Childhood
As a kid Dicamillo suffered chronic pneumonia a condition that prompted her mother, a teacher and her older brother to move with her to Florida when she was five. Though her father, an orthodontist, was scheduled to follow the family in due course, he never did. DiCamillo credited her sickly childhood with having shaped her as a writer, since she spent time alone in her bed imagining and observing. She majored in English at the University of Florida at Gainesville (B.A., 1987) and then took on various short-term jobs. In 1994 she moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she worked in a book warehouse and became drawn to children’s fiction. Her first novel, Because of Winn-Dixie (2000; film 2005), was published after a young editor spotted it in the “slush pile,” a publishing house’s collection of manuscripts sent unsolicited by aspiring authors. The novel—which relates the story of 10-year-old Opal, a girl made lonely by the loss of her mother and her arrival in a new town, and the mangy dog she finds in a supermarket—was praised for its gentle humour, the clarity of its writing, and the endearing nature of its young protagonist.