Kate DiCamillo: A Promising Forecast
By Katherine Romano, Associate Editor

Last April, we showed up on author Kate DiCamillo's back doorstep in the middle of an unexpected blizzard. "Welcome to Minnesota!" she laughed when she opened the snow-encrusted door to greet us.

When we stepped into the living room of her home, we kept searching for evidence of a dog, due to the subject of her hugely successful first novel, Because of Winn-Dixie (Candlewick, 2000). The story, Kate told us, was born during one of the worst winters in Minnesota's history when she was deeply missing the warmth of her home state of Florida and the companionship of a dog. We learned that Kate had indeed finally gotten the dog she was yearning for shortly after she bought her home in Minneapolis. Unfortunately, she had forgotten to consider that she's on the road nearly three weeks every month with appearances and school visits. She ended up turning over the puppy—Henry—to one of her friends. "So, now I'm an aunt," she said.

Even though she is the author of poignant, introspective books such as Because of Winn-Dixie and The Tiger Rising (Candlewick, 2001), we quickly found that Kate DiCamillo has an acerbic sense of humor and a wickedly contagious laugh.

"As a kid, I didn't think people wrote books. It seemed like such a superhuman thing," commented Kate. "I'm grateful for everything that's happened."

"Is that taping right now?" she asked as we set down our tape recorder to begin the interview. "I guess I shouldn't say anything obscene."

A geographical cure. Kate DiCamillo was born in Philadelphia and was often sick as a child. At the age of five, after several bouts of pneumonia, her doctor prescribed a "geographical cure"—a move to Florida—as the best thing to improve her health. "I don't think my recovery had anything to do with the climate," she remembered. "I think I just grew out of it and grew into other more exciting things like scarlet fever and impetigo. I was just a disaster."

Although she admits that she wasn't much of a writer as a child, Kate says that she "read without discretion" and finds great humor in the fact that her books are largely centered on animals—The Tale of Despereaux Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread is coming from Candlewick in fall 2003. "I read Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (Random House, 2002, reissue) when I was eight and spent nearly a year underneath the bed, begging for therapy. I would never check out any book that had an animal on the cover after that. It's ironic because I would never read my own books!" she said.

"The Tiger Rising is Kate DiCamillo's second novel for children.

A flashbulb moment. In 1994, Kate moved with a friend to Minnesota—"I moved without socks. I really thought, 'How cold can it be?' "—and started work filling orders at a book distributing warehouse. She worked on the third floor, where all the books for children were located. "At the time, I had the bias that I think a lot of adults have—that kids books are something less," Kate commented. While filling orders, she began reading the books and experienced what she describes as a "flashbulb moment." "I read The Watsons Go To Birmingham—1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis (Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1995) and thought, 'I want to do this,' " she remembered.

Buckling down. Although she had been writing fiction in Florida, Kate really became dedicated to the work when she moved to Minnesota—"It's great weather for writing," she laughed. She committed herself to waking up every morning at 4 a.m. and wrote at least two pages before she left for work at 7. Once she got started, she couldn't stop and Because of Winn-Dixie was written in six months. From there it went on to Candlewick Press where Kate had already sent a picture book manuscript. Winn-Dixie went on to the fiction editor who ultimately ended up having a baby, working from home and then leaving the company. Kate's manuscript got filed in a box that came back to Candlewick and landed on then editorial assistant Kara LaReau's desk. When Kara eventually read Kate's manuscript, she began immediately championing it. People listened and not only did Because of Winn-Dixie go on to major acclaim and to win the Newbery Medal, but Kara is now Kate's editor. "I've learned that she's brilliant and that I can trust her and I wouldn't be talking to you without her," Kate said.

The product of a "flashbulb moment"— the Newbery-Medal winning Because of Winn-Dixie.

"The weird thing is, everything that's happened to me has happened because I moved to Minnesota," she added. "I finally buckled down and started doing the work when I was still in Florida, but I would've never written Because of Winn-Dixie if I hadn't left."

What if? Once Winn-Dixie hit, Kate was anything but prepared. "Nothing pointed to what was going to happen," she told us. When the book began getting a lot of buzz in Publisher's Weekly and elsewhere, Kate caught herself thinking about the upcoming Newberys and wondering, "What if?"

"When the announcements were made, it was like Christmas Eve," she told us. "I used to look for the Newbery Medal on books I read when I was a kid. I still can't believe it's on something I wrote," she said.

Since then, Kate's moved on to other books and gotten more comfortable with the public recognition, but the thing that never fails to impact her are the letters she receives from her readers. "It's mind-blowing for me to get a letter from a kid who read Winn-Dixie or The Tiger Rising that reads, 'My dad left and now I have a way to talk about it,' " she commented (both books are narrated by children who are missing a parent).

Here's hoping we'll be hearing a lot more from Kate DiCamillo and that she may continue to position herself under a storm cloud of good writing weather.

Kate DiCamillo (left) and Teaching K-8's Associate Editor, Kate Romano (right) swap dog stories.

Photos by Becky Rodia.

May 2003, Vol.33, No.8