With over 44 million books in print, translated into 41 languages. Kate DiCamillo is one of the most successful children’s book Authors in the world.

In addition to being a New York Times bestselling author, Kate’s books have been adapted to film television and even the opera. She has collected scores of awards for her stories, including the Newbery Medal for her first book, Because of Winn-Dixie in 2001, the Tales of Despereaux in 2004, and for Flora and Ulysses in 2014.  Her singular gift is to walk with children as they navigate the joys, the difficulties, and the complexities of being human, helping them feel seen safe and hopeful. This year marks the 25th anniversary of Because of Winn-Dixie, and Kate has just released Ferris, a hilarious love story about a girl, a ghost, a grandmother, and growing up. Today. Kate joins us to talk about the power of stories.  Kate, my kids and I have long inhabited the worlds you have created, and I am so honored to welcome you to Parenting for the Future.

Kate DiCamillo: Oh, thank you! What a beautiful, beautiful welcome! There’s a part of me that listens to all that in utter disbelief, you know. I can’t believe it, and I’m so grateful for it. And it is like we were talking before we started to record, it’s just I’m always after that connection, and that I can feel that with the reader. So,  it’s like there are all those numbers which are so unsettling. But the thing that is so powerful to me is that connection between me and the reader. 

Petal Modeste: Yeah, I mean, and that’s what you get with connection right when you really meet people where they are, what you have to say resonates. Then you end up with those numbers. Actually, that’s what happens. So

Kate DiCamillo: I don’t know. I don’t know how it happened. I’m just grateful, and I’m grateful that I get to.

Petal Modeste: Keep on telling stories. 

Kate: Okay, so I will. I will let you ask me all the hard now.

Petal: So, I always like to start with where you yourself began your early life, the values and experiences that shaped you. I understand that you were a very sickly child. You struggled a lot with chronic pneumonia. And so you spend a lot of time in the hospitals at home, away from school. Your parents were also not huge fans of television. So, you had books. What are your earliest memories of reading? I also think I read somewhere that phonics were not always your friends. 

Kate DiCamillo: You have done your research. Yeah.

Petal Modeste: I’ve done my research, Kate. So, when words did start to make sense to you what stories captivated you most?

Kate DiCamillo: Well, I did struggle to learn to read, and it was frustrating to me because I knew that what I needed was in those books, and I was fortunate that I had a mother who read to me, who took me to the library, who bought me books who really paid attention to me as a reader. And it’s funny because she passed away in 2009. And it’s like you don’t fully understand all of those things sometimes until you know, later on. And I know that she gave me the gift of teaching me to read because she had me memorize words, because, like you said, phonics didn’t make any sense to me. And she made flashcards and taught me to read. But I never really got to thank her for that thing of like, always kind of paying attention to what book would speak to me and getting it into my hands.  And it was a huge, huge gift.

Petal Modeste: Now your mother was a teacher herself, and I did remember in my research that she paid so much attention to the things that you seemed to enjoy and then she tried to get you those books. What impact might her approach have had on you? 

You kind of describe that? It was a gift. But how was it consistent with other values that she embodied in her parenting. So this paying of attention, this really tapping into what she thought you needed and what was resonating with you. How was that sort of representative of her parenting overall?

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, she was very present and she saw me for myself, and that, you know, translated into the books that she put into my hands, but also speaking of that presence, and this is like one of my big things to talk about is the reading aloud which my mother did not only to me, but to my brother and me together. And that was everything.  One of the clearest memories I have is of her reading us, Ribsy, by Beverly Cleary and she was in the middle, my brother and I were on either side of her, the dog was at our feet. And my mother was so into the book. I remember her laughing so hard that she cried, which is the first time that I understood that something like that could happen. You know. It’s like, Wow! She’s crying because it’s so funny.

Petal Modeste: Yeah.

Kate DiCamillo: So, she was just there with us through story and she was absolutely 110% reliable there. And again, as I’m saying that,  I think, man, I wish I could have thanked her for that.

