We’re over halfway done with Bloganuary now. The prompt for today is “Who is your favorite author and why?” As usual, I’ll begin by saying I do not have #1 favorite. I’m not someone to whom the concept of absolute favorites makes any sense. I can narrow things down to collections of favorites, but that’s about it. Anyway, rather than pretending I have a singular favorite author, I will just pick one author out of the many whom I love.

Kate DiCamillo is an example of an author I love. Well, to be more precise, I love her books and writing style. I don’t know very much about the woman herself. You never know if an author is a good person or another J.K. Rowling. But even if it turned out that Kate DiCamillo was some kind of nazi, I would still have to give her credit for writing well and influencing my life. As of now, however, I’ve never heard anything bad about this author.

Kate DiCamillo writes children’s books. I think her most popular book was Because of Winn-Dixie. However, the one that influenced my life the most was The Tale of Despereaux. As much as I say I usually don’t have favorites, I think this might be a case of my top favorite children’s book. That’s just how important of a book it is to me. No other book has ever made me feel so understood. It only takes a few hours to read this book, so as long as you’re someone who likes fantasy, I recommend this book to everyone.

I’m going to end here rather than gush about The Tale of Despereaux for the next ten paragraphs. Maybe this will be an incentive to investigate it yourself. I will leave you with a simple Despereaux quote that I think is very powerful. Thanks for reading and have a great day.

“The world is dark and light is precious.
Come closer, dear reader.
You must trust me. I am telling you a story.”
~Kate DiCamillo