Because of Winn-Dixie — About Kate di Camillo

Kate DiCamillo was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but moved with her family to Florida when she was five years old. "People talked more slowly and said words I had never heard before, like 'ain't' and 'y'all' and 'ma'am,'" she says, recalling her first impressions. "It was all so different from what I had known before, and I fell swiftly and madly in love."

Indeed, it was homesickness for Florida's warmth that helped inspire Because of Winn-Dixie, which Kate DiCamillo describes as "a hymn of praise to dogs, friendship, and the South." The author was experiencing winter in Minnesota, where she had moved when she was in her twenties. "I was also missing the sound of Southern people talking," she says. "And I was missing having a dog. One night before I went to sleep, I heard this little girl's voice with a Southern accent say, 'I have a dog named Winn-Dixie.' I just started writing down what India Opal Buloni was telling me."

Kate DiCamillo lives in Minneapolis, where she faithfully writes two pages a day, five days a week. "E. B. White said, 'All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world,' " she says. "That's the way I feel too."

(Excerpted from Candlewick Press website)

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