One summer's day, ten-year-old India Opal Buloni goes down to the local supermarket for some groceries--and comes home with a dog. But Winn-Dixie is no ordinary dog. It's because of Winn-Dixie that Opal begins to make friends. And it's because of Winn-Dixie that she finally dares to ask her father about her mother, who left when Opal was three. In fact, as Opal admits, just about everything that happens that summer is because of Winn-Dixie.

The twelve kids in the seventh grade at Fawn Creek K-12 have been together all their lives so when graceful Orchid Mason arrives, with exotic clothes and glorious hair, the other seventh graders do not know what to think.