Petal Modeste: So, , following your doctor’s recommendations, your family moved to Florida when you were 5 years old, in the hopes that the warmer clime would improve your health. Your father did not move with the family, and you’ve only recently shared, I think, in the last couple of years that while he did many wonderful things, he was also physically and emotionally abusive. So, he didn’t go with you to Florida. What was the easiest and hardest thing about not having him around at such a young age?

Kate DiCamillo: What a beautiful way to ask that the easiest and the hardest, because there was a huge relief to it, because we were all terrified of him. All three of us – my mother, my brother, and I. We were terrified, so there was relief. But I loved him, and he wasn’t there. And that was a huge, a huge hole. When I talk to kids, I have a Powerpoint, that I do sometimes where I talk about being sick all the time, and my father leaving the family and sometimes kids will make this connection implicitly, and sometimes I will say it to them, but a lot of times they get it on their own. Wait a minute:  These bad things, these hard things that happened; you’re sick all the time; and you don’t have a TV; so you’re reading all the time –  that gave you something. This question of why my father was not there, that absence was something that I wrote into. So, it’s just this wonderful thing that’s happened to me getting to tell stories for a living. Would it have happened if these other harder things hadn’t happened? I don’t know.

Petal Modeste: Yeah. Yeah. And and we’ll talk a little bit more about this, because in many, many of the stories, you know, that’s a question that I feel comes up all the time. It certainly came up with my own kids over the years as we read them. Now, I don’t imagine that people were talking to you about this “hole”, this emptiness that you felt with your dad’s absence. 

I think somewhere I heard you say that it was an emptiness you were constantly turning over. Did books help with that emptiness at all? Did they help you cope with it in any way?

Kate DiCamillo: It’s again a really good question, because I mean, I go to stories then as a kid, and now as an adult for comfort and connection. But it’s also interesting to think about the books that I’ve written and the books that were available to me as a kid. And there were fantastic books, but none of them talked about a family that was fractured. It just wasn’t out there. And  so when you’re saying that the adults weren’t talking to me about what happened. That was true, you know, community wide. It was just kind of this thing that was just, you know, not talked about. I was the only one of my friends that came from a family where the parents were not together and there was nothing in in literature at that point other than fairy tales.

Petal Modeste: Yes, the Disney, the Disney story. Some of that.

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, right? Yeah. And the grim and the grim fairy tale.

So yeah, it’s an interesting. It’s an interesting question. I did. I got a huge amount of comfort from books, connection from books. But that question wasn’t getting answered, and it wasn’t getting addressed. And you know, and I get criticized for writing about hard things in books for kids, and it always kind of frustrates me because, one, I  remember the kid that I was and  what I was feeling and experiencing. And two,  kids live in the same world that we live in and we’re doing them a real disservice. If we pretend that hard things don’t happen because they can see them happening, you know.

Petal Modeste: Yeah, and feel them, even though can’t always describe them. 

Kate DiCamillo: Which is the beautiful thing about a story 

Petal Modeste: Exactly.

Kate DiCamillo: It gives you the language to talk  about it obliquely. It might not be your experience exactly, but it gives you the language to talk about loss and the bigger feelings. You know.

Petal Modeste: What about your brother? How would you describe his influence on you?

Kate DiCamillo: My brother has had a lasting influence on me in many ways, one because he was 3 years older than I was, and so he got to the stories first, and I was just like, but also because my brother had a much harder time of it. It was difficult at school for him, and easy at school for me, so I carry a sadness over not making things easier for him, even though he was the older brother.. I always I was good at friendship. I was good at fitting in.

Those things were difficult for him. And yeah. And that’s another thing that shows up in the stories again and again.

Petal Modeste: Yeah. So the move to Florida, it seemed that it did improve your health, you lived there until you were 30, when you moved to Minneapolis.

Kate DiCamillo: Yes.

Petal Modeste: Did you always plan to be a writer? What dreams did you have for yourself like after high school, during college?

