After the massacre in Texas, the children’s author KateDiCamillo captured the depth of our grief, writes Margaret Renkl. 'That’s my job: to stay heartbroken, to stay heartbroken about this.'
. The post begins with an account of letters from children who write things like “I cried when my teacher read this book” and “I want to be brave like the mouse in the story” and “When I grow up, I am going to write books, too, so that I can make other people feel this way.” The letters testify to the powerful connection between writer and readers, soul to soul, across space and time.
More than 43 million copies of DiCamillo’s award-winning children’s books are in print — stories like “The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane” and “The Tale of Despereaux” and “The Tiger Rising” — and they are read-aloud favorites of teachers. It’s a fair bet that her books are on the shelves of every elementary and middle school in this country, including the classrooms where children have been executed by madmen. For DiCamillo, these massacres are deeply personal.
This is not a political statement, and it is not a prescription for how to solve the problem of a country awash in guns and toxic resentment and groundless fears. This is a howl of grief, and I felt every word of it settling into my own shaken soul. Grief and fear are equally primitive emotions, but only grief can lead to any realistic hope for change that will keep our children and teachers safe.
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