Kate DiCamillo — Happy Birthday!

The Tale of Despereaux,
Candlewick Press 

Despereaux is a very small mouse with very big ears. He is a major disappointment to his family, because he doesn’t enjoy the normal mouse activities of scurrying and scavenging and cowering in fear.

Instead, he thinks that music sounds like honey and that light coming through stained-glass windows looks like heaven. His sister Merlot tries to teach him how to eat books — the tasty glue of the binding and the crispy edges of the pages. But Despereaux is more interested in reading the words on the pages. A story about a heroic knight. Despereaux wants to be a hero, but how can a small, sickly mouse aspire to greatness? Ridiculous!

Yet Despereaux aspires to many wonderful, beautiful, ridiculous things. Like love. And hope. And forgiveness. For even a small creature may have a great heart.

In this charming book — The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo — many stories are intertwined. Despereaux’s story intersects the story of Gregory, a jailer who is himself imprisoned in the castle dungeons. And of Miggory Sow, a servant girl traded by her father for a tablecloth. And of Chiaruscuro, a rat who loves light but has been banished to the darkness. And of Princess Pea, a girl who is doted on by her father but who grieves for her dead mother. When the Princess is kidnapped, all of these stories converge.

Kate DiCamillo belongs to an exclusive “club” of writers who have won the Newberry medal twice. Once for Despereaux (2003) and again for Flora & Ulysses (2013). Only five other people have won two Newbery's. Kate's book Because of Winn-Dixie was Newbery Honor Book and also won the Josette Frank Award. For The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, she won the 2006 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for children’s fiction. 

And she’s won a host of other awards which would take too many electrons to list. On her website, Kate says she feels lucky because she gets to tell stories for a living. "Stories are light," says Gregory the jailor to Despereaux. "Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light." 

Some books shine with an inner light, because of the beauty of the language or the compelling characters or the carefully-crafted story. The Tale of Despereaux has all three.

Happy birthday to Kate DiCamillo on March 25th. Thanks for bringing so much lovely light into the world. Keep telling your stories. Keep making the light.

Want to learn more about Kate diCamillo and her books? Click here.  

Image Credits:     Mouse - Drawing by Rama         Kate diCamillo photo - Candlewick Press     Kate diCamillo reading at Kalamazoo Public Library - Public Domain     Sun - Public Domain

Because of Kate DiCamillo

Every well-written book is a light for me. 

When you write, you use other writers and 

their books as guides in the wilderness.   

                          – Kate diCamillo

To me, Kate diCamillo looks like Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail. And her children’s books seem like the sort that Meg -- I mean Kathleen Kelly -- would write. Her stories are whimsical, touching, funny, serious, and altogether wonderful.

Kate Dicamillo

Katrina Elizabeth DeCamillo was born in Philadelphia in 1964. In childhood, she suffered from chronic pneumonia, and her mother took her to Florida to recover. Her father remained behind to sell his orthodontist practice. But years passed, and he never joined his family.

At age thirty, Kate moved to Minneapolis and found work as a “picker” on the children’s floor of the Bookmen’s warehouse. 

That first winter in Minnesota, the worst on record, Kate was suffering from "dog withdrawal." On her author site, she says, “I was living in an apartment where no dogs were allowed, but there weren't any rules about imaginary dogs. So I made a dog up, the best dog I could think of: a smelly, friendly, big old mutt.” And so Kate’s first book was born—Because of Winn-Dixie.

Winn-Dixie is the story of a ten year old girl who adopts a furry, smelly, and very loud dog after she and her father move to Florida. The book, published by Candlewick Press in 2000, was a Newbery Honor winner for 2001 and was awarded the Mark Twain Award for 2003. In 2005, the novel was adapted for film, starring Jeff Daniels and AnnaSophia Robb. In 2012, the School Library Journal included Because of Winn-Dixie in its list of the top 100 chapter books of all time. 

Not too shabby for a writer's first book -- but that was only the beginning.

The next year -- 2002 -- Kate published The Tiger Rising, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. In 2004, she won the Newbery Medal for The Tale of Despereaux, and in 2006, she won the Boston-Globe--Horn Book Award for Fiction, for The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. The list goes on, and it's hard to imagine this children's author publishing any story that doesn't win an award.

Why is this writer so successful, with an audience comprised of both children and grown-ups? I think it's because her underlying theme is hope, even in hopeless situations. Her characters are on a quest. India Opal Buloni (Winn-Dixie) is trying to find out about the mother who abandoned her. Despereaux (a small mouse with big ears) loves light and words--and he dares to love a human princess. Edward Tulane is a china rabbit who journeys to the bottom of the sea and around the world, searching for home. Kate's stories are charming and whimsical and multi-dimensional. And a great deal of fun to read.

In 2014, Kate was appointed to a two-year term as National Ambassador for Children's Literature by the Library of Congress. Her latest book, Flora and Ulysses, won the Newbery Medal for 2014 as well. 

In this story, Flora watches in horror as her next door neighbor, Mrs. Tickham, accidentally vacuums up a squirrel with her super-suction, multi-terrain Ulysses 2000X vacuum cleaner.  And not just any squirrel, mind you. This squirrel is a superhero. And a poet. What can anyone say in such a circumstance but "Holy bagumba!"

Kate says that books are "guides in the wilderness" for writers. Kate's books are certainly a guide and an inspiration for me. I guess that if a mouse can dare to love a princess, I can keep hoping to someday write a story as wonderful as as the ones she writes. 

It's because of Kate diCamillo that I keep trying.

If you want to be a writer, write a little bit every day. Pay attention to the world around you. 

Stories are hiding, waiting everywhere. You just have to open your eyes and your heart.

                --Kate diCamillo

Link of Amazingness to Kate diCamillo's 
Newbery Acceptance Speech 
for Flora & Ulysses