Of Loss and Love:
The Luminous Novels of Kate DiCamillo
By Delores Schweitzer

"What was that word you said? The word that meant sad?"
"Melancholy," he said.
"Melancholy," I repeated. I liked the way it sounded,
like there was music hidden inside it.

Can there be music hidden under sadness? Imagine a girl with an emotionally distant father, struggling to understand the abandonment of her mother and find a new family in a new town. Imagine a boy told not to think of his mother's death, and so he conjures a suitcase in his mind where he keeps his not-thoughts and not-wishes. Imagine a mouse with a mother who is so disappointed with him at his birth that she names him Despereaux. Imagine a vain and self-centered rabbit, tempest-tossed by fate, and destined to suffer humiliations and agonies of heart until he learns that he cannot hide from love.

These are the worlds created by Kate DiCamillo, a children's book author who has won wide acclaim in the publishing world for her incandescent prose and exquisite storytelling style. Since her first book was published in 2000, she has received many honors including the coveted Newbery Medal, the highest award given for excellence in children's literature by the American Library Association. Her four full-length novels deal with loss and suffering, and through the sensitive treatment of these descents into personal darkness and despair, readers find the other side of the hero's journey.

It is not a big leap to get to that darkness. In fact, many of her characters are in the abyss when we meet them. Childhood is often idealized as a time of innocence and ignorance, but in reality, children are highly sensitive and sympathetic to pain and loss, whether it be beloved toys, pets or parents.

In The Tiger Rising, Rob and Sistine are as different as night and day, but both grieve the loss of a parent — Rob's mother through death and Sistine's father through abandonment. Sistine brawls and rants against everything, insisting that her father will be coming for her any day now. Sensitive and artistic Rob fights internal battles to keep a metaphorical suitcase shut — the one that contains his thoughts of his mother, as well as his wishes and dreams.

While both children believe they are dealing with their problems, Willie May, a prophetess of sorts, sees through them. Rob has a rash that appears to be untreatable by doctors, but Willie May has a different diagnosis: "You keeping all that sadness down low, in your legs. You not letting it get up to your heart, where it belongs. You gotta let that sadness rise on up." Upon meeting Sistine, she says, "I know you. You ain't got to introduce yourself to me. You angry. You got all the anger in the world inside you." She goes on to offer this sage advice: "Ain't nobody going to come and rescue you. You got to rescue yourself."

In this richly framed psychological drama, the children find a caged tiger in the woods-pacing, restless, angry and ready to strike. Rob wants to keep the tiger in the cage, and Sistine wants to let it out — both reactions reflecting their own strategies for dealing with loss. The climax of the story comes with the release of the tiger, which in turn frees the sorrows the children have been desperately trying to control.

In a somewhat lighter, yet equally powerful story of the loss of a parent, Opal, the ten-year-old heroine in Because of Winn Dixie, finds a path to healing through an open heart and a willingness to listen to and share stories. Upon moving to a new town, Opal has a loving, yet reserved relationship with her father. He has closed off the pain of his wife's leaving, and Opal, who was three at the time, yearns to know more about her but is afraid to ask. Opal, longing for friends, finds her first in a lovable stray whom she names Winn Dixie.

This smiling, patient dog seems to have the effect of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on Opal and all the people she meets — her father, the lonely neighborhood "witch," the elderly librarian, the musical ex-convict clerk of the pet store, and the neighborhood children all sense there is something special in Winn Dixie. All are outcasts, searching for connections, and his presence and acceptance encourages them to open up and talk, and their stories become gifts to each other, a window into the pains they share of loneliness, loss, injustice or disappointment.

With the innocence of a child, Opal attributes this gathering of family to Winn Dixie, but we, the readers, know better. For it is Opal's openness, courage and questions that lead them to a community that they can call home. Once again, DiCamillo shows that, while the hero's path may seem to be solitary one, friends and mentors are vital components to redemption and restoration, and healing cannot take place until the sorrow is brought out into the open and freely expressed.

