Because of Winn-Dixie Anniversary Edition

by Kate DiCamillo

Overview

Revisit Kate DiCamillo’s beloved first novel with a beautiful twentieth-anniversary edition featuring an introduction by Ann Patchett.

“This book is (I hope) a hymn of praise to dogs, friendship, and the South,” Kate DiCamillo said of her best-selling debut novel, which has been awarded a Newbery Honor, translated into nearly thirty languages, and turned into a major motion picture. The story of a preacher’s daughter named Opal whose life is transformed by a scruffy dog named Winn-Dixie continues to touch the hearts of readers of all ages. Celebrate twenty years of Because of Winn-Dixie with a signature anniversary edition featuring a redesigned cover, an introduction by PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author Ann Patchett, and an afterword by Kate DiCamillo.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536222180
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	12/01/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	69,624
Lexile:	670L (what's this?)
File size:	10 MB
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Kate DiCamillo is the author of many adored and award-winning books for young readers, including The Tale of Despereaux and Flora&Ulysses, which each received a Newbery Medal, as well as The Tiger Rising, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, The Magician's Elephant, and the Raymie Nightingale sequence of novels. A former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, she lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The theme of hope and belief amid impossible circumstances is a common thread in much of Kate DiCamillo’s writing. In her instant #1 New York Times bestseller The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, a haughty china rabbit undergoes a profound transformation after finding himself facedown on the ocean floor—lost, and waiting to be found. The Tale of Despereaux—the Newbery Medal–winning novel that later inspired an animated adventure from Universal Pictures—stars a tiny mouse with exceptionally large ears who is driven by love to become an unlikely hero. And The Magician’s Elephant, an acclaimed and exquisitely paced fable, dares to ask the question, What if?

Kate DiCamillo’s own journey is something of a dream come true. After moving to Minnesota from Florida in her twenties, homesickness and a bitter winter helped inspire Because of Winn-Dixie—her first published novel, which, remarkably, became a runaway bestseller and snapped up a Newbery Honor. “After the Newbery committee called me, I spent the whole day walking into walls,” she says. “I was stunned. And very, very happy.”

Her second novel, The Tiger Rising, went on to become a National Book Award Finalist. Since then, the master storyteller has written for a wide range of ages. She is the author of six books in the Mercy Watson series of early chapter books, which stars a “porcine wonder” with an obsession for buttered toast. The second book in the series, Mercy Watson Goes for a Ride, was named a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Book by the American Library Association in 2007. She is also the co-author of the Bink and Gollie series, which celebrates the tall and short of a marvelous friendship. The first book, Bink&Gollie, was awarded the Theodor Seuss Giesel Award in 2011.
She also wrote a luminous holiday picture book, Great Joy.

Her novel Flora&Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures won the 2014 Newbery Medal. It was released in fall 2013 to great acclaim, including five starred reviews, and was an instant New York Times bestseller. Flora&Ulysses is a laugh-out-loud story filled with eccentric, endearing characters and featuring an exciting new format—a novel interspersed with comic-style graphic sequences and full-page illustrations, all rendered in black and white by up-and-coming artist K. G. Campbell. It was a 2013 Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner and was chosen by Amazon, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Common Sense Media as a Best Book of the Year.

Kate DiCamillo, who was named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature for 2014–2015, says about stories, “When we read together, we connect. Together, we see the world. Together, we see one another.” Born in Philadelphia, the author lives in Minneapolis, where she faithfully writes two pages a day, five days a week.

Hometown:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Date of Birth:

March 25, 1964

Place of Birth:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Education:

B.A. in English, University of Florida at Gainesville, 1987

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

My name is India Opal Buloni, and last summer my daddy, the preacher, sent me to the store for a box of macaroni-and-cheese, some white rice, and two tomatoes and I came back with a dog. This is what happened: I walked into the produce section of the Winn-Dixie grocery store to pick out my two tomatoes and I almost bumped right into the store manager. He was standing there all red-faced, screaming and waving his arms around.
   “Who let a dog in here?” he kept on shouting. “Who let a dirty dog in here?”
   At first, I didn’t see a dog. There were just a lot of vegetables rolling around on the floor, tomatoes and onions and green peppers. And there was what seemed like a whole army of Winn-Dixie employees running around waving their arms just the same way the store manager was waving his.
   And then the dog came running around the corner. He was a big dog. And ugly. And he looked like he was having a real good time. His tongue was hanging out and he was wagging his tail. He skidded to a stop and smiled right at me. I had never before in my life seen a dog smile, but that is what he did. He pulled back his lips and showed me all his teeth. Then he wagged his tail so hard that he knocked some oranges off a display, and they went rolling everywhere, mixing in with the tomatoes and onions and green peppers.
   The manager screamed, “Somebody grab that dog!”
   The dog went running over to the manager, wagging his tail and smiling. He stood up on his hind legs. You could tell that all he wanted to do was get face to face with the manager and thank him for the good time he was having in the produce department, but somehow he ended up knocking the manager over. And the manager must have been having a bad day, because lying there on the floor, right in front of everybody, he started to cry. The dog leaned over him, real concerned, and licked his face.
   “Please,” said the manager. “Somebody call the pound.”
   “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. I couldn’t let that dog go to the pound.
   “Here, boy,” I said.
   The dog stopped licking the manager’s face and put his ears up in the air and looked at me, like he was trying to remember where he knew me from.
   “Here, boy,” I said again. And then I figured that the dog was probably just like everybody else in the world, that he would want to get called by a name, only I didn’t know what his name was, so I just said the first thing that came into my head. I said, “Here, Winn-Dixie.”
   And that dog came trotting over to me just like he had been doing it his whole life.
   The manager sat up and gave me a hard stare, like maybe I was making fun of him.
   “It’s his name,” I said. “Honest.”
   The manager said, “Don’t you know not to bring a dog into a grocery store?”
   “Yes sir,” I told him. “He got in by mistake. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.
   “Come on, Winn-Dixie,” I said to the dog.
   I started walking and he followed along behind me as I went out of the produce department and down the cereal aisle and past all the cashiers and out the door.
   Once we were safe outside, I checked him over real careful and he didn’t look that good. He was big, but skinny; you could see his ribs. And there were bald patches all over him, places where he didn’t have any fur at all. Mostly, he looked like a big piece of old brown carpet that had been left out in the rain.
   “You’re a mess,” I told him. “I bet you don’t belong to anybody.”
   He smiled at me. He did that thing again, where he pulled back his lips and showed me his teeth. He smiled so big that it made him sneeze. It was like he was saying, “I know I’m a mess. Isn’t it funny?”
   It’s hard not to immediately fall in love with a dog who has a good sense of humor.
   “Come on,” I told him. “Let’s see what the preacher has to say about you.”
   And the two of us, me and Winn-Dixie, started walking home.