Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo

1. This is a stray dog who wanders into the supermarket while Opal, the preacher’s daughter, is running an errand. Opal saves the dog by telling a fib. “ ‘Wait a minute!’ I hollered. ‘That’s my dog. Don’t call the pound.’ All the Winn-Dixie employees turned around and looked at me, and I knew I had done something big. And maybe stupid, too. But I couldn’t help it.” (p. 9-10)

2. This is a mouse that disrupted a sermon Opal’s father was making in their makeshift church, which was a converted convenience store. “Well, when Winn-Dixie saw that mouse, he was up and after him…people were clapping and hollering and pointing. They really went wild when Winn-Dixie caught the mouse….Winn-Dixie took the mouse over to the preacher and dropped it at his feet….Then he smiled up at the preacher.” (p. 36-37)

3. This is the book that the town librarian, Miss Fanny, threw at a bear to scare it away when she was young and the town was still mostly wilderness. Seeing Winn-Dixie peering in the window of the library made her scream because she thought the bear was back. “ I became aware of a very peculiar smell, a very strong smell. I raised my eyes slowly. And standing right in front of me was a bear….He put his big nose up in the air …as if he was trying to decide if a little-miss-know-it-all librarian was what he was in the mood to eat….I raised [the book] up slowly and then aimed it carefully and I threw it right at the bear and screamed, ‘Be gone!’” (p. 47-48)

4. When Winn-Dixie wandered into Gloria Dump’s house 4. When Winn-Dixie wandered into Gloria Dump’s house., Gloria used peanut butter to befriend the dog. Peanut butter also helped to build a friendship between Gloria and Opal. “I sat down careful and Gloria Dump made me a peanut butter sandwich on white bread….she said to me, ‘You know, my eyes ain’t good at all…. Why don’t you go on and tell me everything about yourself, so I can see you with my heart.’ And because Winn-Dixie was looking up at her like she was the best thing he had ever seen, and because the peanut butter sandwich had been so good, and because I had been waiting for a long time to tell some person everything about me, I did.” (p. 65-66)

5. One night, after Opal and her father had settled down to sleep, there was a really bad thunderstorm. Winn-Dixie put up such a fuss, that the preacher concluded that Winn-Dixie had a pathological fear of thunderstorms. “There didn’t seem to be anything that we could do for Winn-Dixie to make him feel better, so we just sat there and watched him run back and forth, all terrorized and panting. And every time there was another crack of thunder, Winn-Dixie acted all over again like it was surely the end of the world.” (p. 76)

6. Opal got a job cleaning up at the local pet store 6. Opal got a job cleaning up at the local pet store. One day she and Winn-Dixie arrived early. They were surprised to find Otis, another employee in the shop, lulling the animals with his guitar music. “I was about to call out to Otis that we were there, but then I heard the music. It was the prettiest music I had ever heard in my life. I looked around to see where it was coming from, and that’s when I noticed that all the animals were out of their cages. There were rabbits and hamsters and gerbils and mice and birds and lizards and snakes, and they were all just sitting there on the floor like they had turned to stone, and Otis was standing in the middle of them. He was playing a guitar and he had on skinny pointy-toed cowboy boots and he was tapping them while he was playing the music. His eyes were closed and he was smiling.” (p. 79-80)

Project Made by Mrs. Hunter