Please Note: I was monetarily compensated in exchange for composing and hosting an interview with the author. This compensation in no way affected my opinions.
Title Berry Parker Doesn’t Catch Crushes
Author Tanita S. Davis
Intended Target Audience Middle Grade
Genre Contemporary, Realistic Fiction
Publication Date September 16th 2025 by HarperCollins
Find It On Goodreads ● Amazon ● Chapters ● Blackwell’s ● Barnes & Noble ● IndieBound
With her mom’s new boyfriend, her best friend’s new crush, and her dad’s interest in her gym teacher, Berry vows to never catch a crush — and to show everyone how much better things would be without theirs — in this stand-alone contemporary middle grade from Tanita S. Davis, author of The Science of Friendship and Partly Cloudy.
Every year, Berry’s mom, Ivy, visits for a three-week “August Invasion.” And every summer Berry hopes will be the one when Ivy will stay — forever.
Which is why Ivy’s surprise return visit is amazing — until Berry realizes her mom didn’t come for her. Ivy’s back to pack the last of her things, and she’s brought her new “friend,” Mr. Cole to help. When Berry discovers that Mr. Cole is taking a job in England, she’s convinced that Ivy wants to move all the way across the ocean with him, to where an August Invasion can’t reach. Even at school, messy feelings are ruining everything. Berry’s best friend, Lia, rearranges her schedule to have classes with her crush, leaving Berry alone all day. Even Berry’s normally boring dad is making excuses to talk to her gym teacher.
All these crushes are crushing the life out of Berry. Weren’t things better before these extra people came along? Why do things have to change?
Tanita S. Davis
Tanita S. Davis is an asocial hermit who feels really weird talking about herself in the third person, and honestly would rather be somewhere reading a book, but oh, well.
Most bios are like a really intense game of two truths and a lie, so Tanita invites you to consider which is which: Tanita holds a Master of Fine Arts from Mills College. Her family all went on a trip to Germany, and left her behind. She once rolled into traffic on Bush Street in San Francisco.
Tanita serves on the board of The Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards, better known as The Cybils. Her short fiction can be found in Hunger Mountain and Cicada magazines.
Her occasional truths, frequent lies, and very random observations can be found on Instagram @Tanita_Writes.
1. You’re the author of a number of beloved middle grade novels including Serena Says, Partly Cloudy, Figure It Out, Henri Weldon and The Science of Friendship. What do you like most about writing for this age group? Are there any particular challenges you face when writing for a middle grade audience?
What I love most about writing for the middle grade/junior high age group is the emotional volatility of the time period. Middle grade for me was when everything fell apart – and in some ways, specifically emotionally, a lot of things began to coalesce. It’s such a big moment when so much of life changes that it feels like anything is possible. I taught both fifth and seventh grade in nontraditional school settings and a lot of what I do in my writing is write love letters to my students and to myself in that moment.
What’s challenging about writing for this age group is what’s challenging about writing for any young people – the temptation to be “relevant.” To learn the slang of the moment, to lean in to the vibes and try to mimic them – when the real truth is that there’s a common thread that runs between my middle grade experiences, roughly twenty billion years ago, and the experiences of middle graders right now. We have to balance chasing the zeitgeist with the reality that human experience has a common through-line. To my mind, the more we lean into that as writers, the better and more authentic characters we create.
2. As indicated in my previous question, you’ve written prolifically in the middle grade contemporary genre, covering a wide variety of topics including the evolution of friendship, learning disabilities, racism and microaggressions and much more. Do you find there are any themes or commonalities that connect the stories you write?
It’s funny – when I was doing my MFA, one of the big discussions was that there are only four plots (depending on who you asked) and that every author writes the same book repeatedly and that there was no originality left in the world. While I think the idea of ‘no true originality’ is wildly oversimplified, I know that I have some cherished tropes I revisit in every book. Foundational to my work is the idea that family – chosen or otherwise – can be a cornerstone to our personal foundations; that humans share a common experience despite ethnicity, age, gender, gender expression, ability, faith, or circumstances; and that in the most common and ordinary ways, love isn’t pie. It doesn’t vanish when divided and shared. I think I’d be happy if people could see my books and know that they can expect to read about one or all three of those things in every story.
3. Berry is a passionate artist and one of the things I loved most about her character is her instinct to relate feelings or situations with colours. For example, at one point in the novel she describes her mood as “Tangerine – a bright, juicy shade that bubbled with fizzy warmth and happiness.” What a fun and evocative way to see the world! What colour do you think your ideal day would be, and what would it entail?
