Background

Kate DiCamillo was born on March 25, 1964, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. She is the daughter of Betty Lee and Adolph Louis DiCamillo. Because she had pneumonia for the first five winters of her life, the doctor suggested that she would do better in a warmer climate. So, in 1969, Kate, her older brother Curt, and her mother moved to sunny Florida. Kate's health improved and she quickly developed a fondness for the warmer S.

Education

Kate DiCamillo received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Florida at Gainesville in 1987, majoring in English. To pay the bills, DiCamillo did a variety of jobs at places like Disney World, Surfers' World, campgrounds, and greenhouses.

Career

After graduating from the university, Kate DiCamillo took on various short-term jobs. In 1994 she moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she worked in a book warehouse and became drawn into children’s fiction. During a long, cold Minnesota winter, DiCamillo felt homesick and wrote a story that took place in the warm South. It was her first novel, Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). The book was published after a young editor spotted it in the “slush pile,” a publishing house collection of manuscripts sent unsolicited by aspiring authors. The novel - which relates the story of 10-year-old Opal, a girl made lonely by the loss of her mother and her arrival in a new town, and the mangy dog she finds in a supermarket - was praised for its gentle humor, the clarity of its writing, and the endearing nature of its young protagonist. That book became a Hollywood film in 2005.

In DiCamillo’s second novel, Tiger Rising (2001), she again explored the life of a child beset by the loss of a parent. In it, two friends discover in the woods a caged tiger, and DiCamillo interspersed lines from William Blake’s “The Tyger” to help drive the narrative. The award-winning The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread (2003; film 2008), DiCamillo’s third novel, is the story of a nonconformist mouse who falls in love with the princess of the castle in which his family lives. Her other novels include The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (2006), which features a conceited china rabbit that learns how to love through tragedy; The Magician’s Elephant (2009), about an orphan whose quest to find his missing sister involves an elephant; Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures (2013), which concerned the adventures of a cynical young comic-book lover and a squirrel endowed with human abilities.

DiCamillo also drew praise for Raymie Nightingale (2016), which centers on a young girl who, in an effort to get her adulterous father to return home, hopes to win the Little Miss Central Florida Tire competition. Other characters in the book included Louisiana Elefante, and her struggles after moving away from her friends were chronicled in Louisiana’s Way Home (2018). In addition to her novels, DiCamillo also wrote several successful series of chapter books. The first series began with Mercy Watson to the Rescue (2005) and follows the adventures of the exuberant toast-loving pig Mercy Watson. Later books in the series include Mercy Watson Goes for a Ride (2006), Mercy Watson Fights Crime (2006), Mercy Watson: Princess in Disguise (2007), Mercy Watson Thinks Like a Pig (2008), and Mercy Watson: Something Wonky This Way Comes (2009).

Characters from these works later appeared in the Tales from Deckawoo Lane series, which included Leroy Ninker Saddles Up (2014) and Eugenia Lincoln and the Unexpected Package (2017). DiCamillo also published picture books, including Great Joy (2007) and La La La (2017). Her most recent book is Beverly, Right Here (2019). Kate DiCamillo turns her focus to the tough-talking, inescapably tenderhearted Beverly with this book.

Achievements

• In January 2014, DiCamillo was named the fourth National Ambassador for Young People's Literature for 2014-2015, by the Library of Congress. She won Newbery Medal in 2004 and in 2014 and a Newbery Honor in 2001, Boston Globe-Horn Book Award in 2006, and the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award in 2011 and honor in 2007.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Mercy Watson

    (Foiling a robber, driving a car, squeezing into a tutu - ...)

  • The Magician's Elephant

    (When a fortuneteller's tent appears in the market square ...)

    2009
  • Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

    (Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures is a laugh-...)

    2013
  • Louisiana's Way Home

    (When Louisiana Elefante’s granny wakes her up in the midd...)

    2018
  • The Tiger Rising

    (Walking through the misty Florida woods one morning, twel...)

    2001
  • Bink and Gollie

    (The state fair is in town, and now Bink and Gollie - utte...)

  • Because of Winn-Dixie

    (One summer’s day, ten-year-old India Opal Buloni goes dow...)

    2000
  • The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread

    (Welcome to the story of Despereaux Tilling, a mouse who i...)

    2003
  • Great Joy

    (It is just before Christmas when an organ grinder and mon...)

    2007
  • Beverly, Right Here

    (Beverly Tapinski has run away from home plenty of times, ...)

    2019
  • Raymie Nightingale

    (Raymie Clarke has come to realize that everything, absolu...)

    2016
  • The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

    (Once, in a house on Egypt Street, there lived a china rab...)

    2006
  • Louise, The Adventures of a Chicken

    (She longed for adventure. So she left her home and ventur...)

    2008

Views

Kate said that she learned that writing isn't all about talent, but about seeing the world. Paying attention to what is going on around you and putting that story of real people and characters down on paper. This viewpoint has given her stories a powerful emotional quality that resonates with many readers.

Quotations: "I like to think of myself as a storyteller."

"I think of myself as an enormously lucky person: I get to tell stories for a living."

"You name it, I got it. Pneumonia, impetigo, pink eye, scarlet fever, mumps, measles, chickenpox. And because I got it, I missed a lot of school and spent a lot of time at home by myself. I am grateful for all that illness. Because I was alone for so much of the day, I learned to entertain myself. I lived in my imagination. And I lived in books. For a writer, it was an excellent beginning."

"If I wanted to tell stories, I was going to have to do the hard work of sitting down and writing them. I started to write. For six years I wrote and wrote and wrote. And most of what I wrote was bad. But here is the beautiful thing about doing something every day; you are bound to get better. And this is true, even for someone as dense as me."

"It doesn’t matter if you’re 10 or if you’re 55. You should read as much as you can. And you should find some way to make a deal with yourself about how you’re going to do the work."

"The world is dark, and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader. You must trust me. I am telling you a story."

"And hope is like love... a ridiculous, wonderful, powerful thing."

Personality

Kate DiCamillo doesn’t know and refuses to learn how to cook but she loves to eat. She has lots of friends and a dog Henry.

She is a neat freak.

Her favorite movie is Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

Physical Characteristics: Kate DiCamillo is short and loud.

Interests

• traveling

Connections

Father:

Adolph Louis DiCamillo

Mother:

Betty Lee DiCamillo

Brother:

Curt DiCamillo

Curt DiCamillo is an American architectural historian and a recognized authority on the British country house. He has written, lectured, and taught in the U.S. and abroad on British history and architecture and leads scholarly tours that focus on the architectural and artistic heritage of Britain and its influence around the world. Since 1999 Curt has maintained an award-winning database on the web, The DiCamillo Database of British & Irish Country Houses (TheDiCamillo.com), which seeks to document every English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish country house ever built, standing or demolished, together with a history of the families who lived in the houses, the architects who designed them, and the history of the houses’ collections and gardens.