Parenting & Family Quote by Kate DiCamillo

A lot of writers manufacture mystique; Kate DiCamillo does the opposite. She opens with geography and a simple fact pattern, the kind you’d find in a library bio: born in Philadelphia, living in Minneapolis, writing for children and adults. The plainness is the point. It signals a temperament that trusts the work more than the persona, and it quietly aligns her with the everyday institutions that keep reading alive: classrooms, public libraries, book fairs, bedtime routines.

The Philadelphia-to-Minneapolis move reads like more than a relocation. It sketches an American map of inheritance and reinvention, East Coast origin story to Midwestern steadiness. Minneapolis carries literary connotations of craft culture and civic-minded arts scenes; it’s a place where storytelling is less celebrity than practice. That background helps explain why her books often feel emotionally precise without feeling performative.

The final line is doing subtle boundary work. “Both children and adults” refuses the hierarchy that treats children’s literature as training wheels. DiCamillo’s intent is to flatten the divide: the same moral seriousness, the same appetite for wonder, the same tolerance for sorrow can belong to any reader. It’s also a strategic refusal of branding. In a market obsessed with niches, she frames her audience as a continuum, not a demographic. The subtext: don’t condescend to kids, don’t overcomplicate for adults, and don’t mistake simplicity for shallowness.