The Costco Connection

By Hope Katz Gibbs

FLORA BELLE BUCKMAN is

10 years old and hates romance. She prides herself on being a natural-born cynic, and while she wants to believe in superhe-roes, she just can’t make her cynical self buy into the premise.

At least, that’s how she feels during the summer after fifth grade, when she’s reading The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto!

With the whoosh of a vacuum cleaner, all that changes. Flora’s neighbor Mrs. Tickham is using her new Ulysses Super-Suction, Multi-Terrain 2000X on the lawn when she sucks up an unassuming squirrel— an incident that magically gives him superpowers. From then on, the squirrel is known as (what else?) Ulysses.

“Holy bagumba,” shouts Flora, witnessing the scene from her bedroom window.

Holy bagumba, indeed.

Magical realism abounds on the 240 pages of Kate DiCamillo’s Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures. After his encounter with the 2000X, Ulysses is born anew with powers of strength, flight and misspelled poetry. Their friendship helps Flora discover the power of having an open heart.

Themes of hope and belief amid impossible circumstances are the hallmark of DiCamillo’s wildly popular novels. Her 12 New York Times best-selling titles have sold 20. 5 million copies and been translated into 39 languages.

Adding to the intrigue of this latest tome
are illustrations by former Hollywood interior
designer Keith Gordon
Campbell, whose genre-bending
approach blends graphic and
comic style in the artwork.

It is no surprise that Flora & Ulysses is the 2014 Newbery Medal winner—another honor for DiCamillo to add to her collection, which includes Newbery Honor Book (Because of Winn-Dixie, 2001), a finalist for the National Book Award for Young

Rising, 2001), the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Fiction ( The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, 2006), the Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor (Mercy Watson Goes for a Ride,

2007) and the Theodor Seuss Geisel Medal (Bink and Gollie, 2011).

She is also the 2014–2015 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature— which means this celebrity author will be making the rounds to meet kids across the country.

“When we read together, we connect. Together, we see the world. Together, we see one another,” says DiCamillo of her newest title.

Yet, the modest author says she’s stunned
that any of her books have even made it into
print. “This almost sounds disingenuous, but
there’s a large part of me that is still hoping I
will simply get published,” DiCamillo tells
The Costco Connection from her home in
Minnesota. “I wrote for six years and got a lot
of rejection letters before I sold anything.”
In fact, DiCamillo didn’t consider a career
as a writer until one of her professors at the
University of Florida told her she had “a cer-
tain facility for words.”
“Because I was 20 years old, I thought he
was telling me I was wildly talented. So I
ditched the idea of grad school and bought a
bunch of black turtlenecks and sat around
telling everyone that I was a writer—for the
next 10 years. I wasn’t writing anything, mind
you, just telling everybody that I was a writer.”
“My job was basically to tell people to
‘Watch your step,’ ” she says. At 30, all that
changed. She moved to Minneapolis and
made writing her priority.

Holy unanticipated occurrences: Her 2000 breakout book, Because of Winn-Dixie, won critical acclaim and became a feature film in 2005. Similar to the sensationally scrappy Flora, this book’s star is another 10-year-old, India Opal. She rescues a scruffy dog that is wreaking havoc in the Winn-Dixie supermarket, and, of course, adventures ensue.

DiCamillo’s 2003 mega hit, The Tale of Despereaux, became an animated movie in 2008. That fantasy follows Despereaux Tilling, a mouse with giant ears who sets out on a quest to rescue a beautiful human princess named Pea.

One can’t help but wonder: Why do animals have starring roles in her books?

“It’s not a conscious thing,” admits DiCamillo, 49. “Sometimes I sit there and think, ‘Oh boy, I’ve got to make sure there isn’t an animal in this one.’ But as readers, we’re inclined to open our hearts to an animal. Once we do, we give the rest of ourselves over to the story. And that’s when the magic happens.” C

Hope Katz Gibbs lives in northern Virginia with
her two teenagers, who were raised on Kate
DiCamillo’s fantastic anthropomorphic stories.
Kate DiCamillo’s Flora & Ulysses
takes readers on an incandescent
summer adventure
Holy
bagumba!
author spotlight