Part fable, part morality story, 'The Beatryce Prophecy' has a heavy load to carry but it is all beautifully light in DiCamillo's hands. But at the first opportunity, they shove her out the door - despite Brother Edik's strong objections.įrom there the story becomes a journey tale, told in magical chapters, threaded through with a story-within-a-story, and populated with full, wonderful characters - the goat is paramount, of course, as is Beatryce, but there's also a cheery, whistling orphaned boy named Jack Dory, whose beloved late grandmother might be buzzing around him in the form of a bee a strange bearded man named Cannoc, who loves to laugh and the evil 'counselor' whose robes are 'as dark as the dungeon itself' and who is determined to find Beatryce. The monks disguise her by shaving her head and dressing her in a rough robe and sandals. The monks have recorded a prophecy that predicts a girl will unseat the king, and now the king's men are looking for Beatryce.

Something terrible has happened, and when she comes close to remembering what it was, she wills herself to forget. “The Beatryce Prophecy” by Kate DiCamilloīeatryce cannot remember how she got there she cannot remember where her family is. The story begins when a goat named Answelica discovers young Beatryce curled up in a haystack, filthy, weeping, burning with fever.Ī monk named Brother Edik rescues the girl (despite his terror of the fiercely protective and extremely hardheaded goat) and she briefly finds shelter in the monastery. … Who can say?' (There are several clues that despite the medieval feel, this is not the past.) 'All of this happened long ago,' DiCamillo writes. 'The Beatryce Prophecy' is set in a time and a place where girls are forbidden to read and write and where monks keep a book recording dire prophecies. For one thing, in this novel the sort-of spirit animal is a goat. She is helped by some benevolent adults, a friend her own age and a sort-of spirit animal.īut oh how different this is from DiCamillo's other books (which are all different from one another). As with 'Because of Winn-Dixie,' 'Raymie Nightingale' and many others, her new novel is the story of a child who is separated from her parents and must find her way in the world. If it's true that all great writers have just one story to tell, then Kate DiCamillo has found dozens of ways to gracefully tell hers.

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