Love That Dog

By Sharon Creech

This was a wonderful book! I'm glad that I was introduced to this story in our reading and responding class because I am now excited to use it in my future classroom. I think this book would be perfect to read and discuss in the upper elementary grades. It is very different the way that you can understand a story through Jack's poems. I must admit that I had the same views of poetry as Jack does at the beginning. I often found poetry hard to grasp and it wasn't until I came across A Poem for Emily by Miller Williams that I started to love poetry. It immediately caught my attention (because the title includes my name). When I read it, it was like an "aha!" moment and I suddenly understood the purpose of poetry. I came to the realization that poetry is truly an art of words. That said, the only thing that I did not particularly care for in this book was when Walter Dean Myers visited the class. I felt that it was not very realistic or plausible and it took away from the rest of the story. Yet overall, it was a different and fun book!