Kate Dicamillo

Biographic Information:

Kate DiCamillo is an award winning author whose books often confront themes of death and loss. Kate DiCamillo was born March 25, 1964 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a child DiCamillo suffered from chronic pneumonia, which caused her and her family to move to Florida when she was five. DiCamillo credited her sickly childhood with having shaped her as a writer.

Significant Events:

1. DiCamillo suffered from mumps and measles, chickenpox twice, and ear infections, plus a few exotic extras: inexplicable skin diseases, chronic pinkeye, and, most dreaded of all, pneumonia, recurring every winter for the first five years of her life.
2. Kate DiCamillo and her family moved to Florida when she five so she could recover from pneumonia which allowed her to jump start her writing career.

Becoming an Author:

Kate DiCamillo

• Kate DiCamillo was in college at the time she discoved she wanted to become a writer. She put off the work of her essay until the last possible moment. The night before it was due, she went grocery shopping. And sitting outside the Winn-Dixie, perched on top of a hundred-pound bag of Purina dog chow, she described was a woman with a tambourine. She beat the tambourine softly against her thigh and started to sing a song about the moon rising up in the night sky like a gold coin and how it was hanging up there all shiny and new and nobody was able to get hold of it and spend it. She called it a "smug old moon." DiCamillo went back home and wrote an essay describing her. She wrote down the words of the song that she sang. She even described her broken fingernails (painted purple) and her blue eye shadow and how she sat atop the bag of dog chow as if it were a throne. She turned her essay into her professor and she got a ton of success out of it. From there DiCamillo found her passion

Publications

Books By DiCamillo

• Because Of Winn-Dixie (2000)
• The Tale of Despereaux (2003
• The Tiger Rising (2001)
• Raymie Nightingale

References: 

Dowd, S. (2018, October 08). Kate DiCamillo. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kate-DiCamillo