Kate DiCamillo
1968-

American author of juvenile novels.

The following entry presents an overview of DiCamillo's career through 2005.

INTRODUCTION

A relatively new figure in the world of children's literature, DiCamillo made an auspicious literary debut in 2000 with her Newbery Honor book Because of Winn-Dixie. She quickly expanded the scope of her juvenile novels with such titles as The Tiger Rising (2001) and The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread (2003)—two novels that were a National Book Award finalist and the winner of the Newbery Medal, respectively. Her novels for young adults are regarded as both evocative and emotional by critics, featuring conflicted protagonists whose personal growth is charted through DiCamillo's gently sensitive language. Expanding her repertoire with the "Mercy Watson" series—beginning with Mercy Watson to the Rescue (2005)—a series of chapter books about a pig adopted by a human family, DiCamillo has continued to create thoughtful narratives replete with animal symbolism and endearing characters.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

DiCamillo was born on March 25, 1964, in Merion, Pennsylvania. At the age of five, her family moved to Clermont, Florida, because her doctors felt the warm climate might cure DiCamillo's chronic pneumonia. In Clermont, she became an active reader, immersing herself in the town's Cooper Memorial Library where, as she recalled in her Newbery acceptance speech, she earned the proud validation of "a True Reader" with special library privileges. DiCamillo earned a B.A. in English from the University of Florida, and after returning to the North to live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, she began working full time in a used book store. She eventually found a job in the children's department at Bookman, a book distribution warehouse, where she developed an affinity for children's literature. During this period, she began writing her own stories and submitting them to literary magazines, receiving a McKnight Artist Fellowship for Writers in 1998. After moving into an apartment building that did not allow pets, DiCamillo started writing a story based on her desire for a dog companion, waking from a dream one night, hearing a girl's voice saying, "I have a dog named Winn-Dixie." The idea developed into the manuscript for her first juvenile novel, Because of Winn-Dixie, and, through her job at Bookman, DiCamillo asked a sales representative for Candlewick Press to pass the novel on to an editor. Her prospectus landed in Candlewick's "slush pile" of unsolicited submissions until an assistant editor named Kara LaReau found the story and was immediately struck by its potential. She handed Winn-Dixie to her managing editor, Liz Bicknell, who located DiCamillo and offered to publish the book. Heavily marketed by Candlewick as one of its featured titles for the 2000 season, Because of Winn-Dixie received tremendous word-of-mouth praise from bookstores and quickly became a top seller. Within months, the book had earned DiCamillo a Newbery Honor Book citation and was eventually adapted as a film in 2005. Her subsequent works have received similar critical and popular acclaim, winning several major literary awards. On her web site, http://www.katedicamillo.com, the author describes herself as "short. And loud. I hate to cook and love to eat. I am single and childless, but I have lots of friends and I am an aunt to three lovely children (Luke, Roxanne, and Max) and one not so lovely dog (Henry)."

MAJOR WORKS

DiCamillo's first two children's works—Because of Winn-Dixie and The Tiger Rising—both feature young, lonely protagonists recently relocated to small-town, rural Florida, a condition with which their creator had great familiarity. Both India Opal Buloni, a ten-year-old spitfire from Naomi, Florida, from Winn-Dixie and twelve-year-old Rob Horton, a withdrawn boy struggling for understanding in Lister, Florida, from The Tiger Rising share several common traits. Both long for lost mothers, India's mother having abandoned her and Rob's mother having recently died from cancer. Both find communion in the presence of an unexpected animal—India rescues a jovial and smiling dog from a grocery store (naming the dog "Winn-Dixie" after the store), while Rob discovers a caged tiger behind a gas station owned by his father's boss. The two protagonists are similarly joined by other outcasts and eccentrics who share their concerns about the animals' welfare. However, where Because of Winn-Dixie is a joyful and humorous unfolding of events with happy endings for all, The Tiger Rising is a much darker narrative, with Rob's emotional escape occuring at a much more deliberate pace. Juxtaposed with passages from William Blake's poem "The Tiger," Rob's preoccupation with the titular tiger serves as an overt metaphor for his own self-made spiritual and emotional cage. Initially he just feeds the animal, although with the help of his friend Sistine Bailey, he eventually undertakes a plan to free the tiger (with unintended and tragic results), which allows him to release his suppressed emotions over his mother's death for the first time. India also finds release through the care of her new animal friend, though her story is unveiled with a far lighter and cheerful tone. India's story has a happier sequence of events, with her best pal, Winn-Dixie, helping her to meet a cast of eccentrics around Naomi that reveal to her a different and fascinating stratosphere to the small community. Further, with the help of the endearingly positive mutt, she finally gathers the courage to ask her father about her absent mother, who left before India can remember and whose absence creates a void between her preacher father and the confused pre-teen.

While Because of Winn-Dixie and The Tiger Rising would seem to cast DiCamillo as a Southern writer specializing in the eccentricities of rural towns, DiCamillo surprised her critics with the Newbery Medal winning The Tale of Despereaux, a magical fable about a small castle mouse named Despereaux Tilling who longs after Princess Pea, the human daughter of the keep's King. Like India Buloni and Rob Horton, Despereaux's differences from those around him are obvious and cause him to stand out from their ranks. A combination of contemporary folk tale and fantasy, The Tale of Despereaux is told in third person through an unseen narrator. The story takes the disparate characters of Despereaux and Princess Pea—along with Roscuro, a rat who seeks the sunlight, and Miggery Snow, a dull servant-girl who stubbornly believes she can become a princess one day—through chapters devoted solely to each character, ultimately bringing their intertwining fates together when Roscuro and Miggery decide to kidnap Princess Pea, with only Despereaux able to rescue her. Following The Tale of Despereaux, DiCamillo published Mercy Watson to the Rescue, a novel for younger readers that continues the author's fondness for animal protagonists. The story of a gregarious female pig adopted by the Watson family, Mercy Watson to the Rescue presents a wild adventure through the suburbs starring an unlikely hero in the form of a pig. After Mercy jumps into bed with Mr. and Mrs. Watson, the bed begins to collapse. Mercy runs away in search of her favorite food—hot toast with butter—though the family thinks that she has gone for help. After a series of romps through the neighborhood, Mercy unwittingly returns with help for the Watsons. DiCamillo continued Mercy's antics with two 2006 releases, Mercy Watson Fights Crime and Mercy Watson Goes for a Ride. Also in 2006, DiCamillo published The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, the tale of a treasured, though selfish and vain, china rabbit named Edward. After the rabbit falls overboard during his owner's ocean voyage, Edward spends 297 days at the bottom of the sea until he is rescued by a fisherman's net. This begins a series of travels bringing Edward into the hands of new owners, who teach the rabbit about humility and the value of love.

CRITICAL RECEPTION

For an emerging author, DiCamillo has received almost universal critical and popular acclaim, winning several literary honors quite early in her career. All three of her first published books were honored with major commendations or national awards, a nearly unprecedented feat among children's literature writers. Her first work, Because of Winn-Dixie, has been lauded by reviewers for its unique and engaging narrative voice and clever optimism. Betsy Hearne has commented that the protagonist of Winn-Dixie "has a singular voice with a simple, infallibly Southern inflection; her daddy is one of the nicest and quirkiest preachers to grace children's literature; and Winn-Dixie, named after the grocery store from which Opal rescued him, is an ugly dog with a smile that makes friends and also makes him sneeze, not to mention a pathological fear of thunderstorms." Betsy Groban has similarly called the book "a poignant and delicately told story of a dog as a child's much-needed best friend," while Anita Silvey has suggested that Winn-Dixie "possesses all the qualities of a children's classic." However, some critics have faulted DiCamillo for the mildly didactic and maudlin qualities of her prose style, a view typified by Christine M. Heppermann, who argued that Winn-Dixie "teeters on the edge of sentimentality and sometimes topples right in," though she qualified this criticism, noting that the "characters are so likable, so genuine, it's an easy flaw to forgive." The Tiger Rising has been widely praised for its mature subject material and evocative descriptions, though a few reviewers have again criticized DiCamillo for succumbing to sentimentality, with Peter D. Sieruta dismissing the text's "heavy-handed symbolism." After the publication of The Tale of Despereaux, commentators have hailed DiCamillo for her thematic versatility. The Publishers Weekly review of Despereaux has asserted that the text treats "themes similar to those of [DiCamillo's] first novel with a completely different approach." Janice M. Del Negro has further applauded The Tale of Despereaux for how the author "speaks directly to the reader throughout this deliberately though gently mannered book, and she makes the point of her lessons clearly. There's an intimacy to the authorial tone that makes the artfully crafted prose and precisely contrived exposition accessible as well as gratifying."

