Interview with Jamie Sumner, Author of Wish You Well
Welcome to Smack Dab, Jamie! Please tell us about Wish You Well.
Wish You Well is one of those stories where you’ll remember the trio of friends for life. Violet, Wyatt, and Noor are the most unlikely friends who meet at the annual children’s hospital picnic. They all have different health issues and decide to pretend to be friends so they can pool their wishes from a wish-granting campaign and go on three epic adventures in one year!
Wish You Well doesn’t rely on any kind of traditional “sick kid” narrative. Here, we have a heist story! What made you gravitate toward a con rather than a survival or coming-of-age arc?
Books that feature kids with illnesses or disabilities often speak of “battling” and “overcoming” them. The story itself becomes all about the struggle instead of the actual child and their interests and personality. Most kids I’ve met through the hospital are tough. They are resilient. They have an excellent sense of humor. They don’t want to be pitied. They want to have fun and get in trouble. That’s what I wanted to portray in Wish You Well.
You're tackling vision loss, cancer, and heart failure through three different kids' perspectives. How did you approach writing each condition with authenticity and specificity?
This is a book in which I did a lot of research. The hospital setting and the caregivers and the attitudes of the kids, I knew right away and from experience with my own son. But in order to do each of these kids (and my readers) justice, I needed to get the illnesses right. I had excellent sensitivity readers and also, lucky for me, I love research. The worst thing an author can do is invalidate someone’s experience by getting it wrong.
How did your experience as a parent of a child with cerebral palsy affect the drafting process for this book?
My son Charlie is fourteen, The children’s hospital here in Nashville has been our home base since he was born. It’s where he spent ten weeks in the NICU, where he had all of his various surgeries and ER admittances. It’s where I met one of my best friends who was one of Charlie’s nurses. Wish You Well is a love story to people who understand this world.
You've written several books now centering disabled or chronically ill protagonists (Roll with It, Tune It Out, Wish You Well). How has your approach to disability representation evolved across these books?
Roll with It was my first middle grade novel and the most autobiographic – it drew from my own childhood and also my experience as a mother to a son with cerebral palsy. But that was one story. If you want to be a writer and love the process, then you have to get that first book out of your system, lift your head, and see what else the world has to offer and what your place is in it. My heart will always be with the outliers – the kids who feel like they don’t fit in. My approach to disability now is less about awareness and more “see, we’re all the same here!” Everyone feels misunderstood at some point and frustrated and confused as to how to explain themselves to others. This is our common thread and what will me coming back to writing these stories.
The book blends humor with genuinely difficult subject matter. How do you find that balance?
I think kids (middle schoolers especially) are rockstars at this. They go through just as much hardship or more, because it’s out of their control, and they keep going. They can wake up with not enough to eat at home and then someone farts on the bus and it cracks them up and they forget, just for a second, how difficult things are. Humor is what shakes us out of our self-examination. It takes strength to laugh. It is just as vital as courage.
For Disability Pride Month specifically, what does authentic representation in children's literature mean to you, and what's still missing from how disability and illness get portrayed in kids' books?
Disability Pride Month is a beautiful time to raise awareness, but it needs to go beyond the month. We need to teach people how to see the world through the eyes of someone who has a disability. Let’s say a wheelchair-user goes to the museum, but the elevator is out of order. That’s not just a bummer, it’s the end of the experience. When we learn to look for these things, they become impossible to ignore. Kids’ books often only capture one dimension of the experience, but just as everyone is a kaleidoscope of eccentricities, so are these kids. They deserve stories that show their whole being.
While we’re talking about Disability Pride Month, the idea of being underestimated and wanting to do something about it feels central to the book. Can you speak to this a bit?
All kids feel powerless and underestimated because they usually are. Their parents/guardians decide food, school, extracurriculars and then there’s the whole not-old-enough-to-drive thing. Kids don’t need to be told to speak their minds and fight for what they want, but I think more adults need to be reminded to stop and listen. We need to lean in close and give them our time and attention. That’s why much of this book is about convincing adults to take a leap of faith and trust the kids to know what they want.
What’s next?
My next middle grade book comes out March of 2027. It is a novel in verse called Space Race! It’s set in the 90s, which was bliss to write and it’s best described as a family road trip gone wrong. It’s hopeful and funny and adventurous all wrapped into one.
Where can we find you?
You can find me and contact me on my website: Jamie-Sumner.com and on Instagram @jamiesumner_author
Jamie Sumner is the author of the Roll with It trilogy, Tune It Out, One Kid’s Trash, The Summer of June, Maid for It, Deep Water, Please Pay Attention, Schooled, Glory Be, and Wish You Well. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications. She loves stories that celebrate the grit and beauty in all kids. She is also the mother of a son with cerebral palsy and has written extensively about parenting a child with special needs. She and her family live in Nashville, Tennessee. Visit her at Jamie-Sumner.com.
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