About this episode
When was the last time you were so captivated by the beauty of the world around you that it stopped you in your tracks? Kate DiCamillo intentionally has those moments daily. In a world that can feel dark and hopeless, she maintains a sense of awe. It’s the force that helps her move through both joy and loss. It’s what allows her to keep noticing the miraculous in the ordinary.
“This is what awe always does. It’s the zoom out. All of a sudden, you can see how tiny and insignificant you are, and you plug into that bigger thing.” — Kate DiCamillo
One of the most beloved voices in children’s literature, Kate is a two-time Newbery medal winner and author of more than 25 books—from Because of Winn-Dixie to The Tale of Despereaux to The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.
In this episode, Kate returns to the show for the first of “The Second Chapter” conversations with previous guests. This time, Kate reflects on awe, grief, and the beauty that connects them. She shares the moments that have gobsmacked her across decades—from childhood discoveries of “protective coloration” to the painting she has revisited at every stage of her life. Kate also opens up about coping with tragedy and how the best way through those moments in life is “the doing of it.”
Settle in for an honest, hard, and still uplifting conversation with one of the most cherished voices of a generation.
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This week's Beanstack Featured librarian is Chelsea Pisani, a rockstar children's librarian at Maple Valley Branch Library in Akron, Ohio. She returns to share her secret sauce for igniting a love of reading in all kids.
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Connect with Jordan and The Reading Culture on Instagram and Facebook, and subscribe to our newsletter at thereadingculturepod.com/newsletter.
Listen to the full episode, "Tender Heart: Kate DiCamillo on Awe and Grief," on Apple, Spotify, Castbox, or wherever you get your podcasts. Like what you hear? Please leave a 5-star review, subscribe, and share with someone who will enjoy it!
Whatever you do, keep reading!
Contents
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Chapter 1: The Art of Noticing
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Chapter 2: The Hem of the Garment
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Chapter 3: Charlotte’s Web
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Chapter 4: Ramona the Great
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Chapter 5: Then and Now
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Chapter 6: Beanstack Featured Librarian
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Kate DiCamillo: This is what awe always does. It's the zoom out. It's just like all of a sudden you can see how tiny and insignificant you are and you plug into that bigger thing.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: To notice is one thing, but to be undone by what you notice, that's awe. Awe has the power to change the way we move through the world. Kate DiCamillo is one of the most beloved voices in children's literature. A two time Newbery Medal winner and the author of more than 25 books from Because of Winn Dixie celebrating its twenty fifth year this year to The Tale of Desperaux to The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, her work has shaped generations of readers. Today, I'm sitting down with Kate for what we call the second chapter, part of a series where we bring back previous guests of the show and ask them to dive a little deeper into one or two topics, subjects where we think they've got a lot of real wisdom to drop on us.
In this episode, Kate reflects on awe, on grief, and the beauty behind both. She shares the painting that has stopped her in her tracks across decades and reveals what she's learned from a bee, a spider, and a dog. We also talk about coping with the Annunciation Church murders, which as it turns out, we each have a personal connection to. My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookie, and this is the reading culture, a show where we speak with diverse authors about ways to build a stronger culture of reading in our communities. We dive deep into their personal experiences and inspirations.
Our show is made possible by Beanstack, the leading solution for motivating people to read more. Learn more at beanstack.com. And make sure to check us out on Instagram the reading culture pod and subscribe to our newsletter for bonus content at the readingculturepod.com forward slash newsletter alright on to the show Hey, listeners. Are you looking for a fun, easy way to track your reading and earn cool rewards? Well, meet Beanstack, the ultimate reading app used by a community of over 15,000 schools, libraries, and organizations nationwide.
Are you an avid reader? Check with your local library to see if they offer Beanstack for free. A parent? Ask your child's teacher if the school library already uses Beanstack. And if you are an educator searching for a fresh alternative to accelerated reader, Beanstack is the perfect tool to cultivate a thriving reading culture.
Ready to turn the page? Visit beanstack.com to learn more.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I went and listened to our talk from last time.
Kate DiCamillo: Okay. Then stop me from repeating myself when I start to say something you say. You said that last time.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. Right. Okay.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yes. But it was so yeah. I was very you were so nice. You're such a kind person.
Kate DiCamillo: It's I was gonna give you a long psychological response to that, and I thought, you know, that's a lovely compliment. Thank you. I'll take it.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh, you feel like it's a shortcoming?
Kate DiCamillo: No. It's just something that, you know, if you want the whole therapy answer, things were rough when I was a kid and I survived. And part of what my brain did was you must not have been good if you survive. So it's only recently that I've understood through this, through what I get to do, you know, writing Mhmm. That my own my tender heart, own my kindness, own my attempts to be a good person in the world.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Your tender heart? Yeah. Something you said when we first spoke that I wrote down, something miraculous is taking place. I can feel it. If I just turn slowly enough, I'll be able to see it.
I'm wondering if you and your and your tender heart can remember when you first started really noticing things.
Kate DiCamillo: I just remember so much, and I think that's because I've been paying attention for as long as I can remember, not always for good reasons. You know? It's like when's the tablecloth gonna get pulled? When's the table gonna be overturned kind of thing? I think there was that.
But it's one of those odd things that then benefited me because that hyper attention to everything, that noticing everything, that's so much where stories come from. And if you turn it, if you're not always looking for when the table's gonna be turned over, but instead if you're looking for the miraculous all the time, then it's a comfort. You know? And it's the same with if you're looking for danger all the time or if you're looking for beauty all the time, you can flip it where you're looking for beauty.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I like that idea. This leads into a question. If you can remember a time when something small really struck you and saw it for its beauty or that you can think of.
