The Tale of Despereaux

My five-year-old son has a freakishly long attention span when it comes to books. He can sit and study novels without pictures for over twenty minutes. So this summer when I wanted to read E.B. White's Charlotte's Web, and knew that Isaac wouldn't reread it with me, I figured I'd see how Adam would do. He was entranced. And then after sobbing at the ending, he looked at me and asked that I start over and read it to him again. His crying was not something he was able to get over easily and left him gasping for air and unable to sleep at night. Days later he'd think of Charlotte and weep. Isaac begged me to stop torturing his brother with the book Adam loved so dearly. And so I asked Adam if I could try to read something else to him, a book I'd read to Isaac years ago and loved. We began Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread. DiCamillo is a beautiful writer and her prose was hypnotizing to us both. I love this book, the story actually gave me chills. It's a story about this tiny mouse who doesn't really fit into the mouse world who goes on a quest to save a princess. But the story has many layers and there are other characters and everyone is connected in one way or another. I'll admit I had forgotten how it ended and was worried I was reading another tear-jerker. I remembered how another DiCamillo book ended (The Tiger Rising) and knew she didn't always deliver happily ever after. I started to relax as we finished it. No, it wasn't like Charlotte's death at all. No matter. Adam cried big thick tears into my chest. "Honey, why are you crying?" I whispered in his ear.
"Because it's over," he wailed.
Ah yes, I understood. This was a beautiful book and it was over; he was worried that he wouldn't get to read anything this good in a long time.