Love That Dog: Poetry for kids

Love that Dog: A Novel by Sharon Creech

This book starts out...

Jack
Room 105 -- Miss Stretchberry
September 13

I don't want to
because boys
don't write poetry.

Girls do.

...and it only gets better from there. Jack, who obviously is not a fan of poetry, gradually blossoms into a talented poet and lover of poetry, especially the poem "Love That Boy" by Walter Dean Myers. Written in free verse form, the reader sees Jack wondering, asking questions, and coming to some wonderful conclusions of his own about what poetry is, while also opening up about the death of his dog Sky.

I highly recommend this book to parents and teachers of young students (ideally grades 5-7, probably). There are allusions to poems by Williams, Frost, and of course Myers, and all of the poems are included at the end of the book.

I think my favorite part is when Jack speculates that maybe Williams and Frost were just trying to create pictures with words, and they didn't realize they were writing a poem, because they were just creating pictures using words, but then their teachers typed up what they'd written and hung it on the bulletin board and all of a sudden, what they had written were poems!