Kate DiCamillo: After high school. It’s like, Okay, I’m going to go to school. And what can I, Major? In English, of course, because then I could read all the time. Right? Yeah, right? And you know, the adults would say occasionally, what are you going to do with an English degree? And it’s just like, you know, basically like.

Petal: Who cares?

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, right? You know, you go away. You bother me, you know, love your feed, and so and then I had I had a professor in my senior year of college who told me that I had, and this is a direct quote. I said a lot, a certain facility with words and that I should consider graduate school.  And because I was young and full of myself, I thought that this professor was trying to say, wow! You’re really talented. And I thought, Well, golly! Why bother going to graduate school? I’ll just go off and be a writer.

That’s my you think at.

Petal Modeste: What you think at 22, or whatever.

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, right? So, I got a black turtleneck right? Because that’s what writers wear. And I told everybody that I was a writer, and I dreamed about being a writer, and I read books on writing, and I didn’t write anything, and that went on for a long time. That went on for almost 10 years. And then, right when I moved to Minneapolis. I figured out that I was going to have to write something if I wanted to be a writer.

Petal Modeste: Yeah, it’s kind of required. Why did you move?

Kate DiCamillo: Why did I move? I called it a pre mid life crisis. I was just, you know, at 30 I moved here because one of my best friends was from here, was moving back, needed a roommate, and I said, Oh, I’ll go, you know I knew nothing about Minnesota, except that it was the home of public radio. Y

Petal: Yes,

Kate: And there were, and still are, a lot of writing programs, writing grants here. And so I thought, I’ll just I’ll go. And at 30 I was just old enough

and just young enough both things to just pick up and go. Yeah, and it was the best thing that I ever did. It kind of like got me out of the rut of you know who I was. It gave me the courage to act. And also, you know, this is one of the things that I can only see in retrospect. I got a job in a book warehouse, a book distributor, and I ended up on the 3rd floor of that warehouse, which was all children’s books.

Petal Modeste: Huh!

Kate DiCamillo: And so, I entered into that job with a bias that I think a lot of adult readers have, which is, oh- kids, books, you know they’re in duckies and bunnies. They’re just so. And but my job was to pull the books off the shelf, filling the orders, and as a reader. It was just a matter of time before I started to read the books that I was pulling, and I read a novel called The Watsons go to Birmingham 1963.

Petal Modeste: Oh! It’s an amazing book

Kate DiCamillo: It is amazing, but Christopher Paul Curtis  and  I thought, I mean, that book is laugh out loud funny, warm, loving, and it deals with something enormous.

Petal Modeste: So hard.

Kate DiCamillo: And I thought. I want to try to do something like this. So it was pretty soon after that that I started on Winn-Dixie. I took the Watsons go to Birmingham, home from work. I typed up a chapter. Okay, like, how long would a chapter be? Okay? Then how long would a whole manuscript be for and the pretty soon after that I started them Because of Winn-dixie. So.

Petal Modeste: That’s  amazing. I want to say –  you don’t have to respond to this. But I do think it’s significant that geographic moves, changing your geographic location has been pivotal in your life. Right? You left Philadelphia or Pennsylvania to Florida for your health. You thrive there physically and then grew up there. You took this chance to go to Minneapolis, which is where you found your chops as a writer. I just think it’s interesting.

Kate DiCamillo: Well, it is really interesting and no one’s ever pointed that out before. It’s like,  that’s what I think of as a really good editorial comment. You know. That’s very true, and I’ve never thought of that. I mean, I did think I have made the connection that I wouldn’t have been able to write about Florida like I do in Winn-dixie without, you know, it’s like the Hemingway thing, you know Paris movable feast away from Paris. I can write about Paris, you know. But I did not put it together that those two gigantic moves.

Petal Modeste: Yeah. It was almost like a subconscious signal that you were ready to embark on a new chapter. At least, that’s how I see it looking in from the outside. 

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, no, it’s really interesting. That’s another thing, that if I hadn’t ended up in the South where you know it was a storytelling, and is a storytelling culture, you know, and it certainly gave me that predisposition. And it’s really a wonderful point.

