New York Times Best Seller |
Creech, Sharon. (2001). Love that dog. New York, NY: Harper Trophy.
I loved reading Love That Dog! It appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list back in 2002. You do not have to love dogs or poetry to enjoy this book. As a matter of fact, I started reading it out loud at lunch with my 6th and 11th grade boys listening attentively and commenting. This novel is all Jack's journal entries written in stanzas about the poetry that his teacher reads to the class and his own attempts at writing poems. It shows Jack's journey from not liking poetry at all to understanding and writing poetry of his own. He even writes to his new favorite poet, Walter Dean Meyers, to see if he will come visit his classroom. This book uses a lot of insight. As you read Jack's journal entries, you can figure out what Jack's teacher is saying by reading Jack's next entry. What a great way to go about teaching poetry. In the back of the book, the author includes the poems that the teacher read to the class. I just started reading the poetry chapter in our text about how many children who once loved Mother Goose rhymes move to not liking poetry at all in school. This made the insight in Love That Dog all the more interesting. I was never one to like poetry much in school. I did love nursery rhymes as a child and didn't mind making sentences with rhyming words in school. But looking back, the depth of the poetry seemed too deep for the age group that it was being presented to which made it frustrating.
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