Love That Dog by Sharon Creech

Genre: Poetry, Realistic Fiction
Themes: Loss, Love, Family, School, Writing
Grade Level: 3-5
Curricular Connections: English/Literature (poetry)

Jack's teacher, Miss Stretchberry, has started a unit on poetry, and Jack wants no part of it. Love That Dog is his poetry journal assigned by Miss Stretchberry. The first entries read:

September 13

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

Girls do.

September 21

I tried.
Can't do it.
Brain's empty.

As different poems are introduced to the class, each showing a different type of poetry and each reprinted in the back of the book, Jack comments on them and slowly starts to see the value in poetry. He starts to write his own poems, sometimes copying the style of poems he's read. He also begins to open up about his dog, Sky, a topic he avoids, in his writing. Sky was killed by a car, and Jack writes about it. He writes Love That Dog, a poem inspired by Walter Dean Myers' poem Love That Boy, and which leads to an author visit from Mr. Myers.

Classroom Suggestions:

1. Look at the examples Miss Stretchberry uses in her class, reprinted in the back of the book. Study the traits of poetry. Present the class with more poems, and ask them to look for the traits you identified.

2. Use poems to "inspire" new poems. Students can copy styles of poems as Jack did, changing topics to their own. Students then can create poems of their own using the traits and styles they've learned, but not copying others.

3. A great set-up activity is to start discussing poetry and get the moaning and groaning out of the way (doesn't poetry always bring some grumbling, especially from the boys?) Then present them with the book, read the first page, and draw the doubters in knowing that the main character of the book shares their opinion of poetry. (When I have done this, the first poem students copy to create their own is Jack's first entry from September 13.)