Kate DiCamillo: Yesterday, I watched a bumblebee back out of a flower. He was all the way in there. I watched him disappear inside, and I stopped to like thank him and to talk to him. And then I watched him fly out backwards. And it was miraculous because it's like that's going on all the time and what goes on with bees is so complicated.
It undoes you the more you read about it. And, you know, and I got to see it. I got to see him go in. I got to see him back out. It's funny because I'm gonna do the Eudora Welty lecture in March.
Oh. And in the course of writing that, I wrote about something that I haven't ever used before in a speech. And now I'm gonna tell you, Jordan, why not? Like, I just realized what a critical moment it was in my life, and it has to do with noticing, and it has to do with becoming yourself. So I went to this great nursery school in Philadelphia, and I loved it.
I loved school from the minute I crossed into a threshold of a school. It's like, oh, boy. You know? And my parents had a dinner party, and it was a big deal because I was gonna get to sit at the grown up's table.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh, yeah.
Kate DiCamillo: And on a couple of chairs, literally dictionaries, because I was always small for my age. I don't remember who the adults were that were there, but one of them asked me at the dinner table that standard question, you know, what'd you learn in school today? Yeah. And so I said protective coloration. And the table, talk about noticing, stopped, you know, because I looked even younger than I was because I'm holding my knife and fork in the correct way and because I'm saying multislavic words and everything just ground to a halt.
And it was just one of those moments where because I was paying attention, I knew several things at once. Mhmm. I knew this was my way. You know? The words.
The words to be able to use the words to be able to use the words to surprise and to take the room and to use my size in combination with the large words. And then my father, like, super intently always interested in my brain, you know, then he wanted a definition, and I defined it. And it was just like it was one of those moments where I knew who I was and was paying attention. And that was beauty because I understood who I could be. Does that make sense?
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't think there is anything. That's like one of my at least getting to see it through my kids, I think. When you know the thing that you're supposed to be doing Yeah. There's really nothing more incredible than that really, or watching somebody else that you love doing that too.
You know?
Kate DiCamillo: Yeah. I think it's beautiful anytime it happens, that wonderful thing of somebody figuring out who they can be in the world.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: The art of noticing begins with the small things, a bee, a word, and those moments can also become the kind of awe that shifts your perspective all at once. Usually, it's uplifting, but sometimes it's more complicated.
Kate DiCamillo: It's weird because that happens anytime I I know what the story is. Do you know what I mean? So it's just like so I might be looking at something else entirely in the world. Like this morning when I got up to plug in the writing lights and I came out onto the porch and I saw this little moon up there, and, I mean, that always fills me with awe whenever I see it. But it clicked into it's like, oh, wait a minute.
I know the next thing that happens in the story, and that happened as I'm looking at the moon. This is what awe always does is, like, it takes you out of your tiny little it's the zoom out.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah.
Kate DiCamillo: You know? It's just like all of a sudden you can see how tiny and insignificant you are, and you plug into that bigger thing. And for me, it's like I can kinda, like, connect the dots into the story. So looking at the thing that moves me to awe, that makes me forget myself, and then it comes back around to knowing what's gonna happen in the story.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: So for you finding what's going to happen in the story, what's coming, it comes from releasing, noticing things around you, or, like, that's when you're able to sort of, like, let your mind go there is when those things come to you?
Kate DiCamillo: Right. Yeah. It's the me goes away. Mhmm. You know?
That worried chipmunk that's, you know, running around terrified and shoving nuts into my mouth and thinking, what's gonna that part of me, the worried part, the small part disappears and I connect to something much bigger than I am, and it allows me to do the work of writing the story.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: And I think this ties into it that, okay. Well, we use awe as a very positive word. I think we think of awe, you know, something can be awesome, whatever. But then it also implies dread
Kate DiCamillo: at some level or Sure. I mean, like, makes me think of Rilke and every angel is terrifying. But we don't think of it that way anymore, do we? Mm-mm. But every angel is terrifying and also beautiful.
I mean, you're like on your knees with the beauty and the terror. Right?
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Do you feel that way too in a sense, or do you also have like a sense of fear or dread in the face of some of those moments of awe that you have?
Kate DiCamillo: Yeah. Maybe because of the enormity and also oddly because of the beauty. Right? I mean, it makes you so small and it also makes you realize how little of the beauty we actually grasp, you know? Just the hem of the garment of it.
And that's terrifying that we don't even see everything that can be seen.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: It's not just bees and moons and natural wonders that give Kate that odd connection to something bigger. Literature and art can do it too. And there's one painting, not a very famous painting, that has felt particularly transcendent to Kate even across decades.
Kate DiCamillo: There is a piece actually in the National Gallery. I saw it for the first time when I was in my mid twenties and with my aunt Anne who lived in DC and who considered the National Gallery to be hers. And every time you visited aunt Anne, she would say, is this not the most beautiful city in the world? And here is all the beautiful art. I was in my mid twenties, and I saw this piece when I was with Aunt Anne by Voulard, who is considered a lesser impressionist, which is really rude, I think.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: The actual title? Yes. Wow.
