Please note that this eBook is a teaching guide for the novel described below. This product does not contain the novel. Ten-year-old India Opal Buloni finds moving to Naomi, Florida with her preacher father difficult, but when she adopts a stray dog she finds at the local supermarket, her life takes a turn for the better. Over the course of her first summer in Naomi, with the help of her new animal friend, Winn-Dixie, Opal makes new and fascinating friends, and gets her father to open up about her long-absent mother. Opal grows to appreciate all of the wonderful things in her life, and while she begins to realize that her mother is never coming back, she also knows that she has so much to be thankful for.