a pile of other manuscripts. It was rediscovered when the employee's office was cleaned out. She was offered and signed a contract. After a rewrite, the book was published in 2000. Flo Davis, the wife of a founder of the Winn-Dixie supermarket chain, sponsored DiCamillo to visit various schools in Florida and widen the book's reach. It was a quick commercial and critical success. Afterwards, DiCamillo left her job to focus on writing full-time. She told the Chicago Tribune in 2004 that she forced herself to write two pages every day, which took her on average from thirty minutes to an hour. In 2017, DiCamillo estimated that she spent about 12–15 hours a week writing and 35 to 40 reading, mainly adult fiction. She often traveled to talk about her writing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, DiCamillo reported that she wrote every morning for 100 days. Because of Winn-Dixie success marked the beginning of DiCamillo's writing career. It won the 2000 Josette Frank Award and a Newbery Honor. Her second book, The Tiger Rising, was published the following year. It was also well received by critics, who noted stylistic differences between it and Because of Winn-Dixie. DiCamillo won the Newbery Medal in 2004 for her third work The Tale of Despereaux. She wrote the book upon the request of the child of one of her friends for a story with "an unlikely hero". DiCamillo said she was shocked by the news of the Newbery. DiCamillo said that her 2006 work The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, which is about a china rabbit, was very easy to write. The Mercy Watson series, which features a pig as its main character, began with Mercy Watson Goes for a Ride (2006) and ended with Mercy Watson: Something Wonky This Way Comes (2009). DiCamillo's 2010 novel Bink & Gollie, co-written with Alison McGhee and illustrated by Tony Fucile won the 2011 Theodor Seuss Geisel Medal. Her 2013 novel Flora & Ulysses was partially inspired by an injured squirrel she saw. It won the Newbery Medal in 2014, making her one of six writers to win two Newberys since the award was created in 1920. In 2014 DiCamillo was named the fourth National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, a post she held from January 2014 to December 2015. Upon taking that role, she utilized the theme "Stories Connect Us". In both the summers of 2015 and