Kate DiCamillo is an award-winning author, has more than 20 million copies of her books in print, and has had two of her books turned into movies. But ask her about how she got her start and she’ll tell you it was a true struggle.

“I thought if I actually wrote and found out that I couldn’t write, then who am I? I don’t even have a dream anymore,” DiCamillo said.

That fear kept DiCamillo from following her dreams for ten years. And when she finally did take the plunge, she went through 473 manuscript rejections before she got her first book published.

DiCamillo told her story to 3rd and 4th-graders at Longwood Elementary, just outside of Chicago, to give them an early lesson in perseverance.