One of my favorite books is The Tale of Despereax by Kate Dicamillo. This book made me feel that as long as you want and try to do something, you will achieve it. This is sort of like the other book that I read in class called Tracker because in the book, John wanted dearly to go and touch a doe, he tried for more than 2 days and a night and he finally suceeded, this book was a Just Right book for me because I understood the plot and the words in the story.
Despereax is a mouse, twice as small as a normal mouse should be. He had ridiculasly large ears and was born with his eyes open. He was not like a mouse should be, he didn't like to eat, he just liked music and reading, he even fell in love with a human princess. He fainted at loud sounds and always carried a handkerchief in one hand because he always sneezed and coughed. He changes because he was a "wimp" when he was sent to the dungeon, but a different mouse when he came out. He even decided to go back again to save the Princess. Roscuro was a rat who desired light, he lived in the darkness of the dungeon, but he wanted to go upstairs to be bedazzled with brightness. Except that when he went upstairs, he somehow managed to get into the queens soup. The queen loved soup and when she found a rat in it, it scared the life out of her, literally. Seeing that the queen was dead, his heart broke and some hearts when tried to be mended mend in not the excatly the right way. He was a different rat, he wanted something beutiful for himself, thats why he wanted the Princess trapped in the dungeon forever.
The book ends with Despereax saving the Princess and Roscuro changing his ways. The Princess gave Roscuro free access from the castle dungeon and the upstair rooms, they even gave him soup, wich was forbidded after the queen died. I would like to change the part when Roscuro tortures a prisoner and realizes it is really not what he wanted and realised that what his parents told him about suffering was the answer was all wrong, I would have changed that part and put more details about him escaping the dungeon for the first time.
