Kate DiCamillo
When you write for kids, people always ask you what lesson you mean to impart. I don't think adult writers get that question. I never mean to teach anybody a lesson, because I don't know anything myself.
I have a part-time dog. I'm actually an aunt to a dog, and he's an awful dog, but I love him. He's only interested in doing what he wants to do.
My parents are separated. My father left when I was six years old.
I had it in my head when I was in college that I wanted to be a writer, but it took me a long time to commit to being a writer. Up until then, I had worked one dead-end job after another while writing on the side.
Writing a novel isn't like building a brick wall. You don't figure out how to do it, and then it gets easier each time because you know what you're doing. With writing a novel, you have to figure it out each time. Each time you start over, you just have the language and the idea and the hope.
When I was 5 years old, I moved with my mother and brother from Philadelphia to a small town in Florida. People talked more slowly there and said words I had never heard before, like 'ain't' and 'y'all' and 'ma'am.' Everybody knew everybody else. Even if they didn't, they acted like they did.
I was a very sickly kid and suffered from chronic pneumonia, which is why we moved to the warm southern climate. I think being ill contributed to my development as a writer. I learned early on to entertain myself by reading.
Writing my own stories had always been one of my dreams, but I didn't start until I was 29. I was working in a book warehouse and was assigned to the third floor where all the children's books were. For four and a half years, I spent all day, every day around children's books, and it wasn't long before I fell in love with them.
How do I feel when I look back at prior work? Hmmm. I think, 'I tried to do the best I could do. It's not perfect. It will never be perfect.' And then I think, 'I want to try again.'
To me, this is one of the great things about writing kids' books: the illustrations.
I was someone who wanted to be a writer but who wasn't writing. I was someone buying books on writing. I was someone telling people that I was writer. But I was not writing.
It's such a potent thing, to be a kid. We grow up, and we don't want to remember how everything is so beautiful and terrifying when we're young. The older you get, the more you hope to muffle things.
Writing at home and then going out into the world to talk about why books matter to me feeds the writing. It's a good mix. It provides balance.
If you sit down and read with your kid, either having your child read to you or you reading to your child at a regular time each day, it deepens the relationship. You don't have to talk about stuff; the story will do that work for you.
Everybody reading the same book at the same time pulls people together. It does start a conversation. If you're going to read 'The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane,' you're going to talk about heartbreak and loss and all of those things that people don't talk about as a community.
There's still, even now, a part of me that can't believe that I got published. That part of me has never gone away.
I was lucky enough to have a mother who took me to the library - the public library - twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays. And also bought me books. And also read aloud to me.
I decided a long time ago that I didn't have to be talented. I just had to be persistent.
I was a shy, terrified kid. But I was also a kid who was lucky enough to have friends. I laughed with those friends. I had adventures. We dreamed together. I relied on them.
Whenever I am with a group of kids, I always ask them, 'How many of you know about the summer reading program at your library and how many of you know it's free?' Spreading that sort of message comes very naturally to me.
It's a very powerful, emotional thing to read a book, and to reduce it to a series of questions in a test strips something away from the book.
Whether it is fear of having fish pie or staying in someone's house or not being able to tell the time, all of those things I can remember very clearly. We so often forget how big all these things are for very small children because they are so often trying these things for the first time.
How do you make your kids read more? It needs to be presented as a joy and a privilege to get to do it, and the kids should get to see you as a parent reading for your own pleasure. It's not something you send your kids off to do, 'Go into your room and read for 15 minutes or else.' It becomes a task then.
It wasn't until my fifth or sixth book where I realized I'm trying to do the same thing in every story I tell, which is bring everybody together in the same room.
I think that sometimes we open our hearts a little more easily to animals than we do to each other.
I find that when I write for children, I am more hopeful, less cynical. I don't use different words or a different sentence structure. I just hope more.
In a first draft, I concentrate on moving forward and trying not to panic.
Progress is hard to measure in any creative endeavor, I think. It's often a matter of instinct, of feeling your way through what works and what doesn't.
I can never tell if anything I do is really good. I'm always just slightly chagrined.
There's this amplification that happens anytime you tell a story. You let it go out into the world. It's the most beautiful thing. All I can do is look at it in wonder and amazement.
From a cognitive standpoint, I'm very aware that you have no room for error in a picture book. Every word counts.
There ain't no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.Collection: Moving On
When we read together, we connect. Together, we see the world. Together, we see one another.Collection: Together
Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift.Collection: Children
The book [The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane] is about the fact that living in this world means that your heart is necessarily going to get broken. But the book also says that's okay. That's the only way to live a truly human life - with your heart getting broken - and eventually getting flooded with love.Collection: Book
My favorite six letter word is always because it promises so much. My favorite five letter word is never because it insists on contradicting the promise. My favorite four letter word is once because it says it happened then. My favorite three letter word is yes because I’m just now learning to say it to my heart. My favorite two letter word is if because it makes all things possible like this: If not always If not never Then once. Yes.Collection: Heart
There is nothing sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name.Collection: Sadness
It is important that you say what you mean to say. Time is too short. You must speak the words that matter.Collection: Mean
Each new friendship can make you a new person, because it opens up new doors inside of you.Collection: Doors
It is truly excellent to have someone believe in you and your ability to write. But I think it is just as helpful to have people who don't believe in you, people who mock you, people who doubt you, people who enrage you. Fortunately, there is never a shortage of this type of person in the world ... write for yourself. Write for the story. And write, also, for all of the people who doubt you. Write for all those people who are not brave enough to do this grand and wondrous thing themselves. Let them motivate you.Collection: Believe
... every time you look at the world and the people in it closely, lovingly, imaginatively, it changes you. The world, under the microscope of your attention, opens up like a beautiful, strange flower and gives itself back to you in ways you could never imagine.Collection: Beautiful
The world is dark, and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader. You must trust me. I am telling you a story.Collection: Dark
But, reader, there is no comfort in the word "farewell," even if you say it in French. "Farewell" is a word that,in any language, is full of sorrow. It is a word that promises absolutely nothing.Collection: Farewell
The undoing is almost always more difficult than the doing.Collection: Undoing
Life is hard. Life is beautiful. Life is difficult. Life is wonderful.Collection: Beautiful
Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark.Collection: Dark
Once upon a time," he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.Collection: Powerful
I feel like I've been blessed. I see the world through stories.Collection: Blessed
So many miracles have not yet happened.Collection: Miracle