Kate DiCamillo: And this little piece is called Repast in a Garden, and it stopped me in my tracks. It's painted on cardboard. I came back again and saw it after my mom died, and I was visiting my aunt, my brother, I were to deliver my mother's ashes back to where she wanted to be. So I was 44, and the three of us went and looked for it and stood in front of this painting. And then two years ago, I was in DC, and each time it stopped me And it's utter simplicity and and beauty and light.
Like, when you see something like that and it makes you stop, it's the same as reading do you know Anne Tyler? Yeah. She wrote a book called The Accidental Tourist. Yeah. And there's this beautiful part in there where somebody in the middle of the night puts their hand on the scar
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Mhmm.
Kate DiCamillo: And says, look. See? We all have scars. There's just this beautiful, stunning moment when I was in my twenties when I read that and I thought, oh, that's what I wanna do. I wanna make somebody feel the way those words just made me feel.
I wanna make somebody feel the way looking at this painting makes me feel. So it is it's like the beauty makes me want to try and create beauty. Mhmm. Can't paint, but I do know the words protective coloration. Right?
And so, okay, maybe I could do something with words. Charlotte, said Wilbur after a while. Why are you so quiet? I like to sit still, she said. I've always been rather quiet.
Yes. But you seem especially so today. Do you feel alright? A little tired perhaps, but I feel peaceful. Your success in the ring this morning was, to a small degree, my success.
Your future is assured. You will live secure and safe, Wilbur. Nothing can harm you now. These autumn days will shorten and grow cold. The leaves will shake loose from the trees and fall.
Christmas will come, then the snows of winter. You will live to enjoy the beauty of the frozen world, for you mean a great deal to Zuckerman, and he will not harm you ever. Winter will pass. The days will lengthen. The ice will melt in the pasture pond.
The song sparrow will return and sing. The frogs will awake. The warm wind will blow again. All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur, this lovely world, these precious days.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Just as she did in her first appearance on this show, Kate read again from Eby White's classic Charlotte's Web. Even after all this time, it remains the passage that does it for her.
Kate DiCamillo: It's such a profound promise, and it's one of those things that, you know, Catherine Patterson had said this, and I didn't encounter the quote until I had been writing for kids for a while. But I felt it always that thing about how you're duty bound when you write for kids to end with hope. And, you know, that that is the promise. This passage is what is implicit in everything that I try to do. I don't consciously think of that, but I think that has to be theirs.
There is this thrum of hope that needs and must be in books for kids that I rely on when I'm writing for it to show up and that the reader relies on for it to be there. And it is it's it's a promise, and it's a reminder. Talk about beauty, this beautiful world, these precious days. And that is true now even though times are so difficult, and we need to be reminded always.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Charlotte is such a beautiful character, but it's bittersweet to love her because even as we read, we know we're going to lose her. Kate's reading for this episode had an extra layer of resonance because her beloved dog, Ramona, had recently passed on after many years of companionship. Kate and I would sometimes exchange text messages about our dogs. Mine, Howie, looks a lot like Ramona did. So I was really sad to learn about Ramona's passing.
I'm thinking also about the loss of sweet Ramona, which
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I know is, like, so impossibly hard last year. Last year, has it been a year?
Kate DiCamillo: It no. Not even. Right? No. It hasn't been a year.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. It's April. What in those moments, what does that teach you or show you about love?
Kate DiCamillo: Oh, well, loving a dog is the primer for how to be in the world because of, you know, the differences and it's like that joke, bought a dog. Congratulations. You've purchased a tragedy.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I've never heard that, but that is very accurate.
Kate DiCamillo: Because they're you know, the numbers don't add up our way. And so what you're confronted with that so starkly when you lose a dog. And the first response is always, I'm not gonna do that to myself again. I'm not gonna sign up for that. And then it only takes a minute for the other voice to say, well, what's the point in being here then if you're not gonna love?
And it also so clearly shows you how to love means that you are going to lose. Full stop. And so what does that mean? You're not gonna do it? You know?
It's like, again, what's the point in being here? I always think about a guy that used to sit down by the coffee shop, and I would walk by this is the dog before Ramona. It was Henry. And he would always this guy would always wanna show me the picture of his dog that he lost twenty years ago. And he was so brokenhearted, and he couldn't get another dog.
And I always wanted to say to him, but now you've been twenty years without a dog. And it's just like it's that math. It's just like all those twenty years you could have been loving a dog. You know? You have to keep on loving.
It hurts, and it's everything that makes life worthwhile. And dogs are just like the walking arithmetic of that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Loving her dog made it worthwhile even though Kate knew that outliving her pet was an inevitable cost of their relationship. But what about the deaths we don't see coming? The ones for which there are no rationalizations. Just a few weeks before this conversation, Kate's home neighborhood of Minneapolis bore witness to a senseless and horrific mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic School. And it was very much on my mind as Kate and I wrestled with the topics of grief and hope.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I want to talk a little bit about a little more down, but then we could talk about change.
Kate DiCamillo: Sorry. Sorry. We're gonna we're gonna go we're gonna go how low can you go?
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I feel like right now this world yeah. I don't feel I know that right now the world feels very heavy. It feels very dreary, and especially where you are. I was thinking about you so much during the Annunciation Church massacres, killing those children. My childhood, like, best friend Johnny, who was, like, down the street from me, it was, his one of the little girls, Harper, who was shot there or was killed was, like, his daughter's best friend.
Kate DiCamillo: Oh my god.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. And he had written me to tell me how much that little girl who was killed reminded him of me. And he had said I just said it to my wife the other night. I hadn't spoken to him in twenty five year in twenty years, really. And I don't know.