PRINCIPAL WORKS

Because of Winn-Dixie (juvenile novel) 2000
The Tiger Rising (juvenile novel) 2001
The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread [illustrations by Timothy Basil Ering] (juvenile novel) 2003
Mercy Watson to the Rescue [illustrations by Chris Van Dusen] (juvenile novel) 2005
Mercy Watson Fights Crime [illustrations by Chris Van Dusen] (juvenile novel) 2006
Mercy Watson Goes for a Ride [illustrations by Chris Van Dusen] (juvenile novel) 2006
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane [illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline] (juvenile novel) 2006

AUTHOR COMMENTARY

Kate DiCamillo and Kathleen T. Horning (interview date April 2004)

SOURCE: DiCamillo, Kate, and Kathleen T. Horning. "The Tale of DiCamillo." School Library Journal 50, no. 4 (April 2004): 44-7.

[In the following interview, DiCamillo discusses the beginnings of her literary career, the impact of her first novel Because of Winn-Dixie, and how The Tale of Despereaux represents a stylistic break from her previous children's works.]

It's hard to believe that it's only been three years since Kate DiCamillo burst upon the scene. Since then, the petite 40-year-old writer has published three outstanding children's novels, including her latest, The Tale of Despereaux, which won this year's top prize for children's literature, the Newbery Medal.

DiCamillo, who grew up in central Florida, belongs to a rare breed of writers: not only are her carefully crafted stories critically acclaimed but they're also wildly popular with kids. Because of Winn-Dixie (2000), DiCamillo's heart-tugging debut, features 10-year-old Opal Buloni, who, with the help of a stray dog that she finds at the local supermarket, makes a successful transition to life in small-town Florida. As a sign of things to come, Winn-Dixie was selected as a Newbery Honor Book and earned young readers' awards in more than 25 states nationwide. The Tiger Rising (2001, all Candlewick), a National Book Award finalist, also takes place in the Sunshine State, where 12-year-old Rob Horton—like Opal in Winn-Dixie —is a lonely child struggling with loss and separation.

For her third book, DiCamillo took the risk of abandoning her Southern roots and fictional realism. Despereaux, an old-fashioned tale seen through the eyes of animals and humans, features a cast of quirky characters that would have made Charles Dickens proud: there's the beautiful, self-centered Princess Pea; a poor, dim-witted daydreamer named Miggery Sow; the villainous Chiaroscuro, a rat with a soft spot for the sublime; and perhaps best of all, Despereaux, a sickly mouse who is the unlikely hero of this charming tale. With its multiple perspectives and interwoven plot lines, Despereaux is at once sophisticated and wholly accessible to children (particularly as a readaloud) and introduces what for some critics is a controversial element into DiCamillo's storytelling—an intrusive narrator who directly addresses the reader. I spoke to DiCamillo, who now lives in Minneapolis, MN, a few weeks after she won the Newbery Medal.

[Horning]: How did you become a writer?

[Decimally]: In college [at the University of Florida], I attached myself to the idea of becoming a writer mainly because several professors told me that I had a way with words. But it wasn't until I was almost 30 that I actually started to write. Then when I moved to Minnesota, I got a job at a book warehouse. I was assigned to the third floor, which was where all the kids' books were. I had been writing every day by that point, and I entered into that job with, I think, a prejudice that a lot of literate adults have, which is that children's literature is something less [than adults']. But then I started to read the books, and I changed my mind.

Were you a reader as a child?

Yes, obsessively so and without discretion. I didn't care what it was. As long as it was a book, it met my criteria. I read everything I could get my hands on.

Did you enjoy reading animal stories when you were growing up?

No! That's the irony of my writing life. I was maybe eight years old when I read Black Beauty, and it horrified me so much that I never wanted to read another book with an animal on the cover. So there are a lot of books that I missed because of that—Charlotte's Web, for one, because I was afraid of what was going to happen to the pig. It's ironic that every one of my books has an animal on the cover, and that I wouldn't have read them because of that!

WasBecause of Winn-Dixie the first thing you wrote?

It was the first book that I wrote. I'd been writing short stories up until that point.

How did you get it published?

I was still at the book warehouse, the Bookman, and a sales rep for Candlewick [Press] came in. I told her, "I love everything that Candlewick does, but I can't get in the door because I don't have an agent, and I've never been published, and they won't look at unsolicited manuscripts." And she said "If you give me a manuscript, I'll get it to an editor." So that's how it happened—great good fortune.

After the success ofWinn-Dixie, did you feel pressure to come up with another great story?

After Winn-Dixie, I had a really hard time because I thought, "I have to write another book like Winn-Dixie or else people won't love me any more." It took me about a year to get back into writing for what I consider to be the right reason: to tell a story. Not to try to please everybody, just to tell the story that you're supposed to tell. I don't know how I'm going to be affected by the Newbery; it's still so new. But, hopefully, I'll be able to keep things in perspective, and know what my job is, which is to tell stories.

All of your books have a strong voice. Do you "hear" voices that inspire you to write?

I do. But saying I hear voices is an exaggeration. Although with Winn Dixie, I heard Opal's voice the night before I started writing the book, and that's why I got up the next morning and started writing. I'd heard her say, "I have a dog named Winn-Dixie." But it's a little bit cloudier than that most times. It's more like you're discovering something that's already there and you're just writing down what already exists.

Despereaux has many points of view? Does that mean you heard multiple voices?

I didn't feel like it was multiple points of view as much as it was a single narrator who told me everything. I heard that narrator's voice very clearly. The narrator told me everything that I needed, and all I needed to do was listen.

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What about that narrator? There's been a lot of talk about that in online discussion groups.

It excites a lot of criticism!

Why did you decide to use that literary device?

Well, to say that I decided to would be giving me more credit than I deserve, because I never know what I'm doing. That voice appeared and I followed it. I didn't make a conscious decision to have what has been called an "intrusive narrator" or by some, an "overly intrusive narrator." Some people love it and some people are really very offended by it. I guess I'll be answering for it for the rest of my life!

So where did it come from?

I think that part of it was me talking to myself through telling the story. I was afraid the whole time. I didn't know how to make the story work because it was very plot heavy. I didn't know where everything was going to go and how a mouse was going to save a princess. I just knew that he was setting off to do it. So the narrator became company for me as I told the story, and I think that the narrator is company for the reader, too. It provides a sense of "It's OK; everything's going to be all right; I promise you everything will work out." It lets the reader know that life is funny and hard at the same time.

Would you say the narrator also helps children navigate the complexity of the plot with its multiple story lines?

Yes, absolutely! When Despereaux goes down to the dungeon both times, you as the reader don't feel abandoned because the narrator is there with you. It's kind of like somebody who's taking the journey with you but who knows a little bit more than you do, and implicitly says, "It's going to be all right." Kids seem to enjoy it.

But adults seem to be divided on the issue.

I've been reading a book of essays by Katherine Paterson, and I find it interesting how often she addresses what the critics say. As a writer you always feel raw. It's your whole heart and soul out there, and people are making judgments about it all the time. So you have to find a way to keep your heart open and tell the story, and not let the criticism bother you. But it always bothers you some.

I've heard thatDespereaux is very popular with kids in second through sixth grade.

Isn't that the ultimate compliment? That makes my heart feel warm because that's who the book is for.

A teacher even remarked that her second graders have started using the word perfidy since she read the book aloud to them.

[She laughs.] See, that makes me happy, too! But this is what I mean about falling into the trap of feeling that you have to make everybody happy. That's impossible, so you tell the story the best that you can tell it, and you hope that people like it. It must be kind of like having a kid in that you raise them the best that you can and then you send them out into the world and hope that the world will love them, but not everybody is going to love them.

One of the frequent comments from teachers and librarians is what a great read-aloud it is.

I read the whole thing aloud. I do this with every book or every story. By the time I get to the fifth or sixth draft, where it's starting to resemble a story, from that point on, I'm writing out loud—you know, reading out loud as I write. I'm glad that that comes through by the time it's a book, because that's how I measure the rhythm and whether or not it's working is by reading it aloud, sometimes reading it into a tape recorder so I can tell whether or not the rhythms are right.