Petal Modeste: So, let’s talk about these stories that you write now like you said you started doing the math in terms of what would it take to write a chapter. What would it take to write a manuscript.  I think it’s really worth mentioning here that you had something like 473 rejection letters over a 6 -year period.

Kate DiCamillo: Yes and I always want to clarify that because a lot of people think, oh, that’s for Winn-dixie that was, for I was writing short stories. That’s where I started and sending them to literary magazines. I remember I remember, when I was working on, because when Dixie and I thought I had the conscious thought, “oh, this is what I’m supposed to be doing.” And so, it was like everything changed for me when I turned to writing for kids. However, all of that rejection and all of those short stories that I wrote gave me a lot they were, you know, it was. That was the apprenticeship. So it was that was wasted. And yeah, and none of those rejection letters were wasted either. I always, you know, when I have the Powerpoint, when I talk to kids, and I ask them, I explain what a rejection letter is, and then I ask them to guess, and nobody ever guesses that number, and the room goes wild like what is wrong with you. And I always say to them, by the time I finally started to do this work I realized that I couldn’t make myself talented. I couldn’t make myself lucky. But I could make myself do the work, and I could make myself be relentless about putting the work out in the world. Those things were within my control, and so. Whether I failed or succeeded.,  it was up to me, you know.

Petal Modeste: Kate, I cannot tell you how powerful that statement is for every child to just know that especially, and we’ll talk a little bit about the time in which we are existing now. This idea of control and what you have power over, what you can do in your little corner of the world. It is so powerful if we, as parents, as people who parent as people with children in our lives, get our children to really embrace that. I’m just very happy you said it. We’ll come back to it, but it’s huge.

Kate DiCamillo: Well, and not that I want to push the conversation in a different direction. But you know the world we are living in, really. We’re living in history that we can safely say right.

Petal Modeste: Yeah.

Kate DiCamillo: And so, when I wake up in the morning, because it’s the first thing I do is write. I often think, “what difference does this little story make In the enormity of the world and I go up, and I do it anyway. And again and again I think  me not doing the work that I have, that I really feel like – this is the trifecta of joy, too –  to find what you’re supposed to d get to do it, because a lot of people don’t get to do it. A lot of people don’t find it. You find what you’re supposed to do. You get to do it, and you get paid to do it. It’s like me not doing the work that I am meant to do or questioning the importance of it doesn’t further anything. This is a push towards joy and connection. That’s what the stories are – connection and love and I have to do that work, even if it doesn’t seem like it’s important enough with the enormity of what we’re facing.

Petal Modeste: I absolutely agree. Do you still get up at 4 am?

Kate DiCamillo: You know what I still have the alarm clock that I used when I was working at the book distributor and I don’t use it anymore. But the alarm hand is still set for 4 because that’s you know. I got up before I went, but I’m up generally now around 5.

Petal Modeste: You write.

Kate DiCamillo: And I write.

Petal Modeste: That really resonated with me, because if you don’t start your morning with the thing that’s sort of most important for you to do that day. Honestly, it won’t get done. 

Kate DiCamillo: That is right, and you know, and I remember when I was working full time, and I said this to a friend, I would get up, and I would do that work. Before I went to work, and I would walk around all day with like this little ball of light inside of me, knowing I had already done the thing that mattered. And so ,it carries you through the day. And that said, we’re not giving a prescription, for I mean I’m a morning person.

Petal Modeste: Sure, sure.

Kate DiCamillo: You know, there are people that that’s not going to work for. But that is what works for me. And it’s still the case. It’s just like, I was up this morning. I did it and the knowledge of having done it, will carry me through the day.

Petal Modeste: Yeah. So, I mentioned again in the introduction that I think you have a superpower, Kate, which is your ability to walk side by side with kids as they navigate the complexities of being human. And what I really love is that your books never talk down to children. The stories have a lot of emotional and philosophical depth. But they are completely relatable. And you talked a little bit about critics who have said, you know you deal with these heavy themes in the book, you know, loss and loneliness, isolation, abandonment, death, fear, all of those things. What do these critics and adults, what do we not always understand about the inner life of a child?

