The Tale of Despereaux

Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux is an adventure for 8 year olds about a mouse who does everything a mouse is not supposed to do.

What happens

Despereaux Tilling is born in the walls of a castle, the only one of his litter to live. He's tiny. His ears are enormous. He is ill roughly all the time and carries a handkerchief about with him for the sneezing.

Worse, from his family's point of view, he has no interest in crumbs.

His brother tries to teach him to scurry and he stands in the middle of the floor staring up at a stained glass window instead. His sister takes him to the library to show him how tasty the glue on a book spine is, and Despereaux looks down at the page and the squiggles turn into words. Once upon a time.

He won't eat it. It would ruin the story.

What he's been hearing all along, the sweet sound he keeps asking about, turns out to be the king playing his guitar. So Despereaux creeps out of the wall to hear it properly, and the Princess Pea sees him, and picks him up, and calls his ears lovely. And he breaks the last great rule of mice. He speaks. To a human.

His own brother goes straight off to report him.

The voice is the thing here. There's a narrator who talks directly to your reader, all the way through. Reader, you must know. Reader, I must report. It's the effect of being told a story by someone sitting on the end of the bed, and it makes even the grim parts feel held.

They do get grim. Despereaux's mother announces at his birth that he'll only die like the others and then asks for her makeup bag. His father decides "something must be done" and beats the drum for the Mouse Council. Thirteen mice vote to send a small sick mouse down to the dungeon, to the rats, and his father cries but doesn't vote against it.

One thing to be ready for. That last bit is the sharp end of the book, and the story lingers on it on purpose. The final line of the opening section asks your reader, straight out, to imagine their own dad doing that. A child who is tender about being left out or let down may need you nearby for it. A child who loves an underdog will be completely on Despereaux's side, which is exactly where the book wants them.

What to read next

If your reader falls for him, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane is by the same author. Edward is a china rabbit with a very high opinion of himself, an excellent wardrobe and a gold pocket watch, and one day he gets lost.