So you read it into a tape recorder….

I listen to it and then that's enough to tell me whether or not it's working. There's a certain rhythm that I'm always looking for. It's kind of like music, I guess. It also helps to read it to somebody but that's always a dangerous thing because you have to be sure that it's ready to be read because criticism at the wrong time can stop you dead. So it's a delicate balance.

Do you revise your stories based on how they sound?

Sometimes I do. Usually I use the tape recorder when for some reason I can't get the rhythm exactly right, and then I can hear it when it's on the tape and know that, OK, that's where I need to fix it. Sometimes it's a simple matter of punctuation. Sometimes it's a matter of word choice. Things need to sound right. It is kind of like music and it has a way that it wants to be, and I need to find the way it wants to be.

The Tale of Despereaux is such a departure fromBecause of Winn-Dixie andThe Tiger Rising. What did you learn from writing those books that helped you writeDespereaux ?

I was so frightened when I was writing Despereaux for a variety of reasons. One was because neither Winn-Dixie nor Tiger Rising are plot-heavy books and they're both Southern books. I thought, OK, so that's the kind of writer I am. So all of a sudden, I was taking a sharp right-hand turn and going into fantasy and talking animals. I thought this is not the sort of story I'm supposed to be telling. It was frightening for me to do it and also frightening to think about how people were going to criticize me for doing it because I was supposed to write Southern novels. So I entered into it with all that fear. It's funny because—and I've heard other writers say this—just because you've written one book doesn't mean you've figured out how to write books. You have to figure out how to write each book. The only thing I took forward from The Tiger Rising and Because of Winn-Dixie was that I would find a way through it if I persevered. That's what the books taught me: that the story knew what it wanted, and I just had to do the work of sitting down and trying not to be too afraid in writing it.

How would you describe the main characters inDespereaux ?

Despereaux is the quintessential unlikely hero. He's so small. He's so sickly. And he's got such a large heart. And speaking of hearts, Roscuro kind of breaks my heart. I think he's a very likeable villain, and I feel a great deal of empathy for him, torn between the light and the dark. Mig is another person who breaks my heart, because she doesn't even know how big she's dreaming to be a princess. Then there's the princess who despite her basic good nature has darkness in her heart: hatred for the rat, and the darkness of missing her mother.

In reading reviews ofDespereaux, I've noticed that your style is often compared to Fielding's, Orwell's, Dickens's, and Cervantes's—all classic writers for adults. How do you feel about that?

I read a lot of Dickens while I was writing. I consciously wanted it to be an old-fashioned tale, and Dickens seemed to do that best. All the other comparisons surprise me and delight me. Of course, no one is ever writing in a vacuum. You're always standing on the shoulders of giants when you write, the geniuses that have preceded you and show you how to do it. So I'm amazed and delighted by all those other references, but I know consciously that Dickens was a role model for me.

I heard that you originally began the story based on a child's request.

Yes, my best friend's son, Luke, who was eight years old at the time. He was a reader himself, very precocious, and he was the one who asked for the story of an "unlikely hero," which is such a wonderful phrase. I told him I can't just write a book on command. I was visiting them in St. Louis, and when I got back home I thought, "You know, that's such a great phrase." He said "unlikely hero" and then he said "with exceptionally large ears." So I started playing around with it and it wasn't a big leap to get to a mouse.

Was he pleased with the book?

His mother is one of my first readers. So when I got Despereaux to the point where it could be shared with people, she was one of the first people to get a draft. She and Luke read it together out loud, and he loved it. He's 11 now so he can't be too enthusiastic about anything. He's starting to be cool now. But he's been excited about everything that's happened with the Newbery because, you know, it's his book.

What about you and the Newbery?

[She laughs.] Me? Every fifth day I'll have a moment maybe of believing it, and it is literally a moment. For the most part it seems unbelievable. There's nothing that compares to it in the literary world, nothing in adult or children's literature. It pretty much guarantees that a book will be around after I'm gone, which means I get to leave something behind. It means that some kid will go into the library, like I did, and look for a book with that medal on the cover, and pick Despereaux. It's unbelievable.

Kate DiCamillo (essay date summer-fall 2004)

SOURCE: DiCamillo, Kate. "We Do Not Do Battle Alone." Children and Libraries 2, no. 2 (summer-fall 2004): 8-10.

[In the following transcript of her acceptance speech for the 2004 Newbery Award for The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread, DiCamillo argues in favor of including darker themes in children's books, noting that such aspects can inspire children in their decision-making and demonstrate that others have faced similar frightening circumstances in their lives.]

About thirty miles west of Orlando is a small town called Clermont, and in that town is a library called the Cooper Memorial Library. When I was seven years old, the librarian there, a certain Miss Alice, stepped out of her office one day and stood beside me and put her hand on my shoulder and spoke the following words with a great deal of force and volume.

"Kate," Miss Alice said to the person at the circulation desk, "is a True Reader! Therefore, the four-book maximum will be waived for her! She may check out as many books at a time as she likes!"

Miss Alice's hand trembled on my shoulder as she said these words. Or perhaps my shoulder trembled beneath her hand. I cannot say.

All I know for certain is that her words, spoken so passionately, so fiercely, shaped me and helped me define who I was. Who was I? I was a True Reader!

I know, emphatically, that Miss Alice's words are a part of the miracle of my presence here tonight. I also know, emphatically, that it is a miracle that I am here tonight at all.

And, in keeping with the nature of miracles, I am properly awed by it. I cannot explain it. I can, however, joyfully point to the many people who are a part of the miracle: Kara LaReau, my patient and daring editor who read the first seven pages of this book and said exactly the words I needed to hear: "More, please;" everyone at Candlewick Press who believed in my small mouse; Timothy Basil Ering, who brought the mouse to life; my mother, who read to me; my friends, who listened to me. Thank you.

And to the Newbery committee: thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you to each one of you for this miracle. Thank you, all of you, for believing in the power of stories.

Speaking of stories, I would like to tell you one. I grew up in Florida, but before Florida, until I was five years old, I lived in a house on Linden Lane in Philadelphia. The house was a large mock Tudor, and within it there were two stairways: the front stairs, which were light and bright and grand, adorned with a chandelier and lit further by tall windows above the landing; and the back stairs, which we called the servant stairs. These stairs ran from the kitchen to my brother's bedroom, and they were dark and dismal and full of cobwebs and smelled of mildew and rot.

Also, according to my brother, the servant stairs were inhabited by trolls and witches. Because of this, my brother kept the door in his room that led to the stairs closed. He shoved a chair up against the door. He checked often to make sure the chair stayed in place. But sometimes, on weekend mornings, when he believed that the trolls and witches were sleeping, my brother would pull the chair aside and open the door and run down the servant stairs and emerge, triumphant and out of breath, into the kitchen.

I was four years old at the time of this story. My brother was seven, and we had a father who was a storyteller and a joke teller. Also, our father could laugh like a witch. The sound was terrifying: a high keening, a cackle that was almost, but not quite a scream. The witch's laugh made me shiver. It made my brother's teeth chatter, and this disgusted my father. He considered my brother a coward, and he told him, often, that he was too afraid of too many things. One Saturday, my father said to me, "Let's fix your brother. We'll give him a real scare. We'll hide in the servant stairs. And when he runs past us, you grab him, and I'll laugh like a witch."

Now you have to understand: no one knew better than I did how afraid my brother was of those stairs. No one knew better than I how much the witch's laugh terrified him. And the combination of those two things—the dark stairs; the witch's joyful, murderous scream—would, I thought, be enough to kill him.

No one knew better. But this is what I said to my father: "Okay."

I knew that if I said, "Let's not do this; it will scare him too much," my father would say, "Oh, you're just like him. You're a big scaredy-cat, too. What's the matter with you guys? You're no fun."

I wanted my father to think that I was brave. I wanted my father to think that I was fun. And so I said nothing.

Instead, I stood at the bottom of the servant stairs. I held my father's hand. I listened as, upstairs, my brother moved the chair aside and opened the door. I could have called out to him. I could have warned him. But I said nothing as he descended the stairs toward us.

I was four years old. And I knew that I was committing an act of great treachery.

That's it. That's the whole story. And it's not, I know, much of a story, but I'm telling it here because there are people who believe that stories for children should not have darkness in them. There are people who believe that children know nothing of darkness. I offer up my own four-year-old heart, full of treachery and deceit and love and longing, as proof to the contrary.