Many people will remember Dr. Seuss’s My Many Colored Days, a posthumously published book from the mid-90’s. For a while, much like Oh, The Places You’ll Go, it was one of those gifts high school graduates receive, and I had a friend in college who was obsessed it. I wrote Berry’s color mindset with her in mind. My best day would be probably a grapefruit peel shade of orange – a bit more yellow at the base, with a hint of a blush that would make it a more subdued peach. It would be a day that included mucking around in my garden, reading on a blanket in the sun (I’m pretty sure my alternate form is a giant feline of some sort) and making some kind of art – the kind that uses too much glue and dubious amounts of sequins or glitter.
4. One of the primary obstacles Berry faces throughout the novel is adapting to a great deal of change. She’s taking a challenging new Latin class, the dynamics in her relationships with her friends are changing, and her mother has a new romantic partner. What would you say to a young reader who, like Berry, feels overwhelmed and anxious about the uncertainty of the future in the wake of significant change? How can we better adapt to and accept change in our own lives?
This is such a good question. Like many people, I loathe change. I find the idea of new situations and new people a nightmare of anxious what-ifs. I cringe from having to adjust my schedules and my expectations, and I haaaaate the uncertainty of starting over. But the fact is, I hate the idea of all of that more than the reality – because repeatedly reality has shown itself to be free of all of the drama and catastrophic consequences of change that I feared.
Anxiety uses up So. Much. Energy. I would encourage a young reader – or anyone – to sit with all of the feelings brought up by the prospect of change, and to give themselves a chance to feel their feelings. Then, I would look at how much they can control. If the change is like your mother getting a beau and relocating across the Atlantic to be with him…oof. Take a breath. You don’t control your mom, so… you’re going to have to deal. Yell, cry, run around the block… and then sit down and ask yourself what you can do to enable yourself to get through the next hour, the next day, the next week – trying not to look too far ahead and anticipate the giant fireball disaster at the end that we fear but just looking to make ourselves safe and make solid, calm decisions in this next hour, this next day, this next week.
Often we’ll find ourselves midway through the thing that we feared and discover that it’s uncomfortable – but not fatal. Reframing our thoughts away from our panicked first response helps us say to ourselves, I know I can survive this. Being more adaptable to me has meant being more mindful. Paying attention to what’s working out with the new way of doing things and taking a moment to be really grateful. Giving myself a tiny reward for having a positive mindset about the new thing. Taking a moment to breathe instead of reacting when the change makes me uncomfortable or angry. Acknowledging what I have the power to change, and what I need to make peace with. All of this is a process – a lifelong one, because I am Today Years Old and still working on it! But – we can survive this. We can adapt to change.
5. In her Latin class, Berry learns about the phrase “carpe diem”, and notes that while most know it means “seize the day”, the rest of the line – “quam minimum credula postero” – emphasizes the importance of being present in the moment and trusting as little as possible in the future. From political unrest to climate change, the future and what it will look like feels more uncertain than ever, especially for young people. Can you speak about this element of the story?
I wrote about Berry digging into carpe diem not only because I know that not a lot of people have ever heard the rest of the quotation, but because Berry, who is watching her mother still grieve the loss of her mother, could really resonate with it. It’s so easy to catastrophize about the future, or to look behind us and feel guilty and sad about things that have already happened. It’s so very clear to me that Berry is lucky in the moment. Lucky that she still has her mother. Lucky that both parents, though living separate lives, love her enough to come together for her, and put her first for so many years. Lucky that she has friends – even friends who are changing and growing in ways she isn’t yet or might never.
Trying to seize tomorrow and reap benefits from something that doesn’t belong to us is, basically, theft, and most of the time it’s stealing our joy from ourselves. I’m a big fan of doing what we can with today to prepare us to live our fullest tomorrow, but not at the cost of stealing time from now. Rather than asking what we can do about tomorrow, maybe the better question is how we can lean into today’s challenges to be who we need to be tomorrow?
6. “Ignis Aurum Probat” (fire tests gold) is another Latin phrase that plays an important role in the novel. Is there a challenge you faced in your own life that felt difficult in the moment, but ultimately helped forge you into the person you are today?
There are two challenges from growing up that I think of specifically helped make me the person I am – and I’ve written a bit about one of them in The Science of Friendship. I had really very few friends at the beginning of junior high and was basically The Awkweird Girl who was hazed during an incident at a swimming party. The next year, my mother was severely ill during a time when she and my dad were having relationship issues. My older sister and I were left alone as she had to go into the hospital – and he had to go to work, and we to school. Many families become especially private when there’s trouble, so no one really knew what was going on with us. My eldest sister was away at school, so we younger girls had to lean on each other, scared of people finding out, angry with our dad for isolating us, and basically terrified we’d lose our mom. I know that I gained compassion from the isolation and the ability to recognize other people at the end of their rope. I know what made a difference for me – kind things people said and did, not even knowing that I was having real troubles.