Something I mean, obviously, like, you know, just because I I realized, like, how desensitized I think I have become.
Kate DiCamillo: I doubt it. You know, do you wanna know what it is a mile away from me. It's right next to a grocery store, Kowalski's, and, you know, the kids would get out, like, around three if I happened to be grocery shopping, and they all would say, hey to me. So the day that it happened, I went up on the street corner with a cardboard sign that said, when will a child's life be worth more than an adult's right to own a weapon of war? And the sign was very crowded and hard to read as people drove by.
A lot of people stopped and said, what does your son say? But I stood up there because I did not I'm like at wit's end. What to do? What to do, and I can put my physical self up there. And there were a lot of people who were walking who just stopped and we just held each other.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: How do you, like, pull yourself when those moments come? Like moments of despair, which just feel so much more frequent right now, how do you still see beauty and awe? And what like, how are you tapping into those things when it can feel just so heavy?
Kate DiCamillo: Well, part of it is other people, but I have a responsibility to do what I can do. And part of what I can do is find beauty and meaning and love and connection through the stories, and the stories go out into the world. And, hopefully, they provide those things to other people. So for me to wake up the morning after that and think, as any right thinking person would think, what is the point in me going and sitting down and trying to write this story? And then I have to consciously will my way into thinking.
And it's hard to talk about because it sounds self aggrandizing, but the books are out there. People find the books. I know this in times of great loss, great need, and read them to each other, read them to themselves, and find something. And so if this is the thing that I can do in the world, then I need to do it. And in the doing of it, I find those things myself, the beauty, the comfort.
So In the doing of it. In the doing of it. Yeah. I
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: think that resonates because I think people say, and I find it's true that, you know, that the best the antidote is to take action. It can be so hard.
Kate DiCamillo: Which is why I walked up to the street corner with my sign. Right? It's just like it's what difference does it make? But my body is getting the message
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah.
Kate DiCamillo: I'm doing something. I'm not just gonna sit here and rock back and forth, which is what I wanna do. I'm gonna walk up there.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I think last time we spoke, we were celebrating one of the anniversaries of Despero, and this time it's Winn Dixie. And for me, rereading those books, you know, I'm so much more emotional when I read them. I think I already was when I read them aloud to my children. You know, you get this, like, whole other experience as an adult when I'm reading Winn Dixie. I'm thinking about it as, like, okay.
I hope I hope that we did all these things that we did. You know, it's like everything is sort of this feels like I'm reading something in my past now. So twenty five years with how you see yourself now and, like, all these different things that have changed in your life since you wrote them, good and bad, and where you're seeing beauty, grief in that.
Kate DiCamillo: It's funny because what I'm so aware of with those books and then being out in the world, it's that thing that because people have now grown up with those books and the kids who had them read to them or read those books on their own are now reading them to their kids or gifting them to their kids. And it becomes this thing of, like, in this moment of all of us, like, collectively processing something with those so I'm grateful that those books exist because they give me the language to talk about light, darkness, being impossibly small in a terrifying world and still taking action, I can think about Despero and think I am impossibly small, but I can be brave like that mouse was brave. And Opal and Winn Dixie we did this thing here in Minneapolis at the Riverview Theater, which is this older, wonderful theater, and we did an anniversary showing of the movie. And there's this wonderful moment at the end when everybody's in Gloria Dump's living room. And Opal is looking around, and you can see on her face, oh, I did this.
Yeah. I brought all these people together.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah.
Kate DiCamillo: It comforts me, you know? And that's how it was doing the event. The theater holds 700 people. It didn't seem like 700 people. It just seemed like this community of people.
We were, you know, holding each other kind of, you know. Gathered. You're gathered. Yeah. Gathered.
Yeah.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I thought a lot about that in rereading that book. Just this idea, which I've been thinking and trying to, like, bring more into my life now is gathering and bringing just being together, being together with people, reminding yourself of what is human and what is good and And what is real. And what is real.
Kate DiCamillo: Yep. What is real. Yep. Which is the other thing about going out there with your physical self and gathering with your physical self.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You've talked about writing toward wholeness, writing toward that. Do you feel that, like, continuing to sort of, like, happen for you? Do you feel that more and more with every book that you're writing? That's a good question.
Kate DiCamillo: Yeah. And it actually like, it takes me back to, like, the moon this morning, awe, and that thing of zooming out. Mhmm. And so that fullness and wholeness is just like it's less and less and less and less about me and more about, like, this kind of thing of it's just the zooming out, and it's way way beyond me and my small concerns, you know.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: While we don't have a reading challenge for these second chapter conversations, we do still have our Beanstack feature librarians and this week's is once again Chelsea Pisani, an incredible children's librarian at Maple Valley Branch Library in Akron, Ohio. This time, she shares her secret sauce for igniting a love of reading in all of the kids at her branch.
Chelsea Pisani: So my secret sauce when it comes to getting kids to being excited about reading is I let them pick. I ask like, hey, what do you want to read about? And I had the kids in the beginning of the school year do a little survey. And they said, want books where the kids look like us, real stories. They pick what crafts we do, what books we pick.
Yeah. And I think just really creativity trying to figure out and meet the kids where they're at. I'm always trying something new. I tried bibliotherapy with the kids and I created kids, everybody goes through things. So I had themed books in little bins, boxes.
