Love That Dog

By: Sharon Creech
Ages: 8-12 (Any age will love this book)

How do you start writing a poem? How do you share it with everyone? What if no one likes what you have composed? We all face these questions and Love That Dog looks at all of these questions by following a student's personal journal throughout the year in school. There are many stigmas that follow writing - it has to be long, it has to have a certain type of content, and even it has to be "good." How do we get past these false ideas? Sharon Creech uses the journal of one student to explain the struggle that many students have when writing poetry. If you think that you hate poetry, I can guarantee you that Creech's amazing novel will change your mind about what defines writing in the first place. The author drops hints in the book, like talking about how great the writing the student does would look if it were on yellow paper and in blue writing - the cover of the book is yellow and the title is in blue. The book itself is a novel - but what is a novel? How many paragraphs or what kind of structure should a novel have? Creech forces us to look at the way that we construct writing and how we define writing. What is really awesome about Love That Dog is that the author included all of the poems in the back of the book that are mentioned throughout the text. This book would be AMAZING for a classroom read aloud or for an introduction into a poetry unit. I fell in love with Love That Dog and I cannot look at poetry in any other way than individual. Read this book if you read anything at all the rest of your life, it will truly change your mind about everything you ever thought writing was.