ORLANDO, Fla.― Peter Augustus Duchene went to the market to buy fish and bread, where he encountered the tent of a fortuneteller. He asked her if his sister was alive and if so how would he find her. “The elephant” said the woman, “she will lead you there.”
Young Peter is one of Kate Dicamillo’s various characters in her children’s books and is the main subject in her new book “The Magician’s Elephant” which she discussed on Sunday. A live webcast of the presentation was made available and shown at the Orlando Public Library.
“We’re all standing on the shoulders of giants” said Dicamillo about herself and her colleagues, “and we all inspire each other.”
The Newbery Award winning author opened the floor to a group discussion after the presentation in which she talked about everything from her childhood in Central Florida to how she got many ideas for her stories by eavesdropping.
“I haven’t read any of her books but I definitely want to now” said Marilyn Houston, an audience member “I like how mystical all her books seem.”
A young girl in the audience wondered how Dicamillo got along with the illustrator of the book, Yoko Tanaka, and the author stated that she had not personally met or spoken to her illustrator. “Writers are so neurotic” responded Dicamillo “they don’t think anyone should be talking to a neurotic writer.”
When she realized she wanted to be a writer, Dicamillo decided not to go to graduate school and instead bought various black turtlenecks so she could look like a writer.
She laughed as she remembered how quickly the realization that she would not get published unless she actually wrote something dawned on her.
“I felt a certain amount of pride just now,” she said after announcing how many books she had written “short lived pride, but it did go through me.” Dicamillo is the author of 16 books and three more are on the way.
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