I made this big display on shelves. Put the books by themes whether it's stress, body image, consent, and from picture books to graphic novels to chapter books and just showing kids the power of fiction and how the power of stories can be healing too. I put them front and center with my new books and I ended up having to expand the display because so many people like loved them. They were taking handfuls of the books. Like the kids really really loved it.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: This has been the reading culture and you've been listening to my conversation with the one and only Kate DiCamillo again I'm your host Jordan Lloyd Bookie and currently I'm reading air of fire by Sarah j Maas and Dear Manny by Nick Stone. If you enjoyed today's episode, please show some love and give us a five star or even better, a written review whether you're listening on Apple or Spotify, any other platform. It all helps to make sure that this episode is listened to by more and more people. So thank you, thank you so much for taking the time to do that. I really appreciate it.
To learn more about how you can help grow your community's reading culture, check out all of our resources at beanstack.com and remember to sign up for our newsletter at the readingculturepod.com forward slash newsletter for special offers and a lot of bonus content this episode was produced by Mel Webb and lower street media and script edited by Josiah Lamberto Egan. Thanks for listening and keep reading.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: To notice is one thing, but to be undone by what you notice, that's awe. Awe has the power to change the way we move through the world. Kate DiCamillo is one of the most beloved voices in children's literature. A two time Newbery Medal winner and the author of more than 25 books from Because of Winn Dixie celebrating its twenty fifth year this year to The Tale of Desperaux to The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, her work has shaped generations of readers. Today, I'm sitting down with Kate for what we call the second chapter, part of a series where we bring back previous guests of the show and ask them to dive a little deeper into one or two topics, subjects where we think they've got a lot of real wisdom to drop on us.
In this episode, Kate reflects on awe, on grief, and the beauty behind both. She shares the painting that has stopped her in her tracks across decades and reveals what she's learned from a bee, a spider, and a dog. We also talk about coping with the Annunciation Church murders, which as it turns out, we each have a personal connection to. My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookie, and this is the reading culture, a show where we speak with diverse authors about ways to build a stronger culture of reading in our communities. We dive deep into their personal experiences and inspirations.
Our show is made possible by Beanstack, the leading solution for motivating people to read more. Learn more at beanstack.com. And make sure to check us out on Instagram the reading culture pod and subscribe to our newsletter for bonus content at the readingculturepod.com forward slash newsletter alright on to the show Hey, listeners. Are you looking for a fun, easy way to track your reading and earn cool rewards? Well, meet Beanstack, the ultimate reading app used by a community of over 15,000 schools, libraries, and organizations nationwide.
Are you an avid reader? Check with your local library to see if they offer Beanstack for free. A parent? Ask your child's teacher if the school library already uses Beanstack. And if you are an educator searching for a fresh alternative to accelerated reader, Beanstack is the perfect tool to cultivate a thriving reading culture.
Ready to turn the page? Visit beanstack.com to learn more.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I went and listened to our talk from last time.
Kate DiCamillo: Okay. Then stop me from repeating myself when I start to say something you say. You said that last time.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. Right. Okay.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yes. But it was so yeah. I was very you were so nice. You're such a kind person.
Kate DiCamillo: It's I was gonna give you a long psychological response to that, and I thought, you know, that's a lovely compliment. Thank you. I'll take it.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh, you feel like it's a shortcoming?
Kate DiCamillo: No. It's just something that, you know, if you want the whole therapy answer, things were rough when I was a kid and I survived. And part of what my brain did was you must not have been good if you survive. So it's only recently that I've understood through this, through what I get to do, you know, writing Mhmm. That my own my tender heart, own my kindness, own my attempts to be a good person in the world.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Your tender heart? Yeah. Something you said when we first spoke that I wrote down, something miraculous is taking place. I can feel it. If I just turn slowly enough, I'll be able to see it.
I'm wondering if you and your and your tender heart can remember when you first started really noticing things.
Kate DiCamillo: I just remember so much, and I think that's because I've been paying attention for as long as I can remember, not always for good reasons. You know? It's like when's the tablecloth gonna get pulled? When's the table gonna be overturned kind of thing? I think there was that.
But it's one of those odd things that then benefited me because that hyper attention to everything, that noticing everything, that's so much where stories come from. And if you turn it, if you're not always looking for when the table's gonna be turned over, but instead if you're looking for the miraculous all the time, then it's a comfort. You know? And it's the same with if you're looking for danger all the time or if you're looking for beauty all the time, you can flip it where you're looking for beauty.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I like that idea. This leads into a question. If you can remember a time when something small really struck you and saw it for its beauty or that you can think of.
Kate DiCamillo: Yesterday, I watched a bumblebee back out of a flower. He was all the way in there. I watched him disappear inside, and I stopped to like thank him and to talk to him. And then I watched him fly out backwards. And it was miraculous because it's like that's going on all the time and what goes on with bees is so complicated.
It undoes you the more you read about it. And, you know, and I got to see it. I got to see him go in. I got to see him back out. It's funny because I'm gonna do the Eudora Welty lecture in March.
Oh. And in the course of writing that, I wrote about something that I haven't ever used before in a speech. And now I'm gonna tell you, Jordan, why not? Like, I just realized what a critical moment it was in my life, and it has to do with noticing, and it has to do with becoming yourself. So I went to this great nursery school in Philadelphia, and I loved it.
I loved school from the minute I crossed into a threshold of a school. It's like, oh, boy. You know? And my parents had a dinner party, and it was a big deal because I was gonna get to sit at the grown up's table.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh, yeah.
