The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

Guest Blogger Day

The assignment was to choose an event in a book and tell how the situation was similar to something that happened in your own life. I present to you another essay written by one of my students.

I think what happened to me one day is similar to what happened to a mouse. This particular mouse is from the book The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo. Despereaux is a mouse that always seems to get into strange events. One of the events that happened to him is similar to something that happened to me. I was scared to do something, yet I was determined to go through the ordeal, just like Despereaux was.

One day, Despereaux wanted to save a princess who was hidden in a palace’s deep, dark, dungeon. He was determined to go to rescue her even though the dungeon was filled with rats that ate mice. On the other hand, I was determined, one day, to go through a haunted tunnel at a Halloween Carnival. I was with my friend and had enough courage to go through. I knew that I probably would be scared stiff, but I was determined to see how scary it really was.

As Despereaux walked through the dungeon, he kept careful watch of everything around him. He was discovered by a rat that led him to the princess because the rat wanted to see them suffer together. Similar to that, I followed the path of the haunted tunnel and was discovered by many scary people wearing costumes. I was pretty scared as I made my way through the tunnel.

Though many hardships, Despereaux was finally able to rescue the princess and escape from the dark dungeon. Like Despereaux and the princess, my friend and I successfully navigated through the haunted tunnel and made it out the other side. The friendly faces of family and friends greeted us as we came out of the tunnel. In the end, everything turned out to be all right.

Despereaux is very similar to me. We both were determined to go somewhere and made it out in one piece. We decided that we could overcome our fears and successfully finish our objective.

-Emily, 6th grade

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo