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Children Guest Review

Title: Because of Winn-Dixie
Classification: Children's
Author: Kate DiCamillo
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Copyright: 2000
Book Rating:

Reviewers: Alyssa, Bobbie-Gaye, Cortez, Domenica, Gareth, Horace, Isatou, Ivana, John, Joseph C., Joseph R., LeAzia, MacKayla, Raekwon, Shalonda, Takia, Wilbert, Zsavez

Reviewer Comments: We are writing a review about Because of Winn-Dixie.  The author is Kate DiCamillo.  India Opal Buloni is telling the story. Her mom ran away.  Her mom likes stories, she is fast, she drinks, she can’t cook, she hates being the preacher’s wife and she knows all of the constellations in the sky.

Opal finds Winn-Dixie, a dog with a pathological fear of thunderstorms, in the produce department of the Winn-Dixie grocery store.  In church, Opal meets a girl named Sweetie Pie Thomas, who sucks her knuckles and wants a dog like Winn-Dixie.  Sweetie Pie invites Opal to her birthday party because Opal has Winn-Dixie.

In the library Opal meets the librarian, Miss Franny  Block, who tells Opal and Amanda Wilkinson the story about her great-grandfather and how he invented Littmus Lozenges.  Miss Franny gives a lozenge to each child and to Winn-Dixie.  The children respond to the lozenges as if they had a secret ingredient which reminded them of things that upset them in the past because Littmus put all of his sadness in the candy.  The secret ingredient is sorrow.  Miss Franny also told them of the time she was reading War and Peace when she saw a bear.  She threw the book at the bear.  The bear took the book and ran away.

In the middle of the book Opal gets a job at Gertrude’s Pets, where she meets Otis, the store manager, who plays the guitar and who went to jail because he hit a police officer.  Opal also meets Gloria Dump who has a bottle tree which keeps ghosts away. 

Finally, Gloria has a party with all of Opal’s new friends.  Stevie and Dunlap Dewberry do not want to go to the party because they think Gloria is a witch.

Introduction to Review

As a holiday gift, Mrs. Meta Hahn gave each of her third-grade students a copy of Because of Winn-Dixie and we decided to use it for our book review.  Every Monday we read two chapters together and the students answered questions about what we’d read.  These answers became the basis for their review and, when we finished our reading, the students divided into groups which wrote the beginning, middle and end of their review.

Nancy Says:

As many of you know, I’ve volunteered as a reader at my grandson’s school since he started kindergarten.  He is now in third grade, and this year I’ve spent part of every Monday reading to his class. . I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed spending time with these children, and how hard they worked to put together this review.  My thanks to them, and to Mrs. Hahn for allowing me to work on this project. 

For anyone looking for a way to share your passion for books, I encourage you to contact your schools and help introduce a whole new generation to the joy of reading!