Life & Wisdom Quote by Kate DiCamillo

There is a quiet defiance in calling yourself a storyteller when your business card could just as easily read "author". Kate DiCamillo is refusing the prestige game. "Author" can sound like a credential; "storyteller" sounds like a job you do in a room with other people, where attention is earned minute by minute. That choice matters for a writer whose best-known work lives in children’s literature, a field too often patronized as training wheels for "real" reading. DiCamillo’s phrasing insists the opposite: story is the primary technology, not the junior version of the novel.

The line also works as self-protection. "I like to think of myself" admits a wish, not a résumé. It’s modest, but it’s also a claim to identity on her own terms: she’s not promising moral instruction, literary gravitas, or marketable brand consistency. She’s promising the oldest thing - a narrative that carries you. In the children’s book ecosystem, where adults frequently police what’s appropriate, educational, or uplifting, "storyteller" signals allegiance to wonder, fear, humor, and grief as legitimate material. It’s a subtle argument that kids deserve art, not just messaging.

Contextually, DiCamillo’s work often treats tenderness and darkness as neighbors, trusting young readers with complexity. "Storyteller" names that trust. It suggests someone listening as much as speaking, shaped by the audience’s needs while still steering the tale. In a culture obsessed with authorial persona, it’s an elegant narrowing of the spotlight back onto the story itself.