Center for Teaching & Learning

The astounding book Love that Dog —as I like to call it, Sharon Creech’s best—is a free-verse novel with a lot to tell. Ten-year-old Jack hates poetry. His teacher tries to get him to like it, but he doesn’t want anything to do with it. This story, which is told through free-verse poems itself, has a lot of great diction, thoughts, and feelings.
From first poem I read, I couldn’t put the book down. It was so intriguing. A little bit of literature can go a long way for a reader who loves to read free-verse novels. I would recommend this to girls and boys of the age of ten and up.
Love that Dog is a one-hundred page book, but I easily finished it in about two to three days. The plot stuck with me the entire time. One of the parts I loved is when Jack really starts to realize something that no one knows except for him… But that is something you will have to read to find out.
This book is full of amazing character personalities, unforgettable poems, and work by other poets like William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, William Blake, Valerie Worth, Arnold Adoff, S. C. Rigg, and Walter Dean Myers, that takes you right into the story.
I mostly read action-adventure or mystery, but after looking for books in our school’s library I decided to change it up and read something else. I’m glad I took a chance with this book because otherwise I never would have discovered my love for free-verse novels.
One of the aspects of this book that I didn’t like was how the famous poets’ works were at the end of the book instead of scattered throughout. I didn’t know what Jack was talking about when he referenced the poems, so I had to go into the back of the book and read them, then read the whole book. I would recommend a second book by Creech: Hate that Cat. It also has a compelling plot line and features all the same characters.
Emma
Harper Collins Publishers, 128 pages