Childrens author Kate DiCamillo reflects on Tale of Despereaux

To mark the 20th anniversary of her award-winning children’s book, “The Tale of Despereaux,” author Kate DiCamillo took time to reflect on her process and the power of storytelling, particularly the story of a small, brave mouse. She shared this personal essay with The Washington Post in advance of the rerelease of the book this week.

I was visiting my mother in Florida in September of 2001; I returned home to Minneapolis several days after the twin towers fell.

On the flight back, I sat next to a middle-aged man in a suit and tie. Right before the plane took off, he looked over at me and said, “Scary times, huh?”

His eyes were kind.

“Yes,” I said.

We talked to each other for most of the flight, and at one point, the man asked me what I did for a living.

“I’m a writer,” I said.

“What do you write?”

Advertisement

“Stories,” I said.

“Stories about what?”

I felt my face get hot. I was working on my third book, the story of a mouse who falls in love with a princess. A mouse! A princess! It was embarrassing — the world was falling apart around us, and I was working on a fairy tale.

“A mouse,” I mumbled. “I’m writing a story about a mouse.”

“A mouse?” he said.

“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “Stories don’t matter now.”

Later, after the flight, the man came up to me in baggage claim. He touched me on the elbow and said, “Hey, good luck with your mouse.” Then he said, “Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe stories do matter now. Have you thought about that?”

I went home and I wrote, “Maybe stories do matter” on a scrap of paper. I taped the piece of paper to the wall above my desk, and I started working, again, on the fairy tale about the mouse and the princess. I tried to tell the story as if every word of it mattered, and in the end, the story became a book titled “The Tale of Despereaux.”

“The Tale of Despereaux” takes place in a castle and begins with the birth of a mouse, an impossibly small mouse named Despereaux. The story then goes on to tell how the mouse’s life becomes intertwined with a princess named Pea, a serving girl named Miggery Sow and a rat named Roscuro.

It was, for me, a very complicated book to write. I kept a timeline above my desk and referred to it often. I was telling a different kind of story than I had ever told before — a fairy tale set in an imaginary world. I was worried that readers who knew me only from my first two books (“Because of Winn-Dixie” and “The Tiger Rising” — both books of realistic fiction set in the South) would not follow me into this world of castles and dungeons, heartbroken rats and literate mice.

Advertisement

All of which is to say that I was afraid as I wrote — afraid of disappointing readers, afraid that I would not be able to tell the story that needed to be told, and afraid, too, because the story seemed like such a ridiculous thing to be working on in such a dire time.

But every time I looked up at that timeline above my desk, every time I tried to figure out where I was in the story and how I could make my way through it, I would see those words from the man on the plane: “Maybe stories do matter.”

And so I kept going. I was terrified and I was hopeful. I was brokenhearted, and my heart was filled with love for Despereaux and the Princess Pea, for Miggery Sow and Roscuro. All that fear and hope, all that broken-heartedness and love got poured into the story.

“The Tale of Despereaux” was published in 2003, and over the years, I have been lucky enough to hear from readers of all ages about the book and why it matters to them. Teachers, librarians and parents tell me about the experience of reading Despereaux’s story aloud to kids.

Advertisement

And I’ve received beautiful, heartbreaking letters from children who tell me that they have felt less alone because of the story — that Despereaux has given them courage, told them it is okay to be themselves in the world.

Many years ago, I was speaking at an auditorium in Charlotte. During the Q&A, a boy stood up and said that he was dyslexic. “The Tale of Despereaux” was the first book he had read on his own. He wanted to know if I had written the story for readers like him.

This question! It undid me. I had to bend over and catch my breath before I could answer. What I told him, when I stood up, was that I had written the story with the whole of my own troubled, confused heart and that miraculously, through the power of the written word, my heart had been able to connect with his, and we had taken comfort from each other.

Advertisement

This is what happens with stories: Our hearts find each other — our broken hearts, our worried hearts, our loving hearts, our hopeful hearts. We take comfort in each other. We form a community.

Not long ago, I received a letter from a 9-year-old named Ollie. “Dear, Kate DiCamillo,” the letter reads, “I loved your book ‘The Tale of Despereaux.’ I really found light in it.”

Ollie’s words are taped above my desk.

This is the thing I cannot get over: Somehow, in the telling of a story, a light gets passed back and forth from reader to writer; we each get to hold the light for the other. We take turns.

“The Tale of Despereaux” begins with these words: “The world is dark and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader. You must trust me. I am telling you a story.”

I think so often of that man who sat next to me on the airplane all those years ago, that man who spoke so kindly to me, who said, “Maybe stories do matter.”

I wish I could find him. I wish I could thank him for sharing that light with me.

Kate DiCamillo is a former national ambassador for young people’s literature and a two-time Newbery medalist. Born in Philadelphia, she grew up in Florida and now lives in Minneapolis.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMC1xcueZqieXZ67tbHRnqqtZ2Jlf3R7j3JmanFfoK61sYydoJyZnZ65rbuMnZysqJWnsqLB12aYp6aZq7Kzv8CrsGg%3D