Wanting, Waiting: The Works of Kate DiCamillo

As directors of child and adolescent psychiatry training programs, we are often asked by prospective fellows for book recommendations: “What should I read to prepare?” Of course we share our lists of canonical, comprehensive child and adolescent psychiatry textbooks. But we are also deeply interested in reminding students and residents what it is like to experience the world as a child. Our sense—as fathers who read alongside our kids—is that reading children's literature, particularly books that capture the loneliness and sense of feeling quite small in a big world, help do this. One author whose works come to mind in this way is Kate DiCamillo.