Kate DiCamillo tells her own tale
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“The Puppets of Spelhorst” tells the tale of five puppets: a king, a wolf with sharp teeth, a girl, a boy and an owl.
“Characters in search of a story, which is basically all of us. Not just puppets, right?” smiles DiCamillo.
DiCamillo says puppets present possibility. You make the puppets tell a new tale.
“And so you get to do things. And you just, you do you tap into something larger than yourself. It’s that collective unconscious of story, you know.”
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The puppets in the book were inspired by some she borrowed from a friend. It’s not unusual for DiCamillo to ponder the story possibilities of objects she brings into her writing room.
She says it took about three years before she found a way into these puppets’ story.
As she started writing, it sparked a memory from when she was really young. She remembered her father giving her some wooden farm figurines. He told her a story about them. Then she told him a story about them too.
What she really remembers though is how for the first time she was not afraid of him.
For years DiCamillo didn’t speak much about her father. He was a well-regarded orthodontist in Pennsylvania, where DiCamillo lived until she was 5. That’s when she moved to Florida with her mother and brother, ostensibly for Kate’s health.
She’s talked about how her dad stayed behind to wrap up his practice, but then never joined them. DiCamillo grew up, moved to Minnesota and then famously exploded as an author in 2000.
She kept in touch with her father sporadically over the years. He died in 2019.
Recently, New Yorker writer Casey Cep visited Minneapolis to prepare a profile of DiCamillo.
“It was the right person at the right time. Then there was the terror of having done it. Right?” said DiCamillo.
She told Cep how, in private, her father was prone to violence. He threatened their mother, and she told the kids they couldn’t tell anyone because no one would believe them.
DiCamillo says telling that part of her own story was really hard.
“It was terrifying. Yeah, I was like, you know, wake up at three o’clock in the morning and clutch your sheets and think ‘Oh, no.’ But it was also freeing.”
The New Yorker article came out in mid-September and DiCamillo and her brother have received many messages from people who have lived through similar situations saying it made them feel seen. DiCamillo says she is grateful to Casey Cep allowing her to tell the story
“I got to see myself and a different way. It was a gift that she gave me. So she helped me see myself.”
And dealing with her own personal history may well have changed Kate DiCamillo as a writer.
She’s published dozens of books starting with “Because of Winn-Dixie.” Many of them are about youngsters dealing with family dysfunction. The pandemic erupted just a few months after her father died, and maybe there was extra impetus to stay home and write.
The book she finished is called “Ferris.” It will be published in March. It’s about a whip-smart about-to-be-fifth-grader who lives in a ramshackle old house with her parents, annoying little sister, uncle, beloved grandmother and her dog Boomer who may be part woolly mammoth. There may be raccoons in the attic, and possibly a ghost on the second floor.
It’s a glorious Kate DiCamillo story, and somewhat of a wonder even to the author herself.
“I could write a story about a kid who has been loved from the minute she arrived and in an odd way, I didn’t realize until I was done with it. Oh, I’ve never done that before.”
She’ll talk about the books at Rain Taxi’s Minnesota Book Festival at the State Fairgrounds on Saturday. She says when she talks to children about writing, she sometimes talks about her father’s departure. She says she sees them connecting the dots.
“The stories are the best of me. And the stories are the result of everything that happened,” she said. “And so, you know, that all I’m grateful for all of it, every bit of it.”