Book Review ~ Love That Dog by Sharon Creech

Title: Love That Dog
Author: Sharon Creech
Release Date: 2001
Published By: HarperCollins
Page Amount: 106, paperback

Blurb:
Jack

Room 105 -- Miss Stretchberry

September 13

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

Girls do.

Meet Jack, who tells his story with a little help from some paper, a pencil, his teacher, and a dog named Sky.

Review:
I have read this book before. This was my favorite book in seventh grade. I adored it. I think that I found it at a book fair. (Do they still have those?) I read it and then showed it to my English teacher because I loved it so much. (I was already a Lit Geek at the time. My English teacher personally invited me to be in a club called Literary Explorers - where we read and discussed literature).

I took a trip to Barnes and Noble recently and I saw this book on the required reading table. (Side note: That is so cool!) I just knew that I had to pick it up and when I got home I couldn't stop flipping through it. So I just picked it up and read it. 

As you could probably tell from the blurb this book is written in verse. And as far as I can tell the story behind that is that Jack's teacher has them studying poetry in class. It looks like these are some sort of journal entries that his teacher sees that he is writing in poetry form. I love that premise. 

Jack writes about the poems that they read, one particular poet that was his favorite and, with some nudging from his teacher, his dog. I think that this book was so simply yet so beautifully written. It is great to see this from the point of view of a child. I also like that Jack is writing this in poetry form because so few children get into poetry anymore. (Heck, so few people my age or older do). I enjoyed seeing Jack have his own little epiphanies about poetry, discover new poems and explore parts of his life through poetry.

I also enjoyed that in the back of the book there is a section that includes the "Poems Used in Miss Stretchberry's Class". Robert Frost is included. William Carlos Williams. Walter Dean Myers. And more. I think this was wonderful to include because it introduces children to poetry. The book itself does that but this just amps it up. I love this book still and I give it 5 stars!

<3 Amanda Leigh