Amelia Bedelia
The first book, Amelia Bedelia, featuring the most common depiction of Amelia (1963)
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| Author | Peggy Parish, Herman Parish |
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| Illustrator | Wallace Tripp, Fritz Siebel, Lynn Sweat, Lynne Avril |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's literature |
| Media type | |
| No. of books | 41 (List of books) |
Amelia Bedelia is the protagonist and title character of a series of American children's books written by Peggy Parish until her death in 1988, and by her nephew, Herman Parish, beginning in 1995. They have been illustrated by Wallace Tripp, Fritz Siebel, and the two current illustrators, Lynn Sweat and Lynne Avril. In 1992 HarperCollins republished the three original ones: Amelia Bedelia, Amelia Bedelia and the Surprise Shower, and Thank You, Amelia Bedelia with illustrations by Barbara Siebel Thomas, daughter of the original illustrator Fritz Siebel.
There is a statue of Amelia Bedelia in Manning, South Carolina, the hometown of Peggy Parish.
Many of the books are published as part of the I Can Read series, levels 1 and 2.
The stories involve Amelia repeatedly misunderstanding various commands of her employer by always taking figures of speech and various terminology literally, causing her to perform incorrect actions with a comical effect. Part of her insight into literalism is that she comes from a family who takes everything literally: their method of ridding their house of dust is to "undust the furniture." However, she almost always manages to win everyone over at the end by baking a delicious pie or cake. Much of her employment is as a maid for a wealthy couple known as the Rogers, who are astute enough to realize her literalism and write their requests as "undust the furniture" and "put the wet towels in the laundry and replace them with clean dry ones," as opposed to simply "change the towels."
Following the death of Parish, children would send in fan letters asking about the continuation of the book series. Herman Parish, her nephew, felt uncomfortable to let his aunt's work to be continued by someone not in the family. He then undertook authorship in 1995 with the full support of his family.
In 2009, Herman Parish began writing books about Amelia Bedelia's own childhood experiences, starting with Amelia Bedelia's First Day of School.
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