Kate DiCamillo: And on a couple of chairs, literally dictionaries, because I was always small for my age. I don't remember who the adults were that were there, but one of them asked me at the dinner table that standard question, you know, what'd you learn in school today? Yeah. And so I said protective coloration. And the table, talk about noticing, stopped, you know, because I looked even younger than I was because I'm holding my knife and fork in the correct way and because I'm saying multislavic words and everything just ground to a halt.
And it was just one of those moments where because I was paying attention, I knew several things at once. Mhmm. I knew this was my way. You know? The words.
The words to be able to use the words to be able to use the words to surprise and to take the room and to use my size in combination with the large words. And then my father, like, super intently always interested in my brain, you know, then he wanted a definition, and I defined it. And it was just like it was one of those moments where I knew who I was and was paying attention. And that was beauty because I understood who I could be. Does that make sense?
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't think there is anything. That's like one of my at least getting to see it through my kids, I think. When you know the thing that you're supposed to be doing Yeah. There's really nothing more incredible than that really, or watching somebody else that you love doing that too.
You know?
Kate DiCamillo: Yeah. I think it's beautiful anytime it happens, that wonderful thing of somebody figuring out who they can be in the world.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: The art of noticing begins with the small things, a bee, a word, and those moments can also become the kind of awe that shifts your perspective all at once. Usually, it's uplifting, but sometimes it's more complicated.
Kate DiCamillo: It's weird because that happens anytime I I know what the story is. Do you know what I mean? So it's just like so I might be looking at something else entirely in the world. Like this morning when I got up to plug in the writing lights and I came out onto the porch and I saw this little moon up there, and, I mean, that always fills me with awe whenever I see it. But it clicked into it's like, oh, wait a minute.
I know the next thing that happens in the story, and that happened as I'm looking at the moon. This is what awe always does is, like, it takes you out of your tiny little it's the zoom out.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah.
Kate DiCamillo: You know? It's just like all of a sudden you can see how tiny and insignificant you are, and you plug into that bigger thing. And for me, it's like I can kinda, like, connect the dots into the story. So looking at the thing that moves me to awe, that makes me forget myself, and then it comes back around to knowing what's gonna happen in the story.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: So for you finding what's going to happen in the story, what's coming, it comes from releasing, noticing things around you, or, like, that's when you're able to sort of, like, let your mind go there is when those things come to you?
Kate DiCamillo: Right. Yeah. It's the me goes away. Mhmm. You know?
That worried chipmunk that's, you know, running around terrified and shoving nuts into my mouth and thinking, what's gonna that part of me, the worried part, the small part disappears and I connect to something much bigger than I am, and it allows me to do the work of writing the story.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: And I think this ties into it that, okay. Well, we use awe as a very positive word. I think we think of awe, you know, something can be awesome, whatever. But then it also implies dread
Kate DiCamillo: at some level or Sure. I mean, like, makes me think of Rilke and every angel is terrifying. But we don't think of it that way anymore, do we? Mm-mm. But every angel is terrifying and also beautiful.
I mean, you're like on your knees with the beauty and the terror. Right?
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Do you feel that way too in a sense, or do you also have like a sense of fear or dread in the face of some of those moments of awe that you have?
Kate DiCamillo: Yeah. Maybe because of the enormity and also oddly because of the beauty. Right? I mean, it makes you so small and it also makes you realize how little of the beauty we actually grasp, you know? Just the hem of the garment of it.
And that's terrifying that we don't even see everything that can be seen.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: It's not just bees and moons and natural wonders that give Kate that odd connection to something bigger. Literature and art can do it too. And there's one painting, not a very famous painting, that has felt particularly transcendent to Kate even across decades.
Kate DiCamillo: There is a piece actually in the National Gallery. I saw it for the first time when I was in my mid twenties and with my aunt Anne who lived in DC and who considered the National Gallery to be hers. And every time you visited aunt Anne, she would say, is this not the most beautiful city in the world? And here is all the beautiful art. I was in my mid twenties, and I saw this piece when I was with Aunt Anne by Voulard, who is considered a lesser impressionist, which is really rude, I think.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: The actual title? Yes. Wow.
Kate DiCamillo: And this little piece is called Repast in a Garden, and it stopped me in my tracks. It's painted on cardboard. I came back again and saw it after my mom died, and I was visiting my aunt, my brother, I were to deliver my mother's ashes back to where she wanted to be. So I was 44, and the three of us went and looked for it and stood in front of this painting. And then two years ago, I was in DC, and each time it stopped me And it's utter simplicity and and beauty and light.
Like, when you see something like that and it makes you stop, it's the same as reading do you know Anne Tyler? Yeah. She wrote a book called The Accidental Tourist. Yeah. And there's this beautiful part in there where somebody in the middle of the night puts their hand on the scar
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Mhmm.
Kate DiCamillo: And says, look. See? We all have scars. There's just this beautiful, stunning moment when I was in my twenties when I read that and I thought, oh, that's what I wanna do. I wanna make somebody feel the way those words just made me feel.
I wanna make somebody feel the way looking at this painting makes me feel. So it is it's like the beauty makes me want to try and create beauty. Mhmm. Can't paint, but I do know the words protective coloration. Right?
And so, okay, maybe I could do something with words. Charlotte, said Wilbur after a while. Why are you so quiet? I like to sit still, she said. I've always been rather quiet.
