Book excerpt: Students learn of loss and longing, loneliness and friendship, and finding contentment and a place for oneself. Our resource is a useful tool to write, discuss, assess, and challenge all learners. Students write the meaning of vocabulary words from the book in their own words. Using multiple choice, choose the best answer that describes how certain events in the story took place. Infer the meaning of certain character actions towards Opal. Students put themselves into Opal's shoes to understand her state of mind when Winn-Dixie is missing. Write a chapter for a nonfiction tour book about the town of Naomi, Florida. Use a fishbone organizer to keep track of different aspects of the characters, setting and resolution from the novel. Aligned to your State Standards and written to Bloom's Taxonomy, additional crossword, word search, comprehension quiz and answer key are also included. About the Novel: This is a story in which a ten-year-old girl must face the abandonment of her mother, and find the answer to the question “Will she ever come back?” The answer, surprisingly, is “No!”, but India Opal Buloni, over the course of the novel, learns to deal with this answer through her experiences and support of a growing circle of friends, all of whom has also suffered some kind of loss themselves. And finally, it is the story of the love between a girl and her dog; a pet that has an uncanny ability to bring kindred spirits together.