Because of Winn Dixie

Because of Winn Dixie is a children's book by Kate DiCamillo. It won the Newbery Honor in 2001 and is on the recommended reading list for elementary grade children in the United States. In 2005 it was adapted to film starring AnnaSophia Robb.

After moving into a trailer-park in south Florida, a lonely young girl befriends a stray dog in a Winn Dixie supermarket. After loosing him during a thunderstorm, she and her estranged father develop a relationship.

• "A mere summary can't capture this warmhearted, lovely combination of hilarity (in one scene Winn-Dixie captures an unhurt mouse in the church and delivers it to the preacher during his sermon), poignancy (a candy that tastes of sadness created by a young man who lost everything in the Civil War), and the kind of characters you find only in Southern novels." - Common Sense Book Review
• "Through the love she gains from her new pet, a girl gains the courage to ask her father about the mother who abandoned them. In this exquisitely crafted first novel, each chapter possesses an arc of its own and reads almost like a short story in its completeness." - Publishers Weekly Review