Kate DiCamillo is on a roll. Twenty-five years after she burst onto the children\u2019s publishing scene with Because of Winn-Dixie, DiCamillo is marking that milestone with the release on September 30 of a deluxe 25th-anniversary edition, as well as Lost Evangeline, the finale to her Norendy Tales trilogy. Paperback editions of Hotel Balzaar (Norendy Tales #2) and A Piglet Named Mercy will also be released that same day, and in November, Candlewick Press is releasing a boxed set: Mercy Watson\u2019s Neighborhood: Four Tales from Deckawoo Drive. DiCamillo spoke with PW about her good fortune, the impact of the pandemic, and what fairy tales offer readers.<\/p>\n
You moved to Minneapolis from Florida in 1994 and took a job at The Bookmen distribution warehouse as a picker, which paid minimum wage. Here you are, three decades later, Minnesota\u2019s most successful author, with 44 million copies of your books in print, film and musical adaptations of your works, and two Newbery Medals. Did you ever think, as you drove north in the fall of 1994, that your life would turn out like this?<\/strong><\/p>\n The great thing about working at The Bookmen was that it gave me such a behind-the-curtains look at publishing. Whatever big dreams I had, they would have never been this big. The big, big goal was that I could go down to working 30 hours a week at some point and either make a little bit of money from the publishing or teach writing workshops. But this? No\u2014it\u2019s unbelievable to me still. I\u2019m gobstopped. I\u2019m not being disingenuous\u2014I can\u2019t believe it. You know what the chances are, and I can\u2019t believe it happened to me.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve always been very prolific, but you\u2019ve become even more so since the Raymie Nightingale trilogy concluded in 2019. You have a veritable flood of books being released this fall. Why do you think your books have endured like this, with even your debut novel still an evergreen bestseller 25 years later?<\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s the same as when we go back to the question, did I ever expect this to happen? I have the same reaction to you listing all those books coming out soon, which is utter disbelief, followed by the conscious thought, what do I do about that? Nothing\u2014except try to be grateful that it\u2019s happening. And as ridiculous as it seems, to keep on doing my work. I can be grateful for it, and I can inhabit it with the whole of myself, and say, okay, thank you.<\/p>\n Any thoughts on why you\u2019ve become so prolific?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve always been prolific, and it\u2019s probably only been in the last two or three years that I haven\u2019t pushed back against that word, because I feel like I move so slowly. I don\u2019t write quickly; I\u2019m just kind of relentless about showing up and doing it. But I have to back up now and say, that\u2019s a lot of books. The pandemic might have really jumpstarted it. I wasn\u2019t on the road as much, and I never write when I\u2019m on the road, so I was home more and writing. I\u2019ve always moved along slowly, like I said, writing two pages a day, but during the pandemic, I did more than two pages each day, because it was a way to anchor myself. It gave the day shape.<\/p>\n Your next original release is Lost Evangeline, the third in the Norendy Tales trilogy that began with The Puppets of Spelhorst. It seems, in the last few years, you\u2019re moving away from these contemporary tales set in Florida into fairy tales set in imaginary realms. What prompted this shift?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, and it\u2019s not in any way a conscious thing. I had started writing The Puppets of Spelhorst before the pandemic; Hotel Balzaar was written during the pandemic. I was out walking the dog, doing that thing that, remember, we would do if you saw somebody coming towards you on the street\u2014you\u2019d cross the street. I was in the process of doing that, and I thought, what I need right now is a fairy tale. I literally turned around and headed back home and started to write Hotel Balzaar; the only impetus for it was that I needed a fairy tale. You can see the pandemic in that book\u2014it has that kind of confined, life under a bell jar feel to it. With Lost Evangeline, this is an idea that I had in a title that I had carried around with me for close to 20 years, and I couldn\u2019t figure out how to tell the story. And then it too happened during the pandemic. The first line of it came to me and I knew what to do.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the thinking behind partnering with different illustrators with each book in this trilogy?<\/strong><\/p>\n To say that these tales are loosely linked is an exaggeration. They hint at each other; there is a hidden thing in each story that connects it to the other. And so, when Candlewick thought, let\u2019s have a different illustrator for each story, it seemed right to me. As for Lost Evangeline, it\u2019s always exciting to have Sophie Blackall do something, but I didn\u2019t know that Sophie has a love affair with the sea, so that is utterly divine to me that illustrating Lost Evangeline tapped into that part of her.<\/p>\n What do you want your readers to take away from Lost Evangeline, and from the Norendy Tales as a whole?<\/strong><\/p>\n I hope that the books provide magic, that feeling\u2014which I always think is one of the most brilliant moments in children\u2019s literature\u2014when Lucy pushes through the wardrobe and ends up in Narnia. If these stories could give that feeling of, there\u2019s another world just adjacent to this world, and if you push on the wardrobe door, you can get through\u2014yes, that feeling. I would love that.<\/p>\n Lost Evangeline by Kate DiCamillo, illus. by Sophie Blackall. Candlewick, $17.99, Sept. 30, ISBN 978-1-5362-2552-5 <\/strong><\/p>\n The Hotel Balzaar by Kate DiCamillo, illus. by J\u00falia Sard\u00e0. Candlewick, $8.99 paper, Sept. 30, ISBN 978-1-5362-4438-0<\/strong><\/p>\n Because of Winn-Dixie: Deluxe 25th Anniversary Edition by Kate DiCamillo. Candlewick, $17.99, Sept. 30, ISBN 978-1-5362-5254-5 <\/strong><\/p>\n A Piglet Named Mercy by Kate DiCamillo, illus. by Chris Van Dusen. Candlewick, $8.99 paper, Sept. 30, ISBN 978-1-5362-4437-3 <\/strong><\/p>\n Welcome to Mercy Watson\u2019s Neighborhood: Four Tales from Deckawoo Drive by Kate DiCamillo, illus. by Chris Van Dusen. Candlewick, $27.96 boxed set, Nov. 4, ISBN 978-1-5362-3613-2 <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kate DiCamillo is on a roll. 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