I didn't have my copy of The Read-Aloud Handbook with me, or I would have gone with a Trelease recommendation. I quickly skimmed Goodreads, Pinterest, and the internet at large for good read-alouds. Then, as luck would have it, I forgot until minutes beforehand that I was supposed to read to the 1st grade for 30 minutes. It didn't hurt that Kate DiCamillo was the author! I was sure the kids were going to love it.įor a year it sat on the shelf collecting dust. I bought it last year for the library-using my own money-because it looked like a colorful, fun, beginner chapter book. If only you knew how many times I have tried to get a child to read Mercy Watson: A Princess in Disguise. It was a 2013 Parents' Choice Gold Award Winner and was chosen by Amazon, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Common Sense Media as a Best Book of the Year. Flora & Ulysses is a laugh-out-loud story filled with eccentric, endearing characters and featuring an exciting new format - a novel interspersed with comic-style graphic sequences and full-page illustrations, all rendered in black and white by up-and-coming artist K. It was released in fall 2013 to great acclaim, including five starred reviews, and was an instant New York Times bestseller. Her latest novel, Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures, won the 2014 Newbery Medal. Since then, the master storyteller has written for a wide range of ages, including two comical early-chapter-book series - Mercy Watson, which stars a 'porcine wonder' with an obsession for buttered toast, and Bink & Gollie, which celebrates the tall and short of a marvelous friendship - as well as a luminous holiday picture book, Great Joy. Her second novel, The Tiger Rising, went on to become a National Book Award Finalist. 'After the Newbery committee called me, I spent the whole day walking into walls,' she says. After moving to Minnesota from Florida in her twenties, homesickness and a bitter winter helped inspire Because of Winn-Dixie - her first published novel, which, remarkably, became a runaway bestseller and snapped up a Newbery Honor. Kate DiCamillo's own journey is something of a dream come true. Together, we see one another.” Born in Philadelphia, the author lives in Minneapolis, where she faithfully writes two pages a day, five days a week.

Kate DiCamillo, the newly named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature for 2014–2015, says about stories, “When we read together, we connect.

Mercy watson first book