Love That Dog

Love that Dog by Sharon Creech was a book about a student who didn’t want to write poetry and thought he was terrible at it but ended up writing some of the best work in his class. For me, this book reassured me that it is possible to inspire any student if you can get to know them and work with their interests. In this case the teacher asked to hear more about a car and a dog and ended up finding out a lot about her student. The student was inspired by an author to write a poem called “love that dog”. His dog had been hit by a car while playing in the street and that experience motivated him to write poems about it. If the teacher had never encouraged the student to keep writing and kept asking questions about his writing, he may have continued to hate poetry. Instead the encouragement and questions led to the student writing wonderful things, enjoying poems and learning a lot about poetry. I felt really sad when the student talked about what happened to his dog. I hate hearing about animals getting hurt or dying. Overall, I really enjoyed the book and I liked that it presented the idea that it is possible to reach every student.