Love That Dog

As a class we read Sharon Creech's Love That Dog novel.  It is written from the point of view of Jack, a reluctant poetry student in Miss Strechberry's class who thinks poetry writing is just for girls.  The entire book is Jack's notes and poetry submissions to his teacher.  Very harsh and short and first but before he knows it Jack is creating his own poetry and a wonderful story emerges as he becomes interested in this thing that 'girls do'!  The transformation of Jack throughout the story is something that our class picked up and analyzed during our book talk.  Each student created a poem that was one assigned to Jack in the book and also gave a 15 word book review that is on display outside of our room.  Overall the class enjoyed the story even though it was sad (Ms. McGurn got a little choked up at one point!), but would have preferred more of a story and not just submissions from Jack.  I thought it was good to start the year with a unique type of novel and get our whole class together and talking.