The Tale of DiCamillo

The true story of an author who takes big risks, tames her fears, and nabs a Newbery

By Kathleen T. Horning -- School Library Journal, 4/1/2004

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 read-aloud) 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.

How did you become a writer?

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!

Was Because 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 of Winn-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.

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 that Despereaux 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 from Because of Winn-Dixie and The Tiger Rising. What did you learn from writing those books that helped you write Despereaux?

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 in Despereaux?

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 of Despereaux, 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.