Love That Dog

By Sharon Creech

I can think of a plethora of ways to use this in the classroom - modeling the use of a writer's notebook, encouraging written response during the reading workshop, modeling our work off of the writing of others, showing students that poetry can be about whatever inspires us most.

We don't know much about Jack. We don't know what he looks like. We don't know who his friends are. We don't know what he likes to do in his free time. We just know what he has written - and through that, we learn more about him than we could ever possibly imagine. I loved seeing Jack's thought process peek out in his writing, and I loved seeing how his thoughts and feelings evolved over time. I especially loved seeing his transformation from a boy who doesn't want to write poetry into a boy who has found his voice and believes in himself as a thoughtful and powerful writer.

As educators I think this is a dream that we have for all of our students, regardless of what they look like, who their friends are, and what they like to do in their free time. And that is what makes this book so universal: there are enough details in this book to make it realistic, but the themes are broad enough that every single reader can put themselves in Jack's shoes. As I started reading this book I wished I had more details about Jack, but it turned out that none of them mattered. Even if we don't know everything about him, we can relate to him through his writing.

I think this is an important message to take away as readers, as writers, and as educators. Even if we leave out some of the details, when we write we are putting ourselves onto the paper. Sometimes it's scary and hard, sometimes we don't want to do it, and sometimes we write things so personal that we thought they would stay inside us forever. The same is true of our students. I think introducing them to and "turning them on" to poetry opens up a whole new world of self-expression and reflection that none of them ever imagined. And reading this book is a great way to help us achieve that goal.