Love That Dog

If you're looking for a poignant, intoxicating read, Love That Dog (2001) by Sharon Creech should be high on your list of definite reads!

     September 13
     I don't want to
     because boys
     don't write poetry.

     Girls do.

Creech's first page and lines, as shown above, engages the reader immediately. A simple first page. Simple lines. And yet, it conjures up so many questions for the reader and makes you want to read more.

Love That Dog is about Jack, a young boy in Miss Stretchberry's English class, who is struggling with the loss of his beloved dog. Throughout the book, Jack also struggles with personal issues, as well as classroom issues. He is unsure of himself and, especially, his writing. The teacher has assigned the class to keep a journal throughout the school year. Jack struggles to understand the poetry they learn in class. He doesn't feel confident in his own writing and has trouble sharing his work with the rest of the class.

This funny, yet powerful story might scare some readers simply because it looks as though it's written as a series of poems. Many students treat poetry like an enigmatic puzzle that is incomprehensible by mere mortals. However, Jack says it best when he writes "...any words/can be a poem./You've just got to/make/short/lines." Creech's style makes us wonder why poetry should be so hard. The entire book is from Jack's journal, hence from his point of view.

Cross referencing this book with another class I'm currently taking, I would absolutely love to use Love That Dog to kick of my own personal Writer's Workshop class of my own with upper grades, like fourth and fifth-graders and up. It shows the main character's fear of writing, as well as his fear of not writing "correctly." This story is a great example of how there is simply no right or wrong to writing.

As for lessons, I would also enjoy using this book to jump start some poetry projects. There are different types of poetry styles used in the book. There are also some well-known poems utilized, and "explained"  by Jack in the book. It would be ideal to discuss the different types of poetry used in Love That Dog, as well as attempting some poems on our own.

Should this be in your own classroom library? I'll let you be the judge of that. However, I already have two copies -- one for my classroom library and one in my personal library!