Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo

3rd grade and up

After experiencing this book, I have decided to own everything Kate DiCamillo ever publishes. Truly one of the best children’s books I have ever read, Because of Winn-Dixie does what I can only hope to do as a writer; it communicates the deep, abiding need people have for connection through prose that speaks genuinely through a child’s voice. These characters simultaneously inhabit the eccentric mythos of the small-town South and transcend that milieu through the very act of connecting with each other. Spinsters, witches, drifters and preachers seem always to have their places in Southern myth, but here they become real people whose pain brings them together as surely as Winn-Dixie does.

Like Flannery O’Connor for grade schoolers, DiCamillo relies on the common people of the South to tell a larger moral truth – the vast majority of the loneliness in the world comes from people’s inability to share either their sorrow or their joy. This truth is particularly important for the Preacher to learn, for despite being the closest to Opal, he is the most closed off of her friends and family. In the movie version of the book, Jeff Daniels gives a fine portrayal of his inner turmoil. His body language perfectly captures the description of Opal’s father as an old turtle hiding in his shell; the audience rarely sees him when he is not slouching at his computer with his head in his hands, or leaning over a sink with his head leaning down below his shoulders, or lounging deep in his chair, cowed by the weight of his sorrow. His transformation at the end, after Opal has done more to ease the suffering of the townsfolk than he has been able to do from his pulpit, is certainly a spiritual transformation, but it is one that manifests itself physically as he raises his hands in a song of praise and lets his voice ring out over that of even Dave Matthews's Otis. His story and the stories of all the townspeople Winn-Dixie and Opal touch are vivid examples that life is like the taste of a Littmus Lozenge: sweet laced with sorrow.