Children's hearts, like our hearts, are complicated. And children need, just as we do, stories that reflect the truth of their own experience of being human. That truth is this: we all do battle with the darkness that is inside of us and outside of us. Stories that embody this truth offer great comfort because they tell us we do not do battle alone.

When I was five years old, we left the house in Philadelphia, but the stairs in that house stayed inside of me. They were carved in my heart, just as the memory of my treacherous act was imprinted there, shaping the person I became.

In Florida, however, two wonderful things happened. I learned to read. And then, safe within the magical confines of the Cooper Memorial Library, I met people in books who had conflicted, complicated hearts like my own. I met people who fought against their own jealousy, rage, and fear. And each page that I turned, each story that I read, comforted me deeply.

I have wanted, for a very long time, to tell the story of me and my brother and the servant stairs. But it was not until I sat down to write this speech that I realized I had, unwittingly, told the story already. It's all there in The Tale of Despereaux : the dungeon stairs and the castle stairs, the chandelier and the tall windows, the sibling betrayal and the parental perfidy.

Despereaux's story turns out differently than mine, of course. And part of the reason that it does turn out differently is that Despereaux reads, in a book in the library, the story of a brave knight. And at the moment when he must make a difficult decision, the mouse decides to act like that knight. He decides to act courageously in spite of his fear.

This is the other great, good gift of stories that acknowledge the existence of darkness. Yes, the stories say, darkness lies within you, and darkness lies without; but look, you have choices.

You can take action. You can, if you choose, go back into the dungeon of regret and fear. You can, even though there is every reason to despair, choose to hope. You can, in spite of so much hate, choose to love. You can acknowledge the wrong done to you and choose, anyway, to forgive.

You can be very small, as small as a mouse, and choose to act very big: like a knight in shining armor.

But none of these things, none of these shining moments, can happen without first acknowledging the battle that rages in the world and within our own hearts. We cannot act against the darkness until we admit it exists.

Thirty-five years after I stood at the bottom of those stairs and said nothing, I have started to forgive myself for not speaking up. I have begun, too, to forgive my father for what he did, for making me complicit in my brother's suffering.

This forgiveness that I am slowly approaching is the gift of the stories I have struggled to tell as truthfully as I can. And it is the gift, too, of each truthful, complicated, tragic, celebratory story that I have read.

Four years ago, when he was eight years old, my friend Luke Bailey asked me to write the story of an unlikely hero. I was afraid to tell the story he wanted told: afraid because I didn't know what I was doing; afraid because it was unlike anything I had written before; afraid, I guess, because the story was so intent on taking me into the depths of my own heart.

But Luke wanted the story. I had promised him. And so, terrified and unwilling, I wrote The Tale of Despereaux.

Recently I had to make a very difficult decision. I had to be brave, but I did not want to be. I had to do the right thing, but I did not want to do it. Late at night, as I lay in bed agonizing over this decision, a friend called me up. She had received a letter from one of her students. The letter was written by a group of third graders at Talmud Torah in St. Paul, Minnesota, who had just finished reading The Tale of Despereaux. Each child said in one sentence what they thought of the book. I'd like to read you a few of those sentences:

You taught us how to do what is right the way Despereaux did.

                                       —Chaim

You inspired me to have courage.

                                        —Jonah

You inspired us to believe in ourselves.

                                         —Gabi

And my favorite:

I think that it was an all-right book.

                                        —Ernie

At the exact moment when I needed it, those kids gave me the courage I lacked, the courage they had gotten from a book that I had written even though I was afraid.

And this, finally, is the miracle of stories: together, we readers form a community of unlikely heroes. We are all stumbling through the dark. But when we read, we journey through the dark together. And because we travel together, there is the promise of light.

Einstein said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is."

Tonight, I choose to believe that everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that I am here. It is a miracle every time I find comfort and courage in books. It is a miracle that we can live in this world long enough to learn how to be brave, long enough to learn how to forgive.

I accept this award tonight. I know that I don't deserve it, but I accept it … for all of us—True Readers, Unlikely Heroes—in honor of our shared journey toward the light.

GENERAL COMMENTARY

Jane Resh Thomas (essay date July-August 2004)

SOURCE: Thomas, Jane Resh. "Kate DiCamillo." Horn Book Magazine 80, no. 4 (July-August 2004): 401-03.

[In the following essay, noted young adult author Thomas offers a tribute to DiCamillo, commenting that, "[h]er versatility has enabled her to depart in voice and mode from each of her successes."]

She's a firefly, this Kate DiCamillo, and who would want to catch a firefly? Having caught one in a jar, who would think that this captured thing was what he was after? I like my fireflies best in the wild, on the wing, out there in the tall grass at the edge of the woods. This account, on behalf of Kate's friends, is therefore only a glimpse.

She's a loyal friend, our Kate. She forgives us our failings, which remind her that we are as human as she. Our wooden legs amuse her. They provide her with proof that, as she suspected, life is not only a dire enterprise but also a hilarious joke, a game played by half-wits, all of us, doing the best we can—a best that, at best, is farce. At the same time, she witnesses the paradox that a man or a mouse may transcend absurdity and rise to heroism.

Kate takes delight in the incongruities of mankind, that glorious ruin. Nothing pleases her more than a man dressed up in an Easter Bunny suit smoking a cigarette out behind the strip mall. Well, one thing pleases her more—the ramshackle wreck who enters the restaurant where she and I are eating sandwiches. As he sits down behind me, Kate's eyes sparkle at the incongruity between this unfortunate and the grandiose view of humanity with which we all delude ourselves, but she observes with such empathy that tomorrow she will make of him a poignant antihero, a revelation of our universally woeful condition.

She's a scamp, Kate DiCamillo is, who loves to scare the horses and shock the prigs. She can belch like a truck driver, and the most outrageous remarks issue from her mouth, but those who prove to be neither horses nor prigs hear the wisdom and tenderness that follows. A phone call or an e-mail comes from her that begins, "Listen to this!" Then, in the manner of someone presenting a Ceylon sapphire in a satin-and-velvet box, she offers a gift: a paragraph from Isak Dinesen, a story from Russell Hoban or George Saunders or Alice Munro. Kate is better acquainted with contemporary literature than anyone else I know. "Listen to this!" she says, and we do listen, for what follows might be something as wonderful as lines from Antonio Machado's poem "Last Night," in which the speaker dreams that bees have built a hive in his heart and are "making … sweet honey from my old failures." Writers need the promise that Machado's dream offers, as they struggle to overcome their failure to gain acceptance for their work and to satisfy themselves. The promise means so much to Kate that she commissioned a friend who has a gift for needlework to stitch Machado's lines into a woolen wall hanging, which Kate then gave away to a writer friend.

Five years before I met her, Kate confronted a question like the one Mary Oliver asks in "The Summer Day":

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Kate answered that if she were ever going to write, she had better begin.

Having begun, she was a dogged worker. To make a living in Florida, she directed shuffleboard at a trailer park, or said, "Look down, and watch your step," to a never-ending line of thrill seekers at Disney World. Such jobs, of course, were never her real work. In the seven years since she and I met in Minneapolis, she has earned her bread at a book warehouse, sold hotdogs at a park, and tended the children's department at a used book store. Her many menial jobs enabled her to rent a small apartment and to feed herself, primarily on bean sandwiches. (Her cooking skill might add up to boiled water or a fried egg, if she owned a kettle or a skillet.) She didn't have the cash, though, to buy a cup of coffee in a shop, or enough to repair the defunct heater in her tincan car when the temperature in Minneapolis was thirty degrees below zero.

Her true work was her writing. Before she went to the book warehouse every morning, she woke up at four thirty to write. Every morning, without fail. She read about writing. She studied the methods of the writers she read. She collected rejections, 470 at last count. (Yes, 470. The bees have made sweet honey indeed from her old failures.) When Because of Winn-Dixie found her, she was ready for it. She knew then how to write it and how to cope with rejections and lukewarm editorial responses. At about the same time, she won a large grant from a Minnesota institution, the blessed McKnight Foundation, for a short story she wrote for adults.

When Because of Winn-Dixie came along, Kate said she had found her voice and her métier. The first time she read from the novel in my hearing, it was worthy of publication. Before anybody else had laid an eye on it, the work was so astonishing in its voice and originality and in the quality of its craftsmanship and the depth of its emotion that I said to her, "You're going to be famous."

