Let me try to explain how I found myself, several minutes past one pee em this afternoon, standing under the neon lights of the Cambridgeside Galleria, surrounded by suits on their lunch breaks and moms pushing babies, trying not to blubber like a fool in front of the kind people offering free flu shots to patrons of the mall. (Hush, dear reader — I was not weeping for the usual dreary litany of grey miseries that have lived in my chest of late. These were very good tears, as you shall see.)

I was waiting to meet Jo, who wanted to buy a new pair of jeans. This explains my location.

Because of MBTA construction, Jo was late for our 1 o’clock meeting. I am, of course, saddened by any loss of Jo-time, but this does not explain the sobs tickling the back of my throat.

No — I was crying for a different reason, a delicious reason, a reason that dissolved nearly two decades of time into the blurry zig-zags of movie flashbacks and brought me right back to the little girl I used to be. I was crying, beloveds, because of a book.

Firmly plugged into my portable isolation booth, I was listening to the last few minutes of Graeme Malcolm narrating — quite wonderfully — Kate DiCamillo’s Newbury Award winning book The Tale of Despereax. This is not going to be a book review entry, except that I do want to tell you what a tremendous job I think Kate DiCamillo accomplished in writing an extremely charming animal fable/fairytale that has a highly avuncular (or auntly, if you will) narrative voice,* but never (in my opinion) descends into cutesyness or irritating didacticism. The story (which is about a tiny mouse who would be a knight in shining armor, a rat who would escape the shadows and enter the light, and a serving girl who would become a princess) is occasionally breathtakingly lovely in its exploration of hope, identity, and the power of story. It is also peopled with creatures named Botticelli, Chiaroscuro, and Miggery Sow, which are all words that are just really fun to say.

If you’re interested, I’d be happy to make you a copy of my audiobook version of it (I am sure that at least 50% of my enjoyment came from the extraordinarily rich narration of Graeme Malcolm, who does about six different accents and made every character visible to this very non-visual reader). You might love it as much as I do, or you might find its style grates on your last nerve. It doesn’t really matter; what I am trying to tell you is that I got to the end, and hearts were being broken and mended all over the place, and the damned book made me cry!

It has been far too long a time since anything other than my own sorry self has moved me to anything other than the most selfish of tears, and I was forcefully reminded of how I used to sob over books constantly when I was a wee thing — and of why, at the very bottom of the thing, I love reading so very much.

It was, to put it quite simply, wonderful.

What was the last book you wept over?

*The kind of narrator who does annoying things like call you “dear reader.”