Kate DiCamillo's Blog, page 10

Answers to your questions Sept 2014 (part 1 of 2)

��Kyla MasonWhat book was the most fun or rewarding book for you to write?��Hmmm . . . fun.�� Well, Edward Tulane was the easiest of all the books to write, in that it kind of wrote itself.�� Normally

From the Candlewick team: Kate wants to answer some more of your questions! If you'll post your questions for her as comments to this post by the end of the weekend (9/21), she'll answer as many as she can next week!

Henry was sick last night, and so I spent a good portion of a very long night outside in the backyard.
I watched Henry eat grass; I looked up at the sky.
The stars were incredible���sharp and brilliant.
As the night progressed, I watched the constellations wheel their way through the sky.
And even though I was worried about Henry, even though I was sleepless and agitated, I was also deeply, profoundly moved: that spectacular brilliant dance is happening every night and I sleep through it, una...

SOME FAVORITE WORDS ABOUT WRITING
From Daily Rituals, How Artists Work, edited by Mason Curry

The writer Bernard Malamud: ���You write by sitting down and writing. There���s no particular time or place���you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he���s disciplined, doesn���t matter. If he or she is not disciplined, no sympathetic magic will help. The trick is to make time���not steal it---and produce the fiction. If the stories come, you get them written, you���re on the right...

I spent all of yesterday morning working.
I pushed myself and pushed myself until I couldn���t push anymore.
And then I went outside and sat on the front steps and put my face up to the sun.
A monarch butterfly flew past me and landed on a nearby flower.
I got up off the steps and bent close and studied the butterfly.
I admired the light shining through his wings.
I felt happy.
Here is a picture of that butterfly, those wings, that light.
I hope it makes you happy, too.

I was signing books at the National Book Festival last weekend, and a father was leaving with his signed books, when he turned around and said the most astonishing thing to me. What he said was: ���It would be remiss of me not to tell you this: you have brought so much joy into our household.���
Which, of course, immediately made me tear up.
But it also made me think that it would be remiss of me not to tell you that all of you have brought such joy to me���you people who come to readings and...

As I was leaving my Aunt Ann���s apartment building, she stuck her head into the cab and said to the driver, ���Drive carefully. She���s precious to me.���
���What?��� said the cab driver.
���it���s fine,��� I said to Aunt Ann. ���He���ll be careful.���
We pulled away.
���She���s my aunt,��� I said to the cab driver. ���She loves me.���
���Look,��� said the cab driver.
Aunt Ann was standing in front of the apartment building, waving like crazy.
The cab driver tooted his horn and waved back....

I leave for Washington, D.C. today.
I will be at the Takoma Park Library on Friday night (http://www.takomapark.info/library/children/archives/003527.html).
And on Saturday, I will be at the National Book Festival from 10 am to noon (http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/).
Since Leroy Ninker is just out, I will get to talk about the small cowboy, and his horse. The horse���s name is Maybelline.
She loves words of endearment.
And spaghetti.
And then on Saturday night, I will go to my Aunt Ann���s ho...

When I finished the last Mercy Watson story, I started, almost immediately, to miss the pig.
In fact, I missed everyone on Deckawoo Drive.
And I thought: what if there are other stories that want to be told?
And I thought: I wonder if Leroy Ninker ever becomes a cowboy, really, truly?
So I wrote a story about Leroy Ninker to try and answer that question.
And what I discovered is that Leroy gets a horse.
Her name is Maybelline.
She likes spaghetti.
And she ends up meeting Mercy Watson.
I had s...

I am so taken with these words from an essay by Anthony Doerr that appeared recently in Granta.
The essay is entitled ���Thing With Feathers that Perches in the Soul��� and the words are these:

���What does not last, if they are not retold, are the stories. Stories need to be resurrected, revivified, reimagined; otherwise they get bundled with us into our graves, a hundred thousand of them going into the ground every hour.
Or maybe they float a while, suspended in the places we used to be, w...