Bedtime Stories: Because of Winn-Dixie

Post by Mark T. Locker.

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo.

My kid is entering first grade in the fall. I’m suddenly thinking about all the books I read to my class of first graders I supervised years ago. How can he possibly be the same age as them??? They were so big! Well, either way, like it or not, my kiddo is growing up. I don’t think I’m going to run out of books to read to him though!

I read Because of Winn-Dixie to that class of precocious first-graders and they all loved it. So when I saw it on the shelf, I knew exactly what we’d be reading together. If you haven’t read it, Winn-Dixie is just a beautiful story, told in the charming first-person of a young girl named India Opal Buloni, preacher’s daughter and newest resident of Naomi, Florida. On an errand to pick up some groceries from the Winn-Dixie store, Opal encounters a stray dog who is terrorizing the produce department. She quickly claims him as her own and brings her new dog, Winn-Dixie, home to meet the preacher.

Everything that happens that summer happens because of Winn-Dixie. If it wasn’t for him, she would never have met the kindly, nearly blind, old Gloria Dump. She would not have met Otis from the pet store whose music would hold all the animals in rapt attention. And if it weren’t for that old stray, her father might never have pulled his head out of his shell.

Kate DiCamillo manages to write a book that is disarmingly sweet in its story and tone without ever coming across as saccharine or forced. It’s a wonderful book with blessedly short chapters. I recommend it to all.

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