The Tale of Desperaux

Kate Dicamillo and Timothy B. Ering

"The initial title is The Tale of Desperaux, and then it goes on to something like, being a story about a mouse, some soup, a spool of thread and a princess or something. So it was just sort an intriguing fairy-tale title.

Desperaux, the main character, is a mouse, who is unlike all the other mice who live in this castle, because he loves to read and he doesn't just want to eat the books. This sort of motley cast of characters were also really great, because even the sort of villains were enchanting in their own way, and also for the ones who were kind of out to get each other, you saw how they'd gotten that way and how mistreatment had sort of hardened their hearts.

This book will -- this book will stay in your imagination, and it's a treat to find out about all of the different elements in the title, because you go along for a while and have no idea how the soup and the spool of thread get woven into the story. So it feels sort of like detective work, or that you're being given a present as you read along and get to find out how those things work."

© Copyright 2007, 2008 Pacific Book Exchange LLC