Among her many virtues is the fact that Kate never writes the same book twice. Her versatility has enabled her to depart in voice and mode from each of her successes, with The Tiger Rising, and The Tale of Despereaux, and the several other books that are progressing now toward publication. Yes, she continues to write, every day when she isn't in a plane or a hotel, for what has her success won her if not the wherewithal to write whatever her spirit moves her to say?

Kate DiCamillo's friends rejoice in the recognition the world has given her. We try to protect her from writer's envy, including our own, and from her own highly developed devotion to duty, for she is beloved among us. As Mr. White told us, in Charlotte's Web, "It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer." We are grateful that sometimes Kate casts her firefly light on us.

TITLE COMMENTARY

BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE (2000)

Judi Moreillon (review date May 2000)

SOURCE: Moreillon, Judi. Review of Because of Winn-Dixie, by Kate DiCamillo. Book Links 9, no. 5 (May 2000): 12.

Gr. 9-12—When India Opal Buloni follows her preacher father to Naomi, a town in rural north Florida, leaving friends and home behind [in Because of Winn-Dixie ], she feels even more acutely the loss of the mother who left the family when Opal was small. Winn-Dixie, the dog she finds and befriends, helps Opal pull together the lives and losses of other lonely and grieving Naomi residents. The story told by the elderly town librarian of her ancestor who fought in the Civil War and lost everything important to him except his appreciation for the sweetness and sadness that mingle in life weaves through this story of new beginnings.

Gillian Engberg (review date 1 May 2000)

SOURCE: Engberg, Gillian. Review of Because of Winn-Dixie, by Kate DiCamillo. Booklist 96, no. 17 (1 May 2000): 1665.

Gr. 4-6—Like Kimberly Willis Holt's When Zachary Beaver Came to Town (1999), this novel [Because of Winn-Dixie ] joins the long tradition of fiction exploring a small southern town's eccentric characters. It's summer, and 10-year-old India Opal Buloni moves with her preacher father to tiny Naomi, Florida. She's lonely at first, but Winn-Dixie, the stray dog of the title, helps her befriend a group of lovable, quirky locals, eventually bringing her closer to her father and the truth about her mother, who left the family when India was 3. Told in India's sensitive, believable voice, the story is most successful in detailing the appealing cast of characters, including Otis, an exconvict, musician, and pet store manager; Miss Franny, a Willie Wonkaesque librarian whose "Litmus Lozenges" candies taste like sorrow; and nearly blind Gloria Dump, whose tree hung with empty liquor bottles reminds her of "the ghosts of all the things I done wrong." While some of the dialogue and the book's "life lessons" can feel heavy-handed, readers will connect with India's love for her pet and her open-minded, free-spirited efforts to make friends and build a community.

Betsy Groban (review date 14 May 2000)

SOURCE: Groban, Betsy. Review of Because of Winn-Dixie, by Kate DiCamillo. New York Times Book Review (14 May 2000): 26.

Opal Buloni ("Sometimes the kids … called me 'Lunch Meat'") is 10 years old and desperately needs a break. For as long as she can remember, she and her repressed but kindly preacher dad have lived in northern Florida. But his new job at the Open Arms Baptist Church in the tiny, and unfriendly, south Florida town of Naomi has forced Opal to leave behind everything she knows, including all her friends.

When she claims a stray dog in the local Winn-Dixie grocery store, her luck begins to turn. Because "it's hard not to immediately fall in love with a dog with a good sense of humor," she calls him Winn-Dixie and risks her dad's anger by bringing him home to the Friendly Corners Trailer Park. Gradually Opal's relationship with Winn-Dixie restores her confidence, and for the first time she bargains with her dad to tell her more about her long-missing mom: "Since I'm 10 years old, you should tell me 10 things about my mama. Just 10 things. That's all."

Because Winn-Dixie "couldn't stand to be left alone," he and Opal are as inseparable as a lonely child and an abandoned dog can be. The world (of Naomi) becomes their oyster, and they make new friends all over the place: Miss Franny Block, the librarian at the Herman W. Block Memorial Library and heir to the Littmus (Block) Lozenge fortune; guitar-playing Otis and his parrot Gertrude, proprietors of Gertrude's Pets; 5-year-old Sweetie Pie Thomas, who invites Opal to her first birthday party in Naomi; and Gloria Dump, the nearly blind town "witch," who encourages Opal to "go on and tell me everything about yourself, so as I can see you with my heart." When Opal proclaims that "just about everything that happened to me that summer happened because of Winn-Dixie," she is speaking the truth. The healing power of canine love has revived her ability to come to terms with the "sorrow-filled world" and to reach out to new experiences with eagerness and hope. Because of Winn-Dixie is a poignant and delicately told story of a dog as a child's much-needed best friend.

Betsy Hearne (review date June 2000)

SOURCE: Hearne, Betsy. Review of Because of Winn-Dixie, by Kate DiCamillo. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 53, no. 10 (June 2000): 354-55.

"My name is India Opal Buloni, and last summer my daddy, the preacher, sent me to the store for a box of macaroni-and-cheese, some white rice, and two tomatoes and I came back with a dog." There you have it: main characters and conflict, all in the first sentence [of Because of Winn-Dixie ]. But there's a lot more to this book. Opal has a singular voice with a simple, infallibly Southern inflection; her daddy is one of the nicest and quirkiest preachers to grace children's literature; and Winn-Dixie, named after the grocery store from which Opal rescued him, is an ugly dog with a smile that makes friends and also makes him sneeze, not to mention a pathological fear of thunderstorms. In addition, readers will meet an elderly librarian whose stories inject the small town Florida setting with a past; a "witchy" neighbor who has hung a tree with beer and whiskey bottles, each representing a mistake she's made in her life; a mentally challenged musician whose street-singing once led him to jail and who now plays for the residents of a pet store, including Gertrude the parrot, whose favorite word is "Dog!" The one person we don't meet is Opal's mother, who abandoned her family long ago. It is the pain of her absence that propels Opal into friendships with all the characters whom Winn-Dixie eventually brings together, lessening the loneliness of each. By turns funny and moving, vivid from trailer park to pet store, this will propel readers into a satisfying circle of companionship.

Christine M. Heppermann (review date July-August 2000)

SOURCE: Heppermann, Christine M. Review of Because of Winn-Dixie, by Kate DiCamillo. Horn Book Magazine 76, no. 4 (July-August 2000): 455-56.

According to Miss Franny Block, the town librarian in Naomi, Florida, her great-grandfather made his fortune after the Civil War by manufacturing a candy "that tasted sweet and sad at the same time." Ten-year-old India Opal Buloni (called Opal) [of Because of Winn-Dixie ] thinks this description of the candy sounds a lot like life, where "the sweet and the sad were all mixed up together," too. It's also a pretty apt description of this engaging Southern-style first-person novel, featuring a girl and dog with a lot to offer each other. Children's literature is full of animal-to-the-rescue stories, but rarely does salvation come in the form of a creature with as much personality as Winn-Dixie. When Opal, who has just moved to town with her preacher father, discovers him cheerfully knocking over produce in the Winn-Dixie supermarket one day, it's obvious he's a stray. "Mostly, he looked like a big piece of old brown carpet that had been left out in the rain." His friendly manner, which involves pulling back his lips into what appears to be a smile, wins her over and, luckily, wins her father over as well. As if in gratitude for giving him a good home, Winn-Dixie immediately begins easing Opal's troubles, helping her make friends, who in turn help her come to terms with the fact that her mother abandoned her and probably won't be back. The story teeters on the edge of sentimentality and sometimes topples right in, but the characters are so likable, so genuine, it's an easy flaw to forgive. All in all, this is a gentle book about good people coming together to combat loneliness and heartache—with a little canine assistance.

Anita Silvey (review date 2004)

SOURCE: Silvey, Anita. Review of Because of Winn-Dixie, by Kate DiCamillo. In 100 Best Books for Children, pp. 88-9. New York, N.Y.: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 2004.

Written in a beautiful and simple cadence, Because of Winn-Dixie presents the healing power of a stray mutt, Winn-Dixie, a dog with a lot of personality and a charismatic smile. Named after the store in which he was found in Naomi, Florida, Winn-Dixie takes over the lives of two people, a preacher and a young girl, ten-year-old Opal. Abandoned by their wife and mother, the two have maintained a marginal existence, but Winn-Dixie changes the family dynamic and helps widen their circle of friends. This gentle book about people coming together to combat loneliness and heartache—with a little canine assistance—features a quirky heroine, memorable characters, and an assured Southern voice.

