You know that party game where someone asks you, “If you could have dinner with any person alive or dead, who would it be?” In the few times in my life when I’ve been in a group and this has been asked, people have astounded me with their answers: historical figures, spiritual leaders, even ancestors from generations back have all been suggested and I have been in awe thinking of the depth of conversation that might be had with such people.

For me, I’d like to meet Kate DiCamillo. More than likely, all four of my regular blog readers are shaking their heads and then doing a Google search to even know who that is. She’s my favorite author, a children’s book author, and while I love several of her books, my dinner guest selection really has everything to do with her book The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.

I’m sure I’ve told the story before, but I bought the book without knowing a single thing about it. It was on a display shelf at a Scholastic Book Fair and I bought it for my niece, probably part of a Christmas present. She presumably read it and it sat on her bookshelf for a good many years until one day when she cleaned off the shelves and bequeathed my classroom with the books she no longer wanted to read or treasured. This book was among them. It still doesn’t explain why I chose to read it. Many, many, many books have been donated to my classroom over the years and I haven’t stopped to read but maybe two. But somehow this one just caught my attention and I stopped to read it.

And I have never stopped. I’ve read it every year to every class and it breaks my heart and gives me hope and makes me long to be such an author.

We are in the midst of the book now, with my two fourth grade ELA classes. We use it to work on our summarizing skills as the chapters are just the right length and with just enough content that students can really hone in on the most important details and by the end of the novel we’ve done enough modeling, practicing and checking that they are really good at independently writing their own summaries. At least of fiction texts. But the truth is, I just applied a standard to this text because there is no way I will ever teach and not read this book to my class. If I were teaching high schoolers, I would find a way to make it applicable.

But today was the day when my students got to really feel the power of the written word. Today is the day when, for me, they get to be a part of the magic of a book – of the way it transcends the moment you are in, the way it provokes strong emotions and connects the experiences in our own hearts to the fictional characters within the pages of the novel. Today was the day when students ran to get the tissue box and it wasn’t just because Mrs. Koehn was crying, but all eyes were damp and red. And we haven’t even gotten to the ending. Lord help me when the ending comes.

I won’t say what happened. If only because some of you have yet to experience this novel and I don’t want to detract from that experience in any way by revealing any events, but today would have been a day when James would have asked me about school and I would have only said three words and he would have hugged me and known what a hard day it was for me all because of this one chapter. And that was before, well, before.

In all honesty, if Ms. DiCamillo were seated across from me at a dinner table and I could talk and ask her anything, I’m not even sure what I would ask. She could tell me all her writing secrets and the story of her inspiration for the novel and she could tell me her daily writing practices that lead to such amazing chapters, but to be honest, there has to be something within a person that gives them words such as these that can time and again move hearts such as mine. I think, in all honesty, I would simply thank her. Not just for the experience of her books, not just for all the emotions that conjure up and spill over, not just for all the ways my heart breaks and mends with her choice of phrase or word, but for helping me help students fall in love with reading.

As I closed the chapter and we sat down to write our summary today, one of my students said, “Are we going to read more books like this one this year?” I asked what he meant by that and he said, “I’ve just never read a book that made me feel like this.” I assured him that I hoped many of the books we read together and that he chooses to read on his own make him feel this way.

Presidents might have changed history, spiritual leaders might have changed religion, our own ancestors would surely have amazing personal stories to tell, but Ms. DiCamillo changed the hearts of many of my students, turning them into readers and for that, I’d sure like to buy her dinner.