Kate DiCamillo: Well, I always think of Beverly Cleary when I answer this question, because it’s taken me a while to understand. When she had her 100th birthday. They replayed interviews over the years with her, and in one of them she said that 4th grader and she patted her chest, is still right here on the surface for me, and I don’t know that it’s that way for everybody. That’s the way it is for me, too. I just, I never. That kid in me is always easily accessible. I remember what it was like. I was a small kid, and I couldn’t stand being condescended to, and I got condescended to a lot because I was just. You know, itty bitty and so, and it also makes me think of I know exactly where I was. I was in Boston, at the Public Library, and in the question and answer session, a boy raised his hand and said, so you write books for kids. And then you put all these really big philosophical questions in there. Why? Why? And I said, because kids are the ones who are brave enough to ask those questions. The older you get, the more afraid you get, and the more you close down and the more you don’t want to consider those big questions. So what adults, I think, forget (and particularly they forget it when they have kids, because it’s too terrifying to remember it) is how, how alive you are and open you are to everything as a kid, and how you are asking those gigantic, really profound questions all the time. And, I think that as adults, whether you’re raising a kid or not, it’s just terrifying to think of how you cannot protect this small person from all the glory and terror of the world.

Petal Modeste: Yeah.

Kate DiCamillo: And so, I just think that we forget that as adults.

Petal Modeste: Do you decide ahead of time – I’m trying to get to your process now – do you decide what heavy emotions, what heaviness the children you’re writing about, or the characters you’re writing about will encounter? Or it evolves as you write?

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah, no. I make no, no decisions, you know I. And if I made decisions I feel like I would mess up and you know I generally I start with an image a name, and I  just write into the unknown, and I certainly I have no idea where the story is going. Nor do I when I get into like I do multiple drafts. And so, by the time I get to like the 5th draft. I can see some of the stuff out of the corner of my eye. But I think don’t look directly at that. That’s not your business. And so, it’s just like I never, ever looked directly at it. And so, when a book goes out into the world. And I start to do interviews. That’s when I start to understand thematically what’s going on with the book. When people, other people read it and ask me questions about it. You know.

Petal Modeste: Yeah. As you’re talking about kids asking the hard questions, but also just being full of curiosity. my 9 year old loves The Tales of Despereaux and one of her favorite characters is Mig Sow – Miggery.

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah.

Petal Modeste: And she’s not necessarily a quote unquote, leading character, but she embodies so much. And I asked my daughter, why do you like her so much? And she said, “she lived with the pigs. She is treated like a pig, but inside she’s not a pig. And that’s why I like her – she believes in what she is inside.”  And I thought, “Oh, my God!”

Kate DiCamillo: Right, you know, and that that’s case in point. Right here, right. Because it’s never anything that I thought or tried to do, and I can see that when it is pointed out, and it’s beautiful, and please tell her “thank you”. But I don’t know what I’m doing. The story is smarter than I am. The characters are smarter.

Petal Modeste: So, you know, in the same way, obviously, that you deal with the heavy stuff you also offer connection, hope, the redeeming power of wonder and love. And you said it earlier. We do our kids a disservice when we don’t talk to them about the tough things, but also when we don’t offer them love and hope. And I actually think that love and hope are natural offerings of difficult conversations that you have with your children. So, if you shy away from the difficulty, then the love and the hope might also escape mention.

Kate DiCamillo: Point, yeah, yeah.

Petal Modeste: How do you define hope, Kate? And is that ultimately the most important gift a story can give a child?

