Sonderbooks Book Review of Love That Dog

*****Love That Dog*

by Sharon Creech

Reviewed October 17, 2001.
A Sonderbooks' Best Book of 2001
2003 Maine Student Book Award Winner
2003 Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award Winner
Joanna Cotler Books. 2001. 86 pages. Available at Sembach Library (JF CRE).

This book is a quickie, but sweet. It begins as follows:
J A C K
Room 105--Miss Stretchberry

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.

The rest of the book is filled with the poems that Jack succeeds in writing, writing down his thoughts in free verse form, talking about his yellow dog and responding to the poems that Miss Stretchberry shares with the class. (Some of these are included at the back of the book.) This book is lovely, and made to order for teachers or parents trying to encourage a teen or pre-teen to write poetry. Not a big time commitment, so I encourage adults who are interested in poetry to take a half-hour and enjoy reading it, too.

Reviews of other book by Sharon Creech:
Hate That Cat
Bloomability
Granny Torrelli Makes Soup

Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund

****Love That Dog

by Sharon Creech

*****Love That Dog*