Because of Winn-Dixie

Because of Winn-Dixie

By Kate DiCamillo

This book is a Newbery Honor book.

Ten year old India Opal Buloni and her father, the preacher, have just moved to Naomi, Florida this summer. When she goes to the Winn-Dixie grocery store for her dad, she comes across a stray dog who is about to get sent to the pound for ransacking the store. She claims the rambunctious pooch as her own and names him Winn-Dixie.

The dog has the gift of making friends of everybody, and needs a home of his own. Opal also is looking for friends and a place of her own in the life of this new town. She misses the mother she has never really known, who left her and her dad when Opal was three.

Opal and Winn-Dixie wind up making friends of the most unlikely people in town: the old maiden librarian Miss Franny, the ex-convict pet store manager Otis, a five year old girl named Sweetie Pie Thomas, a lonely almost blind old gardener Gloria, whom the town children think is a witch, and the uppity smart girl Amanda who doesn’t fit in.

Opal decides to convince the old gardener, Gloria, to have a welcome party for her new dog Winn-Dixie, and invite all her new friends to come. However, they forget to take into account the unpredictable thunderstorms which plague that part of Florida in the summer and Winn-Dixie’s pathological fear of thunder and lightning. Just as the party gets started, a thunderstorm comes roaring in and Winn-Dixie disappears.

Opal and her father brave the rain to search the town for Winn-Dixie, fearing he is gone for good. On the way, they both discover that it doesn’t matter so much that Opal’s mom probably won’t ever come back to them. They have each other, Opal is her mother’s legacy to her dad, and Winn-Dixie is the example they can follow to make the best of whatever life sends their way from now on.

Two strong literary features in this book are the power of dialog to convey the story to the reader and the universal appeal of a good dog story. Most of the actual information understood by the reader in this story is revealed in the dialog of the characters, and in the silences of some of them. The main character in the book is actually the dog, and although the story is narrated by the girl Opal, it is manifested in the actions of the dog.

DiCamillo, K. (2000). Because of Winn-Dixie. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press.