I got through those moments to become less reliant on friends and more self-reliant. More than that, more reliant on the fact that even the worst school year or calendar year can’t last forever. Endurance is a gift, and I realized I could do hard things and survive. That has helped me out repeatedly. It was horrible at the time, but I got through it. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.”
7. The desire for understanding and self-acceptance is a universal quest that’s relatable at every age. You wrote a particular passage in relation to this idea that I’ve returned to again and again because I found it deeply moving. In the novel, Berry reflects “It was weird to think of having secret gears, like parts of herself that she hadn’t discovered yet. How were you supposed to find those parts or know what they were for if you didn’t know they were there?” Simply put: How do you know what you don’t know about yourself? Is there anything middle grade readers can do to learn more about themselves and encourage this journey of self discovery?
Just like learning to know someone else, learning to know ourselves comes about when we spend time with ourselves. Hanging out and being alone deliberately, on a walk or doing art, without the input of social media or other voices can take us on an expedition into our internal self. Mapping the undiscovered country of our inner landscape can be one of the most rewarding journeys, as we learn to see, know, and love ourselves – which gives anyone at any age such a boost in understanding and loving other people.
8. Ivy, Berry’s mother, tells her “You choose your choices, and you don’t let anyone else’s wants or wishes push you to change yours.” This felt like a particularly powerful message, because it relates to both Berry’s personal journey to remain true to herself and her feelings (or lack thereof) when it comes to crushes as well as the general pressure many will face in their life to fit in. What strategies can young readers employ if they feel left behind or otherwise different from their peers?
It can be especially difficult in middle school and junior high to feel left behind. One of the biggest strategies to move past that feeling is to validate that feeling. It feels cruddy to be different, because we’re socialized early that being alike is ideal, and the human brain is always looking for patterns. If we’re the one not fitting the pattern, we have a serious urge to try to fit – and that almost always leaves us more unhappy than ever. So, we need to acknowledge, Yeah, I kind of want to do what other people are doing, just to belong. It feels unsafe and uncomfortable not to be like them… Then we have to also know ourselves well enough to remind ourselves, But that’s not me…and that’s okay. Honestly, telling myself that phrase out loud has gotten me through a lot of things. Then we circle back to getting to know and love ourselves, to making a little date with ourselves to do something maybe our friends don’t want to do, but that we love, and reminding ourselves that our originality, our aesthetic, our weirdness, is us, and that it’s 100% legit.
9. One of the things I most appreciate about Berry Parker Doesn’t Catch Crushes is its open-ended conclusion. Berry might be aromantic, asexual or demisexual, or she might simply be maturing at her own pace and may find her feelings about crushes will change over time. This feels like such a gentle and kind way to approach Berry’s personal journey and underlines the sense of warmth, support and understanding you infused throughout the text. Why was it important to you to end the novel in this way? Have you given any thought to what the future might hold for Berry? I absolutely adored her character and don’t feel ready to say goodbye to her yet!
I wanted to write a story of a girl in transition – in a shifting friendship, in a changing relationship with her mother, and with her father, in a transformational space with her own emotions. To me, middle grade fiction’s most important work is to model the literal work of puberty – it’s not begun or ended as soon as society seems to believe and transition really encapsulates the whole of being human. It was most important not to put a period on the end of that particular sentence – because Berry, like all of us, is going to expand and enlarge. She’s going to travel; she’s going to spend more time with people different culturally from her parents. She’s going to be changed by that – it’s inevitable.
Meanwhile, Eirik’s crush will continue. Berry’s going to sit with the realization that he like likes her until she can come to some conclusion of how she should respond. It’s going to be a minute, but while she considers, she’s going to do her best to still be a steadfast friend, because she knows how it feels to be left behind. Berry has learned to make creative solutions work – and to make lemonade out of the challenges she’s had to drink down this year, and all of that is going to make her an awesome friend, and a smart lady someday. I’ve looked into her future – and Berry Parker is going to be fine. 😊
3 Responses
This is a wonderful interview!! Thank you for sharing.
I heard this has a great Latin teacher in it! Thanks for a fantastic interview with Tanita!
Indeed, she’s an awesome Latin teacher!