For years, Kate DiCamillo tried unsuccessfully to get her writing published. Rejected by several publishers, the manuscript for Because of Winn-Dixie languished in the offices of Candlewick Press for several months. Finally a young editorial assistant, Kara LaReau, brought it to the attention of the editor Liz Bicknell. Bicknell laughed when she read the first chapter and then cried; after finishing it, she believed it to be one of the best middle-grade novels she'd ever seen. After a couple of calls to the author, unreturned, Bicknell finally reached DiCamillo. No doubt surprised to hear from Candlewick so long after submitting the book, the author said simply, "I need to take a bath." However, the next day she called back, and they agreed on a publishing plan for Because of Winn-Dixie.

Believing very strongly in this book by a new author, Candlewick printed a few chapters in the center of its catalog; after that, the book caught on by word of mouth. Although published in this century, Because of Winn-Dixie possesses all the qualities of a children's classic. Winning a Newbery Honor, the book has also received countless awards chosen by children. One child said, "If Winn-Dixie weren't a book, I'd marry it." Although they can't marry Winn-Dixie, many children and adults have grown to love and cherish this heartwarming story.

The Tiger Rising (2001)

Diane Roback (review date 15 January 2001)

SOURCE: Roback, Diane. Review of The Tiger Rising, by Kate DiCamillo. Publishers Weekly 248, no. 3 (15 January 2001): 77.

DiCamillo's second novel [The Tiger Rising ] may not be as humorous as her debut, Because of Winn-Dixie, but it is just as carefully structured, and her ear is just as finely tuned to her characters. In the first chapter, readers learn that Rob lost his mother six months ago; his father has uprooted their lives from Jacksonville to Lister, Fla.; the boy hates school; and his father's boss, Beauchamp, is keeping a caged wild tiger at Beauchamp's abandoned gas station. The author characterizes Rob by what he does not do ("Rob had a way of not-thinking about things"; "He was a pro at not-crying"), and the imprisoned tiger becomes a metaphor for the thoughts and feelings he keeps trapped inside. Two other characters, together with the tiger, act as catalyst for Rob's change: a new classmate, Sistine ("like the chapel"), who believes that her father will rescue her someday and take her back to Pennsylvania, and Willie May, a wise and compassionate woman who works as a chambermaid at Beauchamp's hotel. The author delves deeply into the psyches of her cast with carefully choreographed scenes, opting for the economy of poetry over elaborate prose. The climax is sudden and brief, mimicking the surge of emotion that overtakes Rob, who can finally embrace life rather than negate it. DiCamillo demonstrates her versatility by treating themes similar to those of her first novel with a completely different approach. Readers will eagerly anticipate her next work. Ages 10-up.

Kit Vaughan (review date March 2001)

SOURCE: Vaughan, Kit. Review of The Tiger Rising, by Kate DiCamillo. School Library Journal 47, no. 3 (March 2001): 246.

Gr. 4-6—[The Tiger Rising is a] multifaceted story with characters who will tug at readers' hearts. Rob and his father moved to Lister, FL, to try to begin life anew without Rob's mother, who recently died from cancer. The boy goes through his days like a sleepwalker, with little or no visible emotion. "He made all his feelings go inside the suitcase; he stuffed them in tight and then sat on the suitcase and locked it shut." His sadness permeates the story; even the weather, with its constant dreary drizzle is sad. With the arrival of a new student, Sistine Bailey, Rob's self-contained world begins to crumble. He and Sistine are both friendless and victims of the cruelty often shown outsiders at school. The principal, worried about contagion, decides that Rob should remain at home until the rash on his legs improves. Rob appreciates the respite and Sistine appears daily on the pretense of bringing him his homework. She seems to have the keys to unlock the suitcase on Rob's "not-wishes and not-thoughts." When the boy finds a caged tiger in the woods, he recognizes a similarity between himself and the animal. Then the sleazy owner of the motel where Rob and his dad are living gives him the responsibility of feeding the creature, and Rob realizes he finally holds in his hands the keys to freedom. Quotes from William Blake's "The Tiger" intimate themselves into the narrative and set the tone. This slender story is lush with haunting characters and spare descriptions, conjuring up vivid images. It deals with the tough issues of death, grieving, and the great accompanying sadness, and has enough layers to embrace any reader.

Kate McDowell (review date April 2001)

SOURCE: McDowell, Kate. Review of The Tiger Rising, by Kate DiCamillo. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 54, no. 8 (April 2001): 300-01.

Since his mother's death, Rob and his father have been living in the Kentucky Star Motel in rural Florida, where, in the woods behind the motel, Rob finds a beautiful full-grown tiger in a cage [in The Tiger Rising ]. Rob has no friends at school until he meets Sistine, a girl in a frilly pink dress who beats up anyone who teases her, and Rob finds himself telling Sistine about his discovery. She asks to see the tiger for herself and subsequently campaigns to convince Rob to help her free the big cat. Meanwhile, the motel owner puts Rob in charge of feeding the animal, dropping raw meat by his hotel room home twice a day and giving Rob the keys to the cage. Rob's acceptance of his own painful emotions about his mother's death expands through his friendship with Sistine, and the two of them literally free the tiger from the cage while symbolically freeing Rob's grief. DiCamillo's latest work is written with the same flavor of magical realism that won her acclaim for Because of Winn Dixie, with lyrical prose and deft descriptions that evoke inimitable settings and main characters. Unfortunately, the supporting cast of characters here are more stock than those in her previous novel, with Rob's father characterized mostly by his strong silence and a black maid at the motel functioning as a "prophetess" to the two children. Nevertheless, DiCamillo's careful descriptions spin threads of emotion that are both gossamer and bold, portraying Rob's isolation and his slow recovery with honesty and sympathy. Young readers who enjoyed DiCamillo's first novel won't be disappointed by her second.

Peter D. Sieruta (review date May-June 2001)

SOURCE: Sieruta, Peter D. Review of The Tiger Rising, by Kate DiCamillo. Horn Book Magazine 77, no. 3 (May-June 2001): 321-22.

This tale of loss and redemption [The Tiger Rising ] concerns a lonely child, an absent mother, an emotionally reserved father, and an animal that serves as a catalyst for change and renewal. Though that bare-bones description could also apply to the author's Newbery Honor book Because of Winn-Dixie, the two novels are strikingly different in tone and impact. Robert Horton and his father have moved to the rural town of Lister, Florida, after the death of Rob's mother. Living at the Kentucky Star Motel, where his father is employed, the sixth-grader has "a way of not-thinking about things." He suppresses his grief over his mother's death, ignores the mysterious rash on his legs, and tries not to worry about the bullies who torment him at school. Early one morning, Rob discovers a caged tiger hidden in the woods behind the hotel. Minutes later, he meets a new classmate, Sistine Bailey, on the schoolbus. Angry at her parents for separating, and clinging to the unrealistic hope that her father is going to return for her, Sistine is as emotionally volatile as Rob is subdued. Their prickly friendship comes to center on the caged tiger in the woods, which Rob learns was given to his father's employer to pay off a debt. In a plan that seems more ordained by thematic purpose than fully understood or explained by the participants, the two young people decide to free the tiger from its cage—an act that is emotionally liberating, if ultimately tragic. The brief novel, which features a well-realized setting and an almost palpable aura of sadness, has a certain mythic quality. However, the spare prose is weighed down with significance; even Rob's troublesome rash is described by the motel's maid as "sadness down low, in your legs. You not letting it get up to your heart where it belongs. You got to let that sadness rise on up." Heavy-handed symbolism and sentimentality overwhelm the book's limited characterizations and quiet, almost remote, omniscient voice. Unlike the outgoing dog that cohered Because of Winn-Dixie, the caged animal that serves as this novel's central metaphor never seems more than a paper tiger.

Linnea Lannon (review date 3 June 2001)

SOURCE: Lannon, Linnea. Review of The Tiger Rising, by Kate DiCamillo. New York Times Book Review (3 June 2001): 49.

Twelve-year-old Rob Horton is having a bad year the day he finds a real live tiger. It's caged in the woods behind the Kentucky Star, the motel in rural Florida that's been home to him and his father since his mother died six months ago. Seeing this magnificent beast "was like staring at the sun itself, angry and trapped in a cage," Rob thought.

