Love That Dog by Sharon Creech is worth 30-60 minutes of your time. I promise that you won't be disappointed! Not only was this book funny, sincere and extremely touching, it could be a great teaching tool. It opened my eyes to bringing poetry into the classroom and have it be pleasant and inspiring, rather than hated. I think it is a pretty common phenomenon that poetry is not favorable to children. My own experience with poetry in school was far from pleasant. All I remember was sitting in class as my teacher stared at 25 blank faces, expecting us to interpret a poem without any prior knowledge or experience in doing so.
Miss Stretchberry found a way to reach out to Jack by presenting her class with motivating poetry that was not way over their heads, yet required the students to analyze the poems. Jack, the head-strong main character, tried with all his might to not give poetry a chance. In his attempts at resisting it, however, he was actually making meaningful responses which eventually led to him identifying with some of the poems. Jack's love for his dog and genuine admiration for the poet Walter Dean Myers, makes the book hard to put down.
While reading Love That Dog, I laughed and I cried. NEVER has a book made me cry! I found myself wishing I was Jack's teacher. Getting children to realize that THEY too are poets seems like such a daunting task, but in reality, it just has to be gone about in the right way.
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