Wednesday, October 22, 2008

The Tale of Despereaux

Book: The Tale of Despereaux
Author: Kate DiCamillo
Like/Don't Like: Like a lot

It's been ages since I've read a children's book. I have a huge collection of them and the other day I was looking over the shelves for something new to read and since they're arranged alphabetically by author (the one area in my life that is in some kind of order), I came across this one first. I'm a huge sucker for books with award stickers on them. Have you noticed that more and more books have them and don't really deserve them? I blame Oprah. But this sticker was for the Newberry Award and I trust that one.

Gosh this is a cute book. And it was nothing like I thought it would be. I got it years ago but haven't read it because it has a mouse on the cover, which I took to mean it involved a mouse and I'm always slow to warm to books about animals. But the story was so well written, about a mouse named Despereaux on a quest to save a princess, that I forgot all my prejudices and loved the whole thing. It made me want to steal a few children and read it out loud to them. It's a perfect reading-out-loud book.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I read this book a while ago and remember really liking it as well. My mom said she liked "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" even better, though. I haven't had a chance to read it yet (I guess I could always wait 'til I have kids and she buys it for me, hehe).