Yes. But you seem especially so today. Do you feel alright? A little tired perhaps, but I feel peaceful. Your success in the ring this morning was, to a small degree, my success.
Your future is assured. You will live secure and safe, Wilbur. Nothing can harm you now. These autumn days will shorten and grow cold. The leaves will shake loose from the trees and fall.
Christmas will come, then the snows of winter. You will live to enjoy the beauty of the frozen world, for you mean a great deal to Zuckerman, and he will not harm you ever. Winter will pass. The days will lengthen. The ice will melt in the pasture pond.
The song sparrow will return and sing. The frogs will awake. The warm wind will blow again. All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur, this lovely world, these precious days.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Just as she did in her first appearance on this show, Kate read again from Eby White's classic Charlotte's Web. Even after all this time, it remains the passage that does it for her.
Kate DiCamillo: It's such a profound promise, and it's one of those things that, you know, Catherine Patterson had said this, and I didn't encounter the quote until I had been writing for kids for a while. But I felt it always that thing about how you're duty bound when you write for kids to end with hope. And, you know, that that is the promise. This passage is what is implicit in everything that I try to do. I don't consciously think of that, but I think that has to be theirs.
There is this thrum of hope that needs and must be in books for kids that I rely on when I'm writing for it to show up and that the reader relies on for it to be there. And it is it's it's a promise, and it's a reminder. Talk about beauty, this beautiful world, these precious days. And that is true now even though times are so difficult, and we need to be reminded always.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Charlotte is such a beautiful character, but it's bittersweet to love her because even as we read, we know we're going to lose her. Kate's reading for this episode had an extra layer of resonance because her beloved dog, Ramona, had recently passed on after many years of companionship. Kate and I would sometimes exchange text messages about our dogs. Mine, Howie, looks a lot like Ramona did. So I was really sad to learn about Ramona's passing.
I'm thinking also about the loss of sweet Ramona, which
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I know is, like, so impossibly hard last year. Last year, has it been a year?
Kate DiCamillo: It no. Not even. Right? No. It hasn't been a year.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. It's April. What in those moments, what does that teach you or show you about love?
Kate DiCamillo: Oh, well, loving a dog is the primer for how to be in the world because of, you know, the differences and it's like that joke, bought a dog. Congratulations. You've purchased a tragedy.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I've never heard that, but that is very accurate.
Kate DiCamillo: Because they're you know, the numbers don't add up our way. And so what you're confronted with that so starkly when you lose a dog. And the first response is always, I'm not gonna do that to myself again. I'm not gonna sign up for that. And then it only takes a minute for the other voice to say, well, what's the point in being here then if you're not gonna love?
And it also so clearly shows you how to love means that you are going to lose. Full stop. And so what does that mean? You're not gonna do it? You know?
It's like, again, what's the point in being here? I always think about a guy that used to sit down by the coffee shop, and I would walk by this is the dog before Ramona. It was Henry. And he would always this guy would always wanna show me the picture of his dog that he lost twenty years ago. And he was so brokenhearted, and he couldn't get another dog.
And I always wanted to say to him, but now you've been twenty years without a dog. And it's just like it's that math. It's just like all those twenty years you could have been loving a dog. You know? You have to keep on loving.
It hurts, and it's everything that makes life worthwhile. And dogs are just like the walking arithmetic of that.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Loving her dog made it worthwhile even though Kate knew that outliving her pet was an inevitable cost of their relationship. But what about the deaths we don't see coming? The ones for which there are no rationalizations. Just a few weeks before this conversation, Kate's home neighborhood of Minneapolis bore witness to a senseless and horrific mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic School. And it was very much on my mind as Kate and I wrestled with the topics of grief and hope.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I want to talk a little bit about a little more down, but then we could talk about change.
Kate DiCamillo: Sorry. Sorry. We're gonna we're gonna go we're gonna go how low can you go?
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I feel like right now this world yeah. I don't feel I know that right now the world feels very heavy. It feels very dreary, and especially where you are. I was thinking about you so much during the Annunciation Church massacres, killing those children. My childhood, like, best friend Johnny, who was, like, down the street from me, it was, his one of the little girls, Harper, who was shot there or was killed was, like, his daughter's best friend.
Kate DiCamillo: Oh my god.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. And he had written me to tell me how much that little girl who was killed reminded him of me. And he had said I just said it to my wife the other night. I hadn't spoken to him in twenty five year in twenty years, really. And I don't know.
Something I mean, obviously, like, you know, just because I I realized, like, how desensitized I think I have become.
Kate DiCamillo: I doubt it. You know, do you wanna know what it is a mile away from me. It's right next to a grocery store, Kowalski's, and, you know, the kids would get out, like, around three if I happened to be grocery shopping, and they all would say, hey to me. So the day that it happened, I went up on the street corner with a cardboard sign that said, when will a child's life be worth more than an adult's right to own a weapon of war? And the sign was very crowded and hard to read as people drove by.
A lot of people stopped and said, what does your son say? But I stood up there because I did not I'm like at wit's end. What to do? What to do, and I can put my physical self up there. And there were a lot of people who were walking who just stopped and we just held each other.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: How do you, like, pull yourself when those moments come? Like moments of despair, which just feel so much more frequent right now, how do you still see beauty and awe? And what like, how are you tapping into those things when it can feel just so heavy?
