Because of Winn-Dixie
2000
- freundschaft
- hund
- einsamkeit
- madchen
- teaching, aids and devices
- juvenile fiction
- fiction
- dogs
- urban animals
- pets
The story
Ten-year-old India Opal Buloni describes her first summer in the town of Naomi, Florida, and all the good things that happen to her becauThe summer Opal and her father, the preacher, move to Naomi, Florida, Opal goes into the Winn-Dixie supermarket—and comes out with a dog. A big, ugly, suffering dog with a sterling sense of humor. A dog she dubs Winn-Dixie. Because of Winn-Dixie, the preacher tells Opal ten things about her absent mother, one for each year Opal has been alive. Winn-Dixie is better at making friends than anyone Opal has ever known, and together they meet the local librarian, Miss Franny Block, who once fought off a bear with a copy of WAR AND PEACE. They meet Gloria Dump, who is nearly blind but sees with her heart, and Otis, an ex-con who sets the animals in his pet shop loose after hours, then lulls them with his guitar. Opal spends all that sweet summer collecting stories about her new friends and thinking about her mother. But because of Winn-Dixie or perhaps because she has grown, Opal learns to let go, just a littlse of her big ugly dog Winn-Dixie.
What it’s like
Warm, sun-baked summer voice: a chatty, funny first-person narrator who notices everything in a small Florida town where the heat hangs over tin roofs, screen doors bang, and the air smells of chlorine and cut grass. The prose is plain and conversational, full of short lists, odd facts and deadpan asides, so it reads like someone talking you through the best summer of her life on a porch swing. The mood is gentle and bittersweet, cozy with a quiet undercurrent of longing for an absent mother, and it suits an unhurried afternoon, a rainy-day read, or a comfort reread. Pacing is loose and episodic, with small encounters at the library, the pet shop and the front steps building into a slow, tender shift in a young girl's sense of who she can love and when to let go. Nothing is graphic: there is no violence beyond a tall tale told with a straight face, no sexual content, and little fear, with sadness handled softly and resolved with hope. It is for readers who want heart, humour and an honest, unsentimental look at loneliness and belonging, whether they are young readers or adults who still love a good middle-grade story.
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