Rob understands how the tiger must feel since he thinks of himself as "a suitcase that was too full…. He made all his feelings go inside the suitcase; he stuffed them in tight and then sat on the suitcase and locked it shut. That was the way he not-thought about things." Among the things he tries to keep caged are his dead mother, the rash oozing over his legs despite nightly medication, and the misery of school, where local thugs wait for him "like chained and starved guard dogs, eager to attack" from the moment he boards the school bus.

The day Rob finds the tiger is also the day that the blond Sistine boards the school bus for the first time, dressed in a lacy pink dress that even Rob realizes nobody wears to school. Unlike Rob, Sistine is outspoken and defiant. She actually tells her sixth grade homeroom, "I hate the South because the people in it are ignorant." She's in a fistfight by lunchtime.

Kate DiCamillo, whose Because of Winn-Dixie was a Newbery Honor Book, again explores the difficulty of fitting into a new place. But The Tiger Rising is even more emotionally affecting as Rob and Sistine, united by their aloneness, grapple with unlocking their own heartaches as they debate whether to free the tiger. The symbolism may be obvious, but that won't stop most young readers from racing through it in one satisfied sitting.

THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX: BEING THE STORY OF A MOUSE, A PRINCESS, SOME SOUP, AND A SPOOL OF THREAD (2003)

Miriam Lang Budin (review date August 2003)

SOURCE: Budin, Miriam Lang. Review of The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering. School Library Journal 49, no. 8 (August 2003): 126.

Gr. 3 Up—[The Tale of Despereaux is] a charming story of unlikely heroes whose destinies entwine to bring about a joyful resolution. Foremost is Despereaux, a diminutive mouse who, as depicted in Ering's pencil drawings, is one of the most endearing of his ilk ever to appear in children's books. His mother, who is French, declares him to be "such the disappointment" at his birth and the rest of his family seems to agree that he is very odd: his ears are too big and his eyes open far too soon and they all expect him to die quickly. Of course, he doesn't. Then there is the human Princess Pea, with whom Despereaux falls deeply (one might say desperately) in love. She appreciates him despite her father's prejudice against rodents. Next is Roscuro, a rat with an uncharacteristic love of light and soup. Both these predilections get him into trouble. And finally, there is Miggery Sow, a peasant girl so dim that she believes she can become a princess. With a masterful hand, DiCamillo weaves four story lines together in a witty, suspenseful narrative that begs to be read aloud. In her authorial asides, she hearkens back to literary traditions as old as those used by Henry Fielding. In her observations of the political machinations and follies of rodent and human societies, she reminds adult readers of George Orwell. But the unpredictable twists of plot, the fanciful characterizations, and the sweetness of tone are DiCamillo's own. This expanded fairy tale is entertaining, heartening, and, above all, great fun.

Peter D. Sieruta (review date September-October 2003)

SOURCE: Sieruta, Peter D. Review of The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering. Horn Book Magazine 79, no. 5 (September-October 2003): 609-10.

Despereaux Tilling [of The Tale of Despereaux ] is not like the other mice in the castle. He's smaller than average, with larger than average ears. He'd rather read books than eat them. And he's in love with a human being—Princess Pea. Because he dares to consort with humans, the Mouse Council votes to send him to the dungeon. Book the First ends with Despereaux befriending a jailer who resides there. Books two and three introduce Roscuro, a rat with a vendetta against Princess Pea, and Miggery Sow, a young castle servant who longs to become a princess. Despereaux disappears from the story for too long during this lengthy middle section, but all the characters unite in the final book when Roscuro and Miggery kidnap Princess Pea at knifepoint and Despereaux, armed with a needle and a spool of thread, makes a daring rescue. Framing the book with the conventions of a Victorian novel ("Reader, do you believe that there is such a thing as happily ever after?"), DiCamillo tells an engaging tale. The novel also makes good use of metaphor, with the major characters evoked in images of light and illumination; Ering's black-and-white illustrations also emphasize the interplay of light and shadow. The metaphor becomes heavy-handed only in the author's brief, self-serving coda. Many readers will be enchanted by this story of mice and princesses, brave deeds, hearts "shaded with dark and dappled with light," and forgiveness.

Janice M. Del Negro (review date November 2003)

SOURCE: Del Negro, Janice M. Review of The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 57, no. 3 (November 2003): 99.

The young mouse Despereaux Tilling [of The Tale of Despereaux ] simply does not fit in (he can read, and he has an innate appreciation for music), either with his family or his community, and, as the author states, "you must know that an interesting fate (sometimes involving rats, sometimes not) awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform." When Despereaux makes the unforgivable mistake of speaking to a human, the Princess Pea, he loses both his heart and his place in the mouse community, and the adventure is off. On its way, the novel tells the story not only of Despereaux, the chivalric mouse who risks all for his ladylove, but also Chiaroscuro (a.k.a. Roscuro), the outlawed rat who craves the light, and Miggery Sow, the servant girl who squanders hope on an impossible wish. DiCamillo speaks directly to the reader throughout this deliberately though gently mannered book, and she states the point of her lessons clearly. There's an intimacy to the authorial tone that makes the artfully crafted prose and precisely contrived exposition accessible as well as gratifying. Ering's full-page pencil drawings contribute to the romantic feel, the meticulous drafting softened by the dusty, almost pastel-like treatment of dark and light; the physical design of the book hearkens back to leather-bound volumes with gold imprints and other detailing. There is a classic charm to this picaresque tale of an idealistic mouse suffering unrequited love for a princess; that and a pace that lends itself to reading aloud will make this novel a favorite among those ready for some gentle questing.

Teri S. Lesesne (review date March 2004)

SOURCE: Lesesne, Teri S. Review of The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering. Voices from the Middle 11, no. 3 (March 2004): 67.

What would your life be like if your mother had named you Disappointment? That is the name given our title character [in The Tale of Despereaux ], a young mouse whose mother named him Despereaux, French for disappointment. Despereaux must embark on a journey, armed only with a needle and thread, to rescue a Princess from the dungeon, a dungeon populated by rats. This charming and humorous animal fantasy borrows from fairy tale traditions as well as from other forms of folk literature. An interesting feature to point out to readers is that the edges of the paper in the book appear to have been nibbled by some small creature.

Linda M. Pavonetti (review date March 2005)

SOURCE: Pavonetti, Linda M. Review of The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering. Language Arts 82, no. 4 (March 2005): 316.

Everyone loves a good mouse tale and this Newbery winner [The Tale of Despereaux ] will not disappoint. Divided into four books, the story introduces us first to tiny Despereaux, an unusual mouse who loves unmouselike things including music and the beautiful human, Princess Pea. His French mother considers him a disappointment, as does the rest of the family. In Book Two, we learn of a dungeon rat, Chiaroscuro, who loves the light of day and soup so much he risks everything to have both. In Book Three, we meet Miggery Sow, a dim-witted servant girl who longs to be a princess, and in Book Four, the tale comes together when, banished to the dungeon for unmouselike behavior, Despereaux intertwines the lives of all the characters into a story of hope and forgiveness where good overcomes evil. Ering's pencil illustrations add to the charm of this delightful full-length fairytale.

MERCY WATSON TO THE RESCUE (2005)

Publishers Weekly (review date 20 June 2005)

SOURCE: Review of Mercy Watson to the Rescue, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Chris Van Dusen. Publishers Weekly 252, no. 25 (20 June 2005): 77.

Newbery Medalist DiCamillo (The Tale of Despereaux ) once again displays her versatility with this jaunty debut to an early chapter-book series. The tale [Mercy Watson to the Rescue ] stars Mercy, a pig with personality a-plenty—and a penchant for "hot toast with a great deal of butter on it." When Mr. and Mrs. Watson tuck Mercy into bed at night and switch off the light, their pet no longer feels "warm and buttery-toasty inside" and decides "she would be much happier if she wasn't sleeping alone." So she climbs into the Watsons' bed and dreams of hot buttered toast, until the overloaded bed begins to fall through the floor. Mercy's obsession prompts her to hop off the bed—her devoted owners convinced that she's gone to summon the fire department. Alas, the peckish porcine's single-minded pursuit leads her to the kind next-door neighbor and ultimately does prompt a call to the fire department—but not before a series of comical twists (involving the kind neighbor's sister, Eugenia, who is of the opinion that "pigs should not live in houses"). Van Dusen's (If I Built a Car,) boldly hued, tactically hyperbolic gouache paintings tap into the narrative's wry humor and joie de vivre—a memorable sequence depicts Eugenia in curlers and bathrobe chasing Mercy through the yards and winding up in an exhausted heap atop the porker heroine. Everyone ends up around the Watsons' table where the besotted couple piles up the undeserved toast for their "porcine wonder"—a fitting cap to this animated pig tale. Ages 6-8.

