diff --git a/parquet-avro/pom.xml b/parquet-avro/pom.xml
index 3d172068c2..2db3e55c2d 100644
--- a/parquet-avro/pom.xml
+++ b/parquet-avro/pom.xml
@@ -207,8 +207,9 @@
         <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
         <configuration>
           <systemPropertyVariables>
-            <!-- We need to set this system property to allow Avro to serialize these classes via the specific/reflect models -->
+            <!-- We need to set these system properties to allow Avro to serialize these classes via the specific/reflect models -->
             <org.apache.avro.SERIALIZABLE_CLASSES>java.math.BigDecimal</org.apache.avro.SERIALIZABLE_CLASSES>
+            <org.apache.avro.SERIALIZABLE_PACKAGES>org.apache.parquet.avro,java.util</org.apache.avro.SERIALIZABLE_PACKAGES>
           </systemPropertyVariables>
         </configuration>
       </plugin>
diff --git a/parquet-avro/src/main/java/org/apache/parquet/avro/AvroRecordConverter.java b/parquet-avro/src/main/java/org/apache/parquet/avro/AvroRecordConverter.java
index 66ffe64f6b..9f6c788807 100644
--- a/parquet-avro/src/main/java/org/apache/parquet/avro/AvroRecordConverter.java
+++ b/parquet-avro/src/main/java/org/apache/parquet/avro/AvroRecordConverter.java
@@ -355,7 +355,7 @@ private static Converter newConverter(
     LogicalType logicalType = schema.getLogicalType();
     Conversion<?> conversion;
 
-    if (knownClass != null) {
+    if (knownClass != null && logicalType != null) {
       conversion = model.getConversionByClass(knownClass, logicalType);
     } else {
       conversion = model.getConversionFor(logicalType);
@@ -787,7 +787,8 @@ public void end() {
       } else if (elementClass == double.class) {
         parent.add(((DoubleArrayList) container).toDoubleArray());
       } else {
-        parent.add(((ArrayList) container).toArray());
+        parent.add(((ArrayList) container)
+            .toArray((Object[]) java.lang.reflect.Array.newInstance(elementClass, 0)));
       }
     }
 
diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
index 372c1d5034..effefd2fad 100644
--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -94,7 +94,7 @@
     <fastutil.version>8.5.19</fastutil.version>
     <semver.api.version>0.9.33</semver.api.version>
     <slf4j.version>1.7.33</slf4j.version>
-    <avro.version>1.11.5</avro.version>
+    <avro.version>1.12.2</avro.version>
     <guava.version>33.6.0-jre</guava.version>
     <brotli-codec.version>0.1.1</brotli-codec.version>
     <assertj.version>3.27.7</assertj.version>