. Math Blaster and the Jump Start games were computer games that I loved as a child and played all the time. (It was really fun revisiting that late 90’s /early-2000’s setting while I wrote this!) Her annoyance with Mirisen being able to beat her at solving math problems comes from when I was learning multiplication facts at seven, and my four-year-old brother kept answering them more quickly than I could.

1st Grade: The Year of Firsts

I had to include that plane ride! The one mentioned in 7th Grade, where it says the last time she was on a plane she was five. I guess technically she was six on the return flight, but SHHH! Unimportant details!

The surprise party plot was pure imagination, although we did have a surprise 60th birthday party for my grandmother when I was ten. (I did not hear about it and think it was for me, though).

The way Allisen loses her first tooth is very similar to the way I lost mine. My brother and I were pretending to save our stuffed animals from the “water” (floor) by throwing them up onto the “boat” (bed). One of the dogs was wearing a spaghetti-strap tank top, and I hooked that strap around my two front bottom teeth and heaved that dog up onto the bed. Out went those two teeth! The feeling of my mouth being “minty” and like my jaw was going down elevators is exactly what it felt like for me. I don’t think I was really aware of the concept of losing teeth at the time, so it really freaked me out! And then for a long time after that, I was scared of losing teeth. I don’t really remember why—maybe I was afraid of swallowing them if I lost them while I was sleeping? I only remember that I used to have nightmares about losing teeth! When my adult teeth started growing in, I did notice that they were like cat teeth, and while that didn’t help me get over my fear like it helped Allisen, I did think that was kind of cool.

The bike incident was written because in 7th Grade, Allisen’s mom references a time when Allisen almost got hit by a car. That’s not something that ever happened to me, though I did learn to ride a bike when I was six.

2nd Grade: Mischief in the Making

This chapter was so much fun to write! I enjoyed brainstorming different troublesome things Allisen and her siblings might decide to do.

I wasn’t a huge troublemaker as a kid, though I definitely had my moments. One of my most vivid memories of getting in trouble is when I was around six years old. My mom had told my three-year-old brother and me that we could have strawberry ice cream for dessert, but first we had to go change into our pajamas. I don’t remember exactly how the situation unfolded, but I do remember that my brother and I both ended up in the bathroom, giggling as he intentionally dropped his socks into the toilet. Our mom caught us and was very disappointed in us. She told us that as a punishment for doing something we knew we weren’t supposed to do, we could not have the ice cream. I found it super unfair that I was being punished when I hadn’t even done anything, but my mom told me that encouraging a bad decision, rather than telling my brother no, was just as bad as making that bad decision myself.

As you’ve probably guessed, that’s where the Harrisson-bread-head story came from. I wanted to come up with a story that was similar to what happened to me without making it exactly the same. If I’m being honest, I still laugh when I read this section, just like I still laugh when I think about my brother putting socks in the toilet (even though I now understand why we both got in trouble that night).

The other stories in this section aren’t things that actually happened to me, although my brother and I did enjoy having “talk time” when we were little, and for a long time I had the habit of peeking behind the shower curtain to make sure there were no creepy bad guys lurking there. Also, my grandmother said she once caught my brother trying to convince one of our cousins to sled down the stairs on the lid of a toy box, so that’s where that story came from.
The part in the anniversary surprise section in which the parents catch Allisen and Pete but allow them to partake in the cake is very loosely drawn from a night in which my parents ordered Chinese food after we were in bed, and we smelled it and went downstairs, and they allowed us to have some rather than just making us go back to bed.

3rd Grade: Everything New

This chapter probably has the most events drawn from my own life. Third grade was my first year not being homeschooled, and I went to a private school, just like Allisen. I got in trouble on my first day for kicking the boy next to me when he wouldn’t stop humming, and for the first couple weeks I had stomachaches and complained that I didn’t want to go to school. I was just as disappointed as Allisen was when I found out that we could only check out two books at a time from the school library, since they had so many books from my favorite series! (And just so you know, my favorite series at that age were The Boxcar Children and Babysitters Little Sister, just like Allisen).

