The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread is a fantasy book written by Kate DiCamillo that won the Newbery Medal in 2004.

The hero of the story is Despereaux Tilling, a small mouse with large ears, who falls hopelessly in love with the beautiful human Princess Pea. Despereaux was dubbed unusual by the other mice immediately after his birth because he was born with his eyes open, a rather large pair of ears, and a tiny body.

This information is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "The Tale of Despereaux".