Things are pretty busy here this week (naturally, as a Catholic during Holy Week), so for my Thursday review I decided to revisit a book I read as a kid and have read multiple times since then – the famed middle grade classic Because of Winn-Dixie by critically acclaimed children’s author Kate DiCamillo.

Opal is an only child to her single father, a preacher. Her mother abandoned them when she was still a baby, for reasons unknown. She and her dad have just moved to a new community in Florida, where she’s worried that she’ll have trouble making friends. In a Winn-Dixie store, she happens upon the first friend she meets: a scruffy stray dog rampaging through the grocery store. When the dog gets in trouble with management, who plan to call animal control, Opal claims he is her pet. To prove her ownership of the dog, she provides the dog’s name, Winn-Dixie.

Opal brings Winn-Dixie home, and together they embark (pun not intended) on an adventure exploring their new community and making friends with unlikely characters, such as the local librarian and the former convict working at the pet store.

This is one of those books from childhood that sticks with people as they get older for its themes of tweenage curiosity about the world around you. It’s a coming-of-age classic that every kid can relate to. For that reason, it had to be one of the books I chose to read with my class the year I taught 4th grade. Those students, now 7th graders, still remember it fondly. In fact, it actually came to mind as a perfect one to review for this week because I had the chance to work with one of my former 4th graders earlier this week while subbing for one of his teachers, and he told me how much he still loved that book (and all the other books we read that year).

This book was nostalgic for me before because I remembered reading it myself when I was in school, but knowing that it made such an impact on one of my students adds a new layer of nostalgia to it. There’s something special about fostering a love of reading with the kids you work with as a teacher that just hits different, and this book is one that belongs in every classroom for that reason.

There are some slightly more mature themes in it (particularly language used) that point to this being a middle grade book, but if you’re looking to find a great read for your tween to get them back into reading, or you’re looking to go down memory lane as a millennial or elder Gen Z (because this really was of our generation, published in 2000), this would be the book you’re looking for.