Kate DiCamillo will receive the baiduhai Young Adult Book Prize in recognition of her remarkable novels for young people. “Because of Winn-Dixie,” published in 2000, was a Newbery Honor Book and captivated readers with the basics: interesting characters and a story well-told. Since then DiCamillo has carved out a distinct place as one of her generation’s most beloved writers. “The Tiger Rising” was a National Book Award finalist, and DiCamillo won the Newbery Medal for “The Tale of Despereaux,” a story about a heroic mouse and a princess named Pea. Her most recent novel, “The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane,” tells the story of a girl in search of her beloved china rabbit. Most recently, DiCamillo has aimed for the younger set with her Mercy Watson books, in which a charming pig gives Wilbur of “Charlotte’s Web” a run for his money. In anticipation of her Chicago appearance, DiCamillo spoke from her home in Minneapolis with literary editor Elizabeth Taylor:
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Q. You describe yourself as short and loud, someone who hates to cook and loves to eat. So what else are you?
A. What else am I? I am a smart … aleck!
I tend to think of myself as one of those boring people out in the world, so I should start doing something interesting so that the kids will say, “What are your hobbies?” and I won’t go: “Man, my hobbies, my hobbies. That is a real stumper.”
I love to read. That is one of the primary pleasures of my existence.
And I love dogs.
Q. Lots of four-legged creatures show up in your stories.
A. I don’t know why. It certainly hasn’t been conscious. By the time I got to the third book, I could see it was a pattern that I was going to have to answer for. I guess it is just because I love animals. And also, you know, I was aware of the Swiss [saying] that camels can open up doors in our heart that people can’t. So I think it is a good way to get to the heart of a reader, although my motives were never that crafted.
Q. What do you read?
A. I am mainly a fiction gal. And I would say I am about 80 percent adult literature, 20 percent kids literature. And in that 80 percent, usually stuff that is pretty current–although I do find myself going backwards now. I just finished Willa Cather’s “The Song of the Lark.” I don’t know how I missed Cather in college, but I did.
Q. Cather has quite a connection with Chicago.
A. I was actually in Chicago for the first time in 2000 at a trade show, and I was at the Palmer House. I was so terribly excited that I couldn’t stand it that someone would actually pay to send me somewhere–and that lobby in that hotel is just so beautiful.
I got done early and went to the art museum and saw “The Song of the Lark” [a painting that plays a role in Cather’s book of the same name about a famous opera singer, from her beginnings in rural Nebraska to Chicago and the Southwest]. I had been near museums all my life, and nothing had ever really spoken to me. But for some reason that painting made something open up inside me.
Q. Any other books that resonate for you in a similar way?
A. I live for the yearly anthologies that come out. I love “The Best American Short Stories” and have also come to love “The Best American Essays.” I love “New Stories From the South” and Alice Munro. You can learn more from an Alice Munro short story than any number of novels about how to write a book, I think.
Q. Do you read books for the young-adult audience?
A. I think Richard Peck is phenomenal.
Q. He won the award for “Fair Weather” in 2002, but we rethought the award to recognize an entire career, so this is your lifetime-achievement award.
A. Wow. What a ring that has to it, and it is a fun thing to think about–but I can’t.
Katherine Patterson is a constant source of wonder and delight. You know, when I was growing up, we never had–I don’t know why it must have been some conspiracy–but we didn’t have any Roald Dahl anywhere, in either the school library or the town library. So I’ve come to Roald Dahl late, and I love him. And I am astonished by what he got away with. He breaks every conceivable [convention]. And Christopher Paul Curtis has been an influence on me.
Q. When you were a kid, what did you read?
A. When I was a kid, I read without any kind of discretion at all. I loved to read. There were things that I came back to. “The Twenty-One Balloons.” I loved Beverly Cleary. I never read “Charlotte’s Web” as a kid because I had a pronounced fear of what might happen to the pig that I saw on the cover. “Black Beauty” did a number on me as far as animal suffering. But I had to put that up there as a book that is astonishing–and, I think perfect. And again, “Charlotte’s Web” breaks a lot of rules, but it works anyway. There was also this George Washington Carver biography that I loved and kept checking out of the library.
Q. You grew up in the South, set your books in the South. Why live in Minnesota?
A. My first two books are a direct result of being in Minneapolis but having grown up [in the South]–it’s understanding what you grew up in once you are away from it. I can’t really call myself a Southern writer, as much as I’d like to. I don’t know what kind of writer you would call me . . . a lucky one!
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Q. What should readers know about you?
A. I guess that I sure do feel like I am lucky. I am still back there hoping to sell 5,000 copies of a book so that I can write another one. I feel like it has all been kind of a fever dream.
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HOW TO GET TICKETS
Kate DiCamillo will receive the 2006 baiduhai Young Adult Book Prize at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St., as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival. Book sales and signing will follow the program. Tickets are free for students and teachers, $5 for all others, and are available through Wednesday at
the Tribune Store, 435 N. Michigan Ave., or through the festival ticket office at 312-494-
9509, or online at www.chfestival.org.