DiCamillo, Kate. The Tale of Despereaux, being the story of a mouse, a princess, some soup, and a spool of thread

When a book has a title that long, you can expect it to be a twee and slightly cutesy fairy tale along the lines of Stardust by Neil Gaiman or The Princess Bride, both of which I probably like more than I, strictly speaking, ought to.

Despereaux is a very small mouse with big ears and an improbably chivalrous nature; to his great misfortune, he spontaneously learns to read (giving him some of this improbably chivalrous nature) and falls in love with a human princess. He thus becomes rejected by all mousekind. There is also a villainous rat, and a servant girl who desperately wants to be a princess.

The illustrations are charming, and all the way through the book is so sweet and winsome that it's very hard to say any mean things about it.

Nevertheless, the beginning third left a bad taste in my mouth; I'm not thrilled about stories premised on "Society can't stand people who are Special and Different, so they cast them away, but in the end the Special and Different will be vindicated," because if you're a certain kind of young person (as I was) it's all too tempting to see one's classmates as braindead, conformist sheep (or mice, as the case may be). A book that claims to value empathy as much as this one does should perhaps have a little empathy for the other mice.

The book recovers from that, though, and keeps on being sweet and lovable. Too much irony and narrative distance (largely in the form of asides to the reader) for me to genuinely, truly love it, but I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.