DiCamillo is thrilled that people are still loving what turned out to be the first of dozens of books she has created — and, like all of her titles, she is reluctant to take much credit for it.
“What I always think of when I think of this book is, it’s almost a joke that everything that happened to me, happened to me because of ‘Winn-Dixie.’ But that’s the case,” said DiCamillo, drawing a line between her life and the life of Opal. “This book, in my head, is not mine but has acted as what I genuinely feel like is a golden doorway that I got to walk through to do this work. Because of how people responded to the book, it let me become a storyteller.”
DiCamillo says that’s “a wonderful gift” and one message of the book is that dogs are gifts to us all. The titular pooch in “Winn-Dixie” reminded Petersen of a dog he used to have, named Abby. That human/dog connection is an important one for other lovers of the book such as Weber, who’s currently reading it with her grandkids and seeing it through their eyes.
“I love how the main character talks to the reader, as if they’re peers, talking about her experiences. I love Winn-Dixie and the descriptions of his smile, his toothy grin, his personality,” said Weber, who’s a dog lover. “You can see that personality and how he has a way of wheedling in and using that personality, getting into people’s hearts.”
Although she has read the book many times, Weber will be seeing the movie for the first time Tuesday. One person who won’t be able to make the screening is 10-year-old Arielle Brown, who lives in New York. She first read the book a little more than two years ago, not realizing it was by the same writer as her beloved “Mercy Watson” books.
Arielle started out with library books but now has a DiCamillo collection because she re-reads them so often — mostly because, as her mom, Caron Brown, said, DiCamillo is “so descriptive in her writing that it enables her to visualize what appears to be happening.”