Kate DiCamillo: Hope is I – I’m thinking about myself now as a reader. And I did a a commencement address a long time ago, where I talked about Charlotte’s Web.My best friend, that I grew up with. She reread that book – like again and again and again and again she would finish like literally turn over and start. And so in writing this speech, I asked her, it’s like, What do you remember? what you were thinking? You know. You knew what was going to happen. Did you think that if you read it again it wouldn’t happen? And she said, “no.”  I can’t quote her exactly everything. “The book was so beautiful. And I knew this hard thing was going to happen, and I didn’t think that I could bear it. But then I found out that I could bear it. So, that’s hope. It’s like somebody telling you the truth. And telling you that it will be and that’s what Charlotte’s web does it? It delivers the bad news. And it reconciles you to it at the same time. And that’s hope it. It is hard here. It’s terrifying here. It is beautiful here. There is love here, and that’s hope.

Petal Modeste: and of course, while we’re on Charlotte’s Web, you know, we have to talk about animals in all your books they’re in just about every book cover, I think I should add.

Kate DiCamillo: Right? Right? Let’s you know. Let’s take a sidebar there and say that I myself, as an 8-year-old, probably would not have read most of my books because of my experience with Black Beauty, which I could not bear how that horse suffered from that point on. I didn’t want to check out books with animals on the cover.

Petal Modeste: This is how you never got to Charlotte’s web. But you had a dog. You had a poodle, Nanette.

Kate DiCamillo: Yeah. Nanette.

Petal Modeste: Who was a constant companion to you when you were a child when you were sick. I think I read somewhere. You said I think Nanette was like a nurse in another life, because always took care of me. So, even though the Black Beauty quote unquote trauma I wonder of Nanette’s  influence.

Kate DiCamillo: Oh, absolutely! That’s so true. I mean, that was like she was stalwart and absolutely. There is that that comfort and connection of her, and there was also, you know, because I do. You know, it’s just. It’s almost a joke how every one of my books has an animal on the cover. But there’s also, I think, that you know, like I loved Paddington when I was a kid.  Stuart Little. So those , animals store it little. And so I think that there’s a part of me that, like, you know, taps into that. The 8-year-old me, and then and this sounds calculating, but it’s not done in a calculating way. I think, as readers. We often will let our guard down a little bit more easily for an animal protagonist than we will for another human being. So it’s just it is. It’s a way into the story.

Petal Modeste: I once heard you say as well that at some point in your life, your young life, you, I think your brother was also there, but you were in a classroom, or in some setting where a teacher or a librarian read a Tale of Two Cities out loud to you.

Kate DiCamillo: Oh, my brother and I, my brother and I had the same 9th grade English teacher, Mrs. Yep, and we both for both of us. I remember passages of that still, and that’s the same way for my brother. It was profound getting that read aloud. It was profound. Yeah.

Petal Modeste: And you talked about, you know, being on either side of your mom while she was doing that as well. Do you mean for your books to be read out loud to kids? And if so, why is hearing the story in that way so impactful?

Kate DiCamillo: Let’s go back to the “I never know what I’m doing”, kind of you know. But I do know that when I’m in the draft before I before every all the other eyes go on it. I’m reading aloud, because that’s how I can find what you know when a word bumps up against, or it is just the only way, and it takes a long time. But I’m reading aloud. What I didn’t know, and I remember the first signing that I did, for Because of Winn-Dixie, and I had a 3rd grade teacher who had read the book to her class, and she said they applauded at the end of the 1st chapter, and then I knew that I had something that I that they would want to keep on hearing. I wasn’t thinking. Oh, let me write something that will be read aloud. But the fact that teachers and librarians and parents have done that has been life altering for me as a writer, but to be a part of that read aloud. And then as to why is it so powerful? I don’t know. I mean, I have theories. I think it. It speaks to something really at the very core of who we are as human beings. It goes back to sitting around a fire. and somebody’s telling you the story. It’s something we need. And there’s something that happens when it’s done communally where everybody like. It’s it makes a safe place. Everybody puts down their armor and comes into that that safe space, where you’re getting read aloud to everybody, puts down the teacher or the parent, the kids. Everybody enters into this other place together.

Petal Modeste: Like a third place.

Kate DiCamillo: A third place. Yeah.

