“This story begins within the walls of a castle, with the birth of a mouse.”

From Kate DiCamillo’s The Tale of Despereaux: The Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread.

In a castle in the mythical, medieval kingdom of Dor lives a tiny mouse with giant ears named Despereaux.  Along with reading, Despereaux likes to spend time with the human princess, Pea, instead of hiding from her.  Pea is kind, but her father, King Philip, does not approve of the little mouse’s presence because of the similarities mice share with rats, which have been outlawed. However, because of his conversation and friendship with Pea, Despereaux is sentenced by the mouse council to the dungeon. The cause for the banishing of the rats, a light-loving rat named Roscuro, is angry at the way he was treated after the queen’s death, even though he was not responsible, so the rat partners with Miggery Sow, a servant girl that wants to be a princess and the two begin to plot. When Pea’s life is threatened by the rats, Despereaux springs into action, risking everything to save the princess, and just maybe the lives of everyone else in the castle, as well.

The story, which inspired the 2008 movie of the same name, is full of heart and adventure.  While the setting is fictional, it closely resembles medieval France; this allows DiCamillo to create a new world that is connected, but not cemented, to reality.  The illustrations are simple pencil drawings for a majority of the book, but they are so packed with details that the reader can easily get transported to the world of The Tale of Despereaux.