Ilene Cooper (review date August 2005)

SOURCE: Cooper, Ilene. Review of Mercy Watson to the Rescue, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Chris Van Dusen. Booklist 101, no. 22 (August 2005): 2022.

PreS-Gr. 2—Oh, Mercy, what a pig! Mercy [of Mercy Watson to the Rescue ] is a fat little porker, a beloved member of the Watson family. When Mr. and Mrs. Watson sing her a happy morning song, she feels as warm inside as buttered toast. But when the lights go off, Mercy is so scared she gets in bed with the Watsons. The bed breaks under the weight, which leads to a series of hysterical events. The Watsons think Mercy is on the way to call the fire department, when, in fact, she wants to see if next-door neighbor Baby Lincoln has any buttered toast. After another misunderstanding and a merry chase, the firemen arrive—just in time to rescue the Watsons, who are about to fall through the floor. Mercy is a heroine (to the Watsons, at least), resulting in more songs and towers of toast. Appropriate as both a picture book and a beginning reader, this joyful story combines familiar elements (the unexpected heroine, the mean neighbor) with a raucous telling that lets readers in on the joke. Van Dusen's artwork is also spot-on. The gouache illustrations are polished to a sheen and have plenty of heft. The characters are exaggerated with a vintage cartoon flair; Mercy, for instance, looks like a piggy bank that has sprung to life. Another jolly adventure about Mercy is in the works.

Kirkus Reviews (review date 1 September 2005)

SOURCE: Review of Mercy Watson to the Rescue, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Chris Van Dusen. Kirkus Reviews 73, no. 17 (1 September 2005): 971.

Hilarity and hijinks abound in [Mercy Watson to the Rescue, ] this tale about a voracious swine with an overweening yen for hot buttered toast. Mercy is the beloved pet pig of the doting Mr. and Mrs. Watson. When Mercy sneaks into her owner's bed one night, her added heft causes the bed to fall partway through the ceiling. Although the besotted Watsons assume Mercy is trotting off to seek help, the only search and rescue Mercy seems to care about involves butter and hot bread. In her quest for some midnight munchies, Mercy awakens the crotchety neighbor. Wild chases and mayhem ensue before help arrives in the guise of firefighters. DiCamillo aims for over-the-top fun with her tale of porcine shenanigans, and Van Dusen's gouache illustrations provide a comical counterpart to the text. The glossy paintings, with exaggerated caricatures and lively colors, complement DiCamillo's tone, although the scowling, lantern-jawed visage of the crabby neighbor borders on the unpleasant. With vocabulary that may prove too challenging for a novice, DiCamillo's tale is best suited for those ready to move up. However, the pacing and the action easily make it right for shared reading. (Fiction. 6-8)

Lee Bock (review date October 2005)

SOURCE: Bock, Lee. Review of Mercy Watson to the Rescue, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Chris Van Dusen. School Library Journal 51, no. 10 (October 2005): 112.

K-Gr. 2—[In Mercy Watson to the Rescue, ] Mercy Watson, a disarmingly charming pig adopted by a loving human family, makes her debut in this new series of chapter books for beginning readers. After the Watsons tuck Mercy into bed with a sweet song and a kiss, she feels "warm inside, as if she has just eaten hot toast with a great deal of butter on it." However, afraid of the dark, she snuggles into bed with the couple. Moments later, all three are rudely awakened from their lovely dreams with a "BOOM!" as their bed falls into a hole that has opened in the floor beneath them. In hot pursuit of buttered toast, "the porcine wonder" inadvertently gets help and saves the day. Along the way, she causes great, humorous distress to the next-door Lincoln sisters. Van Dusen's bright gouache illustrations have a jovial exaggerated style and capture the sometimes frantic action and silliness of Mercy's "heroic" escapade.

THE MIRACULOUS JOURNEY OF EDWARD TULANE (2006)

Alison Morris (review date 24 October 2005)

SOURCE: Morris, Alison. Review of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. Publishers Weekly 252, no. 4 (24 October 2005): 9.

There are sparks of Kate DiCamillo's signature wit in The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (Candlewick), but it is compassion that reigns in this stirring story of a china rabbit who is self-obsessed but not self-aware. Edward has never loved another soul, and it hasn't occurred to him to try. As one might expect, his heart undergoes a remarkable transformation in the course of this story, and the events that bring about his awakening should stir the heart of any reader. There is nothing cloying in the telling of this tale, nothing sweeping or epic or self-satisfied on these pages. Kate DiCamillo gives us a fragile and wonderfully human antihero and a meaningful, memorable story with all the markings of a future classic.

Katherine Patterson (review date 12 December 2005)

SOURCE: Patterson, Katherine. Review of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. Publishers Weekly 252, no. 49 (12 December 2005): 67.

Although Edward Tulane [of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane ] resents being referred to as a toy, much less a doll, most of us would regard him as such. He is, in fact, a rabbit made mostly of china, jointed with wire at the elbows and knees, so that he has quite a range of motion. His ears are bendable wire, covered with rabbit fur, so that they can be arranged to suit his mood—"jaunty, tired, full of ennui." He has a lovely, fluffy rabbit fur tail, as well. He prefers not to think about his whiskers, as he darkly suspects their origin in some inferior animal. Edward, thanks to his owner's grandmother, has more clothes, and certainly more elegant clothes, than most children. He even has a little gold pocket watch that really tells time. But the most important thing that Edward has in his pampered life is the love of a 10-year-old girl named Abilene Tulane.

Surely, Edward Tulane is a rabbit who has everything—everything that is, but what he most needs. There will be inevitable comparisons of Edward Tulane to The Velveteen Rabbit, and Margery Williams's classic story can still charm after 83 years. But as delightful as it is, it can't match the exquisite language, inventive plot twists and memorable characters of DiCamillo's tale. Edward, unlike Rabbit, has never thought of himself as less than real, he just hasn't caught on to what it means to love anything or anyone beyond his own reflected image.

Until, that is, he is rudely set off on the miraculous journey of the title—a journey that begins when Abilene's grandmother tells her and Edward a strange fairy tale of a princess who does not know how to love, and whispers in Edward's ear, "You disappoint me." And the journey ends, as any true fairy tale should, with a happily ever after. But it is the journey from pride through humiliation, heartbreak and near destruction that brings Edward to that joyful ending.

Even in the galley stage, this is a beautiful book. Ibatoulline's illustrations are simply wonderful, and the high quality of the design incorporates luxurious paper and spaciously arranged blocks of text. But a story for today about a toy rabbit? Okay, I thought, Kate DiCamillo can make me cry for a motherless child and a mongrel stray. She can wring my heart following the trials of two lonely children and a caged tiger, and bring tears to my eyes for a brave little lovesick mouse, but why should I care what happens to an arrogant, over-dressed china rabbit? But I did care, desperately, and I think I can safely predict you will, too. Ages 7-up.

Additional coverage of DiCamillo's life and career is contained in the following sources published by Thomson Gale: Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Vol. 47; Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults, Vol. 15; Contemporary Authors, Vol. 192; Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vol. 148; Literature Resource Center; and Something about the Author, Vols. 121, 163.

FURTHER READING

Criticism

Coats, Karen. Review of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 59, no. 8 (April 2006): 347.

Compliments the poignant pathos of the title character of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, but faults the book's "contrived" plot.

Harrity, Kathleen. Review of Mercy Watson to the Rescue, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Chris Van Dusen. Library Media Connection 24, no. 5 (February 2006): 66.

Offers a positive assessment of Mercy Watson to the Rescue.

Hearn, Michael Patrick. "Rabbit Redux." New York Times Book Review (14 May 2006): 16.

Lauds The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane as DiCamillo's best work to date.

Jones, Michael M. Review of The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering. Chronicle 26, no. 5 (May 2004): 26-7.

Evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of The Tale of Despereaux.

Morrison, Hope. Review of Mercy Watson to the Rescue, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Chris Van Dusen. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 59, no. 4 (December 2005): 176.

Praises DiCamillo's skill with recurring motifs and "creative word choices" in Mercy Watson to the Rescue.