Kate DiCamillo is my new most favorite children's book author. I read my daughter's all four of the Mercy Watson books that my library had and they loved them. Who doesn't love a pig that loves toast. Every once in a while my daughter will say, out of the blue, "Mommy, Mercy likes toast with lots of butter." Right before vacation I took the book The Tale of Despereaux out of the library but neglected to take it on vacation with us. When we returned home to stormy weather we headed to the movies and saw a trailer for the movie The Tale of Despereaux. The very next day we started the book. I read the first 119 pages to my children at breakfast Sunday morning - it wound up being a long breakfast.
The book is so well written. Kate DiCamillo talks to the reader throughout the book. She even tells the reader to go look in a dictionary to discover the meaning of one word she has used. It really is a modern day fairy tale. I won't give it all away but I will tell you the complete title and, really, it all makes sense once you read the book:The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread.
I kept returning to the title as we were reading the book and saying - hey - do you think this relates at all to the title?
I guess I'm late on the Kate DiCamillo bandwagon. She also write Because of Winn-Dixie which was also made into a movie. I have not seen it. I don't have that book. I did purchase The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane but heard that it is a sad book. That it ends sad. So, I might read it first to myself before I read it to the kids.