The Tale of Despereaux, shows the damage caused by a community built on fear and dogma, rather than communication and understanding. Despereaux, a very small mouse with large ears, disappoints his family at every scurry. He is mesmerized by music and tales of chivalry, and he falls in love with a human princess, threatening the whole structure of mouse society and causing him to be sent into the dungeon to be devoured by rats. Even when confronted with the betrayal of his family, Despereaux holds on to hope because his heart is filled with love. Chiaroscuro, aptly named for his paradoxical nature of dark and light, is a rat who also is attracted to the light, but has no such love in his heart to sustain him through disappointment and loss, and so his reaction to being cast out of the king's assembly is much different:

There are hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman. Such was the fate of Chiaroscuro. His heart was broken. Picking up the spoon and placing it on his head, speaking of revenge, these things helped him to put his heart together again. But it was, alas, put together wrong.

And so unfolds an epic story of tragedy, judgment, deep sorrow, danger, descent into hell, and finally the understanding of what brings about restoration:

Despereaux looked at his father, at his gray-streaked fur and trembling whiskers and his front paws clasped together in front of his heart, and he felt suddenly as if his own heart would break in two. His father looked so small, so sad.
"Forgive me," said Lester again.
Forgiveness, reader, is, I think, something very much like hope and love, a powerful, wonderful thing.
And a ridiculous thing, too.
Isn't it ridiculous, after all, to think that a son could forgive his father for beating the drum that sent him to his death? Isn't it ridiculous to think that a mouse could ever forgive anyone such perfidy?
But still, here are the words Despereaux Tilling spoke to his father. He said, "I forgive you, Pa."
And he said those words because he sensed that it was the only way to save his own heart, to stop it from breaking in two. Despereaux, reader, spoke those words to save himself.

As Chiaroscuro learns, the hero's journey is much harder when love is not present from the start but his hollowness is nothing compared to the cold, vain, porcelain rabbit for whom The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane is named. As far from the Velveteen Rabbit as you could imagine, Edward is a masterful creation of smug narcissism, oblivious to the love of his owner Abilene, scornful of her patronizing parents and only concerned with how well he looks in his silk suits. Possessing as much hubris as Odysseus, Edward has a long way to fall, and his failure to love anyone sets into motion his destiny of separation from Abilene and the loss of all self-esteem as his fine clothes are stripped away and he is tossed into the ocean. Time and again, he is taken in, opens his heart to his owners and the hope of a true home, and has that love and hope snatched from him.

As is the paradoxical nature of loss and love, instead of diminishing with each encounter, Edward's capacity to love grows until he finds himself in the arms of a dying girl. The pain of this last separation thrusts Edward into the true abyss, a place of loss and despair from whence he hopes never to return. His fragile head is smashed, and he is resurrected by a doll mender, restored to his former glory and placed upon a shelf, where coldness settles in his being until the day a very old, wise doll comes to sit next to him:

The old doll said, "I wonder who will come for me this time. Someone will come. Someone always comes. Who will it be?"
"I don't care if anyone comes for me," said Edward.
"But that's dreadful," said the old doll. "There's no point in going on if you feel that way. No point at all. You must be filled with expectancy. You must be awash in hope. You must wonder who will love you, whom you will love next."
"I am done with being loved," Edward told her. "I'm done with loving. It's too painful."
"Pish," said the old doll. "Where is your courage?"
"Somewhere else, I guess," said Edward.
"You disappoint me," she said. "You disappoint me greatly. If you have no intention of loving or being loved, then the whole journey is pointless. You might as well leap from this shelf right now and let yourself shatter into a million pieces. Get it over with. Get it all over with now."

Filled with expectancy. Awash in hope. Courage. Forgiveness. Love. These are the ways, simple as they may seem, to overcome the shattering effects of loss and find a reason to believe and a way home. From their beginnings, Kate DiCamillo's characters are destined to lose, but then, aren't we all? Deaths, resurrections, transformations, and the realization and belief in something greater than one's self — these are the hallmarks of the hero's journey. DiCamillo's gift is that of allowing her characters to be who they are, and to be honest in their journey. They have no special powers, except those that come from discovering their gifts and giving of themselves. In their presence of being, in their capacity to love, they are transformed, and so they transform, and often save, the lives of others. In her characters, her stories, her touches of harsh reality and magical realism, we see who we are — the light and the dark, the melancholy and the music-and in such luminosity, how can we be disappointed?

Delores Schweitzer is a librarian and literary magazine editor for Laing Middle School in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. She is happy to report that The Hero with a Thousand Faces is alive and well in contemporary children's and young adult literature, as well as the minds and hearts of her students. She lives on Sullivan's Island, where she has many heroic adventures with her Jack Russell Terrier named Stella.

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