Each and every one of us is a former eight-year-old, wide open with yearning and possibility, almost

unbearably alert to the world's wonders and its dangers all at once, understanding exactly how trouble the adults

around you are, even if they think they are hiding it from you.

In her writing, it is Kate De Camillo's gift to make bearable the fact that joy and sorrow

lives so close, side by side, in life as it is, if not as we wish it to be. In this conversation, along with good measures of

raucous laughter and a few tears, Kate summons us to hearts, as she's said said capacious enough to contain the complexities and

mysteries of ourselves and each other and it seems to me that these years in the life of the world call that forth from all of us young

and old with ever greater poignancy and vigor.

Kate Di Camilo has near cult status among teachers and parents and young former children who've grown up reading her books which include the tale of Despero, the magician's elephant, the Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, and Flora and Ulysses.

I read her books with my children, and in recent years I've read them by myself.

But you don't have to have read any of them

to drop into this conversation

and gather refreshment for life in this world.

I'm Krista Tippett and this is on being.

Because of Winn-Dixie, about a girl and her dog was Kate D. Camillo's first novel published in the year 2000.

She is a rare two-time winner of the Newberry Medal, and I interviewed her from the

makeshift pandemic recording studio in my basement

while she was sitting in my seat

in the on-being recording studio in Minneapolis.

Hello?

Do you want this to be a recordable hello or is this for levels?

That was the most uncertain hello I've ever heard in my life.

...