Petal Modeste: I love that imagery because, coming back to the time in which we exist.The smartphones, the distractions, the constant sort of chaos. And I mean, it’s like we’re inundated all the time, overstimulated. And this idea of leaving everything aside so you could sit in community. I think it’s more powerful now, perhaps, than ever.

Kate DiCamillo: Yes, and  I agree with you. And also like, let’s give a shout out to the parents who are doing it. The grandparents were doing it, and the teachers who I get letters. These teachers. And so, I just want to give them love letters included with the 32 kids that are in their class. And they will tell me about those kids in the cover letter and how they read this aloud. And what happens with this kid and that kid and anytime I’m in front of a group of people. I ask the teachers who are in the audience to raise their hands, and then I ask them if they read aloud, and then I ask everybody to applaud them, because I think it’s the same as like me saying that I didn’t fully get to thank my mother for everything. I didn’t get to thank all those teachers. Yeah, who read aloud to me, me. A kid who was getting a read aloud to at home was. Had books who was being taken to the library, and I lived for it. So what does it mean for the kid that’s not getting anyplace else. That’s what those teachers and the librarians are doing. You know…

Petal: They’re changing the world

Kate DiCamillo: the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Petal Modeste: In a good way. It’s true. So, I’m going to confess that the Tales of Despereaux  It’s probably my favorite book. I’m not finished with Ferris yet, but I love Despereaux  because I just feel like with so many of your books, of course it reinforces several salient truths about human beings. But for me, the big lessons from that are: every human dreams, and our dreams are not very different; hurt people hurt people; when we “other” people, we make them feel less than, we ultimately endanger ourselves; evil thrives on pain and desperation and courage like fear, can be learned. Those were my lessons from that.

Kate DiCamillo: Those are beautiful. You’ve made me tear up. And not only are those some things that I have not consciously been aware of there, but I want to say that that’s so much of what I get as a reader still is that notion. And it goes back to hope. That I myself can change, and that it is never too late to change and to move through the world in a different way to move, and this takes us back to Despereaux for a minute to turn to somebody like the Pea does Princess P. And says to Miggery Sow, what do you want?

Petal Modeste: Yeah.

Kate DiCamillo: And so like, you know, which is a variant of where does it hurt, you know, and that that’s how we need to move through the world. It takes bravery to do that to ask somebody else about their pain, and it takes bravery to tell somebody else about your own pain stories give us a way to do that.

Petal Modeste: Yeah, indeed. So, you know, I had mentioned a little earlier that one of the goals of this podcast is to really give those who parent a new lens through which to understand the forces shaping the future. And its things that we’ve grappled with for a long time. Ageism, sexism, racism, poverty, war, ableism, political divisions, but also new things. AI social media, climate change, and information overload, of course. And so as we wrap up the conversation. I really want to touch on how stories can help us raise our children to not just be who they are meant to be, but to be the kinds of people the world needs – the kinds of people who would ask, “where does it hurt? What do you need? How can stories help children a make sense of the world, find a path for themselves through the chaos but really develop the empathy. They will need to live well with others, and to have their own unique impact, whatever it might be, on the world.

Kate DiCamillo: Well, I mean, we know we know that the science shows us empathy – that is one of the ways it’s developed is through reading a story. And it’s like literally neuroscience that you know. You read that the character picks up a pencil and the same parts of your brain fire, even though you’re sitting there reading. That would be firing if you were picking up a pencil, which is just kind of like amazing. So, it’s just to read. To insert yourself in a story is that one of of the ways that we develop empathy. And so that. And  then how to make sense of it. The only way to make sense of it. And this is what stories give us, too is to turn to the person next to you, and say, Is this the way it is for you and the story answers that question right? This is how it is for me. Oh, I thought I was alone. I’m not alone, or if you have not experienced that kind of pain, it goes back to the empathy. Oh, people can feel this way. I didn’t know that this could happen. So those two things of oh, you feel this way, too. Oh, I didn’t know that that kind of thing could happen, and that carves a new neural pathway in my brain that I then know. I remember this was just in some reading, you know, textbook that I had in third grade. There was a story about a kid that slept on the street in Korea, on a, on a mat and  begged during the day, and I remember, like riding home on the bus and looking out, the window thinking, that is happening somewhere in the world, and I did not know it, you know. And so, it’s that thing of like, “wow, that can happen to people. I’m going home to my house, my house, where there’s my mother’s waiting for me where there’s food on the table where I don’t have to beg. I didn’t know that such a thing was possible, and now I know there is no going back to not knowing, and it changes, you know.

