Because of Winn-Dixie

DiCamillo, K. (2000). Because of winn-dixie. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press.

                                                          Newbery Honor Award, 2001

 

Exposition (the beginning of the story, establishment of setting and characters):  India Opal Buloni, a ten year old girl who just moved to Naomi, FL so her dad, “the preacher,” could be the pastor of Open Arms Baptist Church, finds a stray dog in Winn-Dixie supermarket.    

Conflict (the problem(s) faced by the characters):  Opal struggles with her mother abandoning her at the age of three, her father, “the preacher,” being preoccupied with his sermons and doing the work of a pastor, and being lonely.

Rising Action (events in the story leading up to the climax):  With the help of her new dog, Winn-Dixie’s easy loving and outgoing personality, Opal begins to make friends in her new home; she befriends Sweetie Pie, a young girl who wants a dog like Winn-Dixie; Miss Franny Block, the elderly town librarian; Otis, a worker at Gertrude’s Pets, who can entrance animals with his guitar playing; Gloria Dump, a supposed old witch, who really becomes her best friend; and eventually "pinch-faced" Amanda, who is unhappy because her brother drowned the previous year, and the “bald-headed babies,” the Dewberry boys, who tease Opal daily in a backward attempt to befriend her.

Climax (the culmination of events in the story, point of highest reader interest):  After Opal and Gloria’s outside dinner party is ruined by a sudden thunderstorm, Opal and the preacher frantically search for Winn-Dixie, who has run off because of his pathological fear of thunderstorms; when the preacher tells her to give up the search, Opal explodes and is finally able to tell him her feelings she has kept buried for years – how he always gives up and puts his head in his turtle shell and how he probably did not even search for her mama when she left – and the preacher breaks down, and she learns that Gloria Dump’s advice was right: You can’t hold onto something that wants to go.  You can only love what you have while you have it (DiCamillo, 2000).

Falling Action (events leading to the solving of the story’s problems):  Opal and her daddy, who she no longer refers to as “the preacher,” have reunited and found solace in one another again, and they return back to the party to find that Winn-Dixie had never run off, but had actually been hiding under a bed in Gloria’s house the whole time. 

Resolution (how events and problems of the story are solved): Opal goes outside to talk to her mother in her heart and tells her she still misses her but that she did not feel empty anymore, and then she, her father, and her new friends sing songs and laugh together.

Chapter books only (List two strong literary qualities displayed in the book and write one sentence about each quality): Kate DiCamillo first uses the literary quality character by making Opal someone who is believable and easily relatable, and the reader cannot help but empathize with Opal's feelings of loneliness, abandonment, and neglect.  DiCamillo also uses tension to draw the reader into the story as the reader automatically is interested in Opal’s situation; once it is revealed that Winn-Dixie has a pathological fear of thunderstorms and “the preacher” tells her they will have to watch to make sure he does not get out during a storm and that “the preacher” is constantly going back into his turtle shell, the reader turns each page waiting for the moment when a storm comes and Winn-Dixie gets loose and Opal finally tells her father how she feels.