Kate DiCamillo: Well, part of it is other people, but I have a responsibility to do what I can do. And part of what I can do is find beauty and meaning and love and connection through the stories, and the stories go out into the world. And, hopefully, they provide those things to other people. So for me to wake up the morning after that and think, as any right thinking person would think, what is the point in me going and sitting down and trying to write this story? And then I have to consciously will my way into thinking.
And it's hard to talk about because it sounds self aggrandizing, but the books are out there. People find the books. I know this in times of great loss, great need, and read them to each other, read them to themselves, and find something. And so if this is the thing that I can do in the world, then I need to do it. And in the doing of it, I find those things myself, the beauty, the comfort.
So In the doing of it. In the doing of it. Yeah. I
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: think that resonates because I think people say, and I find it's true that, you know, that the best the antidote is to take action. It can be so hard.
Kate DiCamillo: Which is why I walked up to the street corner with my sign. Right? It's just like it's what difference does it make? But my body is getting the message
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah.
Kate DiCamillo: I'm doing something. I'm not just gonna sit here and rock back and forth, which is what I wanna do. I'm gonna walk up there.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I think last time we spoke, we were celebrating one of the anniversaries of Despero, and this time it's Winn Dixie. And for me, rereading those books, you know, I'm so much more emotional when I read them. I think I already was when I read them aloud to my children. You know, you get this, like, whole other experience as an adult when I'm reading Winn Dixie. I'm thinking about it as, like, okay.
I hope I hope that we did all these things that we did. You know, it's like everything is sort of this feels like I'm reading something in my past now. So twenty five years with how you see yourself now and, like, all these different things that have changed in your life since you wrote them, good and bad, and where you're seeing beauty, grief in that.
Kate DiCamillo: It's funny because what I'm so aware of with those books and then being out in the world, it's that thing that because people have now grown up with those books and the kids who had them read to them or read those books on their own are now reading them to their kids or gifting them to their kids. And it becomes this thing of, like, in this moment of all of us, like, collectively processing something with those so I'm grateful that those books exist because they give me the language to talk about light, darkness, being impossibly small in a terrifying world and still taking action, I can think about Despero and think I am impossibly small, but I can be brave like that mouse was brave. And Opal and Winn Dixie we did this thing here in Minneapolis at the Riverview Theater, which is this older, wonderful theater, and we did an anniversary showing of the movie. And there's this wonderful moment at the end when everybody's in Gloria Dump's living room. And Opal is looking around, and you can see on her face, oh, I did this.
Yeah. I brought all these people together.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah.
Kate DiCamillo: It comforts me, you know? And that's how it was doing the event. The theater holds 700 people. It didn't seem like 700 people. It just seemed like this community of people.
We were, you know, holding each other kind of, you know. Gathered. You're gathered. Yeah. Gathered.
Yeah.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I thought a lot about that in rereading that book. Just this idea, which I've been thinking and trying to, like, bring more into my life now is gathering and bringing just being together, being together with people, reminding yourself of what is human and what is good and And what is real. And what is real.
Kate DiCamillo: Yep. What is real. Yep. Which is the other thing about going out there with your physical self and gathering with your physical self.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You've talked about writing toward wholeness, writing toward that. Do you feel that, like, continuing to sort of, like, happen for you? Do you feel that more and more with every book that you're writing? That's a good question.
Kate DiCamillo: Yeah. And it actually like, it takes me back to, like, the moon this morning, awe, and that thing of zooming out. Mhmm. And so that fullness and wholeness is just like it's less and less and less and less about me and more about, like, this kind of thing of it's just the zooming out, and it's way way beyond me and my small concerns, you know.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: While we don't have a reading challenge for these second chapter conversations, we do still have our Beanstack feature librarians and this week's is once again Chelsea Pisani, an incredible children's librarian at Maple Valley Branch Library in Akron, Ohio. This time, she shares her secret sauce for igniting a love of reading in all of the kids at her branch.
Chelsea Pisani: So my secret sauce when it comes to getting kids to being excited about reading is I let them pick. I ask like, hey, what do you want to read about? And I had the kids in the beginning of the school year do a little survey. And they said, want books where the kids look like us, real stories. They pick what crafts we do, what books we pick.
Yeah. And I think just really creativity trying to figure out and meet the kids where they're at. I'm always trying something new. I tried bibliotherapy with the kids and I created kids, everybody goes through things. So I had themed books in little bins, boxes.
I made this big display on shelves. Put the books by themes whether it's stress, body image, consent, and from picture books to graphic novels to chapter books and just showing kids the power of fiction and how the power of stories can be healing too. I put them front and center with my new books and I ended up having to expand the display because so many people like loved them. They were taking handfuls of the books. Like the kids really really loved it.
Jordan Lloyd Bookey: This has been the reading culture and you've been listening to my conversation with the one and only Kate DiCamillo again I'm your host Jordan Lloyd Bookie and currently I'm reading air of fire by Sarah j Maas and Dear Manny by Nick Stone. If you enjoyed today's episode, please show some love and give us a five star or even better, a written review whether you're listening on Apple or Spotify, any other platform. It all helps to make sure that this episode is listened to by more and more people. So thank you, thank you so much for taking the time to do that. I really appreciate it.
To learn more about how you can help grow your community's reading culture, check out all of our resources at beanstack.com and remember to sign up for our newsletter at the readingculturepod.com forward slash newsletter for special offers and a lot of bonus content this episode was produced by Mel Webb and lower street media and script edited by Josiah Lamberto Egan. Thanks for listening and keep reading.