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Welcome to the first issue of Quercus, Winding Oak's occasional newsletter about children's books. This month we're featuring an interview with Kate DiCamillo. Future issues will each have an article on subjects of interest to those who work with children's literature as well as a few tidbits we uncover about reading and books. Look for articles by or about our Winding Oak authors and illustrators, information on topics like fundraising strategies for school visits, and more. We hope you enjoy Quercus!
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Looking back after five years
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an interview with author Kate DiCamillo
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With the February release of her latest book, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, award-winning author Kate DiCamillo's already busy life moved once again into high gear. She took time in April to sit with Winding Oak founder, Vicki Palmquist, for an interview.
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| VP: |
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What books are you reading today? |
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Best American Essays 2005
Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
Best New Stories from the South 1990
Pushcart Prize 1987
The Wild Braid by Stanley Kunitz |
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What’s the current music in your CD player? |
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Josh Ritter’s The Animal Years
Faurer’s Requiem |
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What’s your favorite guilty food? |
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Do I have to pick just one? Macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, hashbrowns. |
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Looking back five years, what would you like to say to the Kate before Winn-Dixie was published? |
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‘Whatever you’ve dreamed, it’s small compared to what’s going to happen to you. Be happy. Relax. Try to enjoy what is coming.’ Also: ‘Stop wondering if you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. It’s going to be okay.’ |
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What do you wish the Kate ten years from now could tell you? |
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‘See, I told you you could keep on telling stories.’ That is what I would most like to hear from the me that will exist in ten years time—that somehow I will be able to keep writing. |
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Do you have a writing goal you might share with us? |
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Right now, I’d like to do one more Mercy Watson and another novel. Long-term, I just want to keep on telling stories. |
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I suspect that your understanding of your writing process has grown. How has that shaped the way you work today? |
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I don’t know that I know any more about how I do it. I’ve always thought that it’s a miracle. It’s impossible to do it without God and that presence is not something you can demand.
I’ve always understood how to do the work. It’s the magic of it that’s inexplicable. I can sit and make myself write, but the voice of a story is out of my control. It’s either there or it’s not. And often, it is about waiting, being patient. For example, I’ve been working on something that I think is a really good story. I love the characters. I’ve been working on it off and on for a long time, but I just put it away again because I was pushing it. If you’re pulling it that’s okay, but pushing it is a soulless enterprise.
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Can you turn off the Writer’s Eye when you read? |
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I guess that you are talking about willing suspension of disbelief. And I think that gets harder and harder. The more you write, the more you are aware of the backstage magic behind other people’s stories, because it is the same magic you are trying to work yourself.
“Reading like this and being uber-aware means that the show isn’t quite as spectacular as it was. The whole original magic of reading is no longer there—it isn’t the same type of reading. That’s what you get for giving up your innocence but in the end the experience is deepened, too, by the insider knowledge that you have gained. Happily, at a certain point, when the story is incredible, and when the writer’s magic is so subtle and profound and when it is executed so flawlessly, the writer part of me turns off and I relax. I’m just somebody being told a story.
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Next time, Marion Dane Bauer on the 10-year anniversary of Am I Blue, her groundbreaking collection of original short stories on gay and lesbian themes by well-known children's writers. Read Quercus June 2006.
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Did You Know?
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Tulane University’s mascot is . . . not a rabbit but “The Green Wave.”
Julius Caesar is credited with being the inventor of the modern book form. He was the first person known to fold a papyrus scroll accordion-style into "pages." By the first century BC his invention would be refined into a book, or codex, of separate, bound pages.
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On Our Book Tables
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Here are the titles a few of our other Winding Oak authors and illustrators and some of the WO staff are currently reading:
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Gennifer Choldenko, author
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Life of Pi by Yann Martel; The Year of Secret Assignments by Jaclyn Moriarty, and Don't Call us Molls: Women of the John Dillinger Gang by Ellen Poulsen.
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Kelly Dupre, illustrator
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The Scent of God by Beryl Singleton Bissell.
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Michelle Edwards, author
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The Gabriel Allon books by Daniel Silva; old New Yorkers; Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson, and Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson.
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Marsha Qualey, author
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The Unknown Matisse by Hilary Spurling and Nightlife by Thomas Perry
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Julie Reimer, WO staff and media specialist
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Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper by Harriet Scott Chessman and Clair de Lune by Cassandra Golds
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Contact Winding Oak
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Visit our website! Sign up to receive this free newsletter regularly. |
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