Petal Modeste: it doesn’t escape me, talking about – kids begging in the day and sleeping on mats at night on the street – that there is actually an implicit privilege in being able to read; in being able to afford a book, even to access a library. To have the time to lose oneself in stories, to see yourself in books. How can more authors bring this privilege to more children everywhere? And can technology help us?

Kate DiCamillo: Can technology help us? I don’t know. Do you think it can?

Petal Modeste: Well, I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on all of the new immersive readers. There are a lot of AI powered systems like “Voicitt” and “Dysolve AI” that really are doing some remarkable things with children who have, for instance, dyslexia or other learning differences. It helps them engage with the written word, and in really new ways. I do think that, like everything with technology, there are some remarkable things that can be done. Technology might be able to help create sort of a world in which more kids can read and have access to books. But I think we need to be thoughtful about it, too.

Kate DiCamillo: Right, and I think it needs to come with that human connection. And it’s funny, because, you know, during the pandemic, I learned this, and I would not have believed it if I hadn’t experienced it. So,  it was day after day of sitting in front of the computer talking, talking to either a classroom or you know, or something bigger, you know, like, you know, 50 people are zooming in from all over, and what I was struck by again and again, even when I couldn’t see the faces that I was talking to, was that I could feel that palpable connection. And so, and it was just like it was really interesting to me. I would not have believed it. But it’s like, you know, something will happen when I’m in a room with people where I can feel that we are connected, and that would happen with technology. And I would have this really huge gratitude for it, because it made me feel less isolated. So, I think there’s hope for us. And I think that you’re right. I think it can put more stories in more hands. And it would be wonderful if whoever was holding the book or the piece of electronics, and was reading aloud that the words, as long as they’re being read together, deliver that hope and connection.

Petal Modeste: I agree. I think that’s the key. So, my last question for you, Kate. What are three things all of us who parent can do in our everyday lives? I mean, in many ways, you’ve answered this already, but what are three things we can do in our everyday lives to help the kids in our life develop an insatiable appetite for reading?

Kate DiCamillo: The first thing I would say is, read yourself for yourself.  And you touched on this – reading a book is a privilege and it is a joy and  to have a parent turn it into a task – go to your room and read for 15 min. Oh, it’s like, you’re so lucky. You have access to this book, you get to read it. But  you, the parent are reading for yourself. A book for yourself. That, I think matters so much. Modeling that. And then the second thing is, of course, reading out loud, and this can go both ways. You know, your  child can read to you as you’re driving them to school. You know you can read to your child at nighttime. I mean, it can happen all kinds of different ways. And so, reading for yourself, reading aloud and then I think, it’s a real daily challenge, for all of us staying alive to the wonder that is. To focus only on all of the things that are wrong takes away from how much beauty and wonder there is. So,  if you can, as a parent point out this flower, that half-moon, those stars, this dog, these moments of beauty. I think that I have to remind myself all the time. And I think it’s a wonderful thing to remind kids of. Beauty is everywhere.

Petal Modeste: It’s everywhere. Thank you, Kate. Thanks for visiting with us. Thanks for bravely and generously sharing your gift with the world, and for making books safe, and the instruments through which our kids are seen, and receive the gift of hope.

Kate: I want to say, thank you. It was like a spectacular conversation. I’m so grateful for it. So thank you.

Petal Modeste: As am. I, Take good care, Kate. Thank you.

Kate DiCamillo: Thank you.

Kate DiCamillo

John Newbery Medal

Beverly Cleary

Christopher Paul Curtis

Dysolve AI

Voiceitt