I did eventually come to love my school, though. I made some great friends (one of whom is still my best friend today), and we had some exciting learning experiences, including trying to hatch chickens (unfortunately, our chicks never hatched, because someone turned off the incubator over the weekend). I learned the songs we sang every morning, and found some good books in the classroom library.

My great-grandmother lived with my family for a few months when I was six or seven. She lived with my grandparents ordinarily, but I think they were traveling or needed a break, so “Nana” came to live with us. I don’t recall experiencing any of the resentment Allisen experiences, but I do remember Nana having the volume up really loud when she watched Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. I also remember playing Sorry with her a lot.

I always had it in my mind that Allisen’s family adopted Tuxio when Allisen was around eight; I don’t know why. Maybe because I was eight when my grandparents got their cat, Tux. Tux was a neighborhood cat who’d follow them around when they walked their dog, Sammy, and since he had no home of his own, they decided to adopt him. I guess I drew from that story while writing this one without even realizing it!

A funny thing is, I made up Tuxio’s name back when I was eleven as just a variation on Tux, without even thinking about how it was a combination of Tux and Oreo. Then at some point before I wrote this prequel, I realized that the Tux/Oreo combination would be a perfect story for how Tuxio got his name!

4th Grade: A Rough Year

Whose idea was it for Allisen’s great-grandmother and dog to both die in the same year? Haha. Obviously, I wasn’t planning on writing a prequel when I wrote those little details into the 6th and 7th grade books; if I’d known I probably would’ve done it differently somehow. But it all worked out fine.

I decided early on in the writing of the prequel that Goldie’s death would be the catalyst for Pete’s rebellious years. It made sense that the death of his dog, his best friend who’d been there for him since before he was even part of the Zepetto family, would hit him extremely hard. Since I wanted to keep this prequel mostly lighthearted and not the kind of book you cry over, I didn’t want to go into detail about Goldie’s last days or how hard it was to adjust to her being gone. Obviously I had to show some of that, but to keep the sadness to a minimum, I chose to focus mostly on Pete.

That’s also why I chose to make the focus of the Great-Grammy chapter about Allisen forgetting her commemorative art piece, rather than the actual death. The memorial was based on the memorials we had for my great-grandmother (when I was twelve) and my grandfather (when I was twenty-two), both of which were “celebration of life” type events.
Allisen’s transition to the public school for fourth grade was simply because I’d written in the 6th Grade book that she went to public school for fourth grade, because the private school had gotten too expensive. Her experience with Karena was because in 8th Grade, I mentioned that she’d had a really bossy girl in her fourth-grade class named Karena. The actual group project in which they were trying to figure out what they’d need for a moon base was something we did in my fourth-grade class, but I don’t remember details about it.

5th Grade: Try It; You'll Like It!

I obviously knew that a big portion of Allisen’s fifth grade year would be devoted to her “crazy school” that she speaks so poorly about in the later books! What was difficult was trying to figure out why she’d even stay there for the full year if it was such a bad school. I finally decided that it would make sense if she didn’t speak up about it at first, and then if her staying at that school would help her get into Learner’s Cove for the next year.

I had fun introducing Domacie, and coming up with ways the school could be kind of bad without being so awful that it would be immediately shut down. The ski trip was because I’d mentioned in one of the other books that Allisen and her family went skiing when Harrisson was five. The rock climbing was actually because I’d designed the cover before writing the book, and one of the pictures I used showed Allisen rock climbing! What was funny, though, was that at the time I was writing that part, I actually had a membership to an indoor rock climbing place, so I really knew what I was talking about!

I also had fun incorporating things from the 6th Grade book, like Mirisen being in Allisen’s class, and Pete having green hair and a lip piercing. I don’t remember if the very ending was something I’d planned out before writing the prequel, but I’m very satisfied with how it came out.

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