Click through to sign up for the National Poetry Month giveaway!
My junior year in college I took my favorite course of all time, adolescent literature. It was the year I discovered books from my adolescence I hadn't known existed before, books like HATCHET and JACOB HAVE I LOVED. It was the year I fell in love with newer titles, like THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF CHARLOTTE DOYLE and LONG NIGHT DANCE. It was the year Sharon Creech won the Newbery for her gorgeous WALK TWO MOONS.
I continued to read Sharon's books over the years, the impossible-to-put down ABSOLUTELY NORMAL CHAOS, the feels-like-home-to-this-gal-who-attended-international-school BLOOMABILITY, the simple and stunning verse novel, HEARTBEAT, and this gem, LOVE THAT DOG.
The poem below
I started a few years ago after first reading DOG. Last year, after a second reading, I pulled it out and worked on it again.
With the #SharpSchu book club scheduled to discuss LOVE THAT DOG and MAY B. on April 24, this felt like the perfect time to share.
Thank you, Sharon, for writing words that pushed me to respond. The kindness of the children's literature community never ceases to touch me. Still pinching myself that the author I discovered in college knows who I am!
Words count.
All words,
and giving voice to those children
who don’t yet know their power
is to open the world.
Mrs. Stretchberry
knows how to woo her student Jack,
understands how to draw from him
phrases that play with shapes and sounds,
stanzas that speak to the pain
of loss
and love
and memory.
During a school year
where poetry is a regular part of things,
words work deep,
settle,
unfold,
grow
as Jack does
from a boy who thinks
writing poetry is to
“make
short
lines”
to one who finds the courage --
through the structure, voice,
and style of others --
to speak his own.
Author Megan Spooner is featuring my writing space at her blog this week. Stop by to have a look and enter to win a copy of MAY B. The winner will also receive a copy of my Navigating a Debut Year mini-poster (in the turquoise frame below).
Librarian Mr. Schu along with teacher Mr. Sharp of the #SharpSchu Book Club, have just announced the books they'll discuss for National Poetry Month : Sharon Creech's LOVE THAT DOG and MAY B.! Mr. Schu is giving away copies of both books at his blog,
Watch. Connect. Read.
Enter to win and
please consider joining us on Twitter April 24 at 8:00 EST, hashtag #SharpSchu.
#100 Love That Dog by Sharon Creech (2001)
19 points
“This book does such an excellent job of blending story with poetry. The voice of the narrator is powerful. This one also makes me cry!” - Dee Sypherd
When we last conducted this poll Creech’s classic made it all the way up to #75. Two years later it has fallen in favor of other titles but I’m pleased to report that it’s still making a fine showing.
Publishers Weekly described the plot in this way: “The volume itself builds like a poem. Told exclusively through Jack’s dated entries in a school journal, the book opens with his resistance to writing verse: ‘September 13 / I don’t want to / be cause boys / don’t write poetry. / Girls do.’ Readers sense the gentle persistence of Jack’s teacher, Miss Stretchberry, behind the scenes, from the poems she reads in class and from her coaxing, to which the boy alludes, until he begins to write some poems of his own. One by William Carlos Williams, for instance, inspires Jack’s words: ‘So much depends / upon / a blue car / splattered with mud / speeding down the road.’ A Robert Frost poem sends Jack into a tale his verse) of how he found his dog, Sky. At first, his poems appear to be discrete works. But when a poem by Walter Dean Myers (‘Love That Boy’ from Brown Angels) unleashes the joy Jack felt with his pet, he be comes even more honest in his poetry. Jack’s next work is cathartic: all of his previous verses seemed to be leading up to this piece de resistance, an admission of his profound grief over Sky’s death. He then can move on from his grief to write a poem (‘inspired by Walter Dean Myers’) about his joy at having known and loved his dog.”
Where did the book come from? Well, on her British website Creech says, “Walter Dean Myers’ poem, ‘Love That Boy’, has been hanging on my bulletin board for the past three or four years. It’s at eye level, so I probably glance at it a dozen times a day. I love that poem–there is so much warmth and exuberance in it. (The poem is reprinted at the back of Love That Dog.) One day as I glanced at this poem, I started thinking about the much-loved boy in Myers’ poem. I wondered what that boy might love. Maybe a pet? A dog? Maybe also a teacher? And whoosh–out jumped Jack’s voice.”
That’s all well and good, but how did Walter Dean Myers, a man who has since become the National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature, feel about becoming, essentially, the book’s hero? After all, he became a character in the book all thanks to that poem hanging over Ms. Creech’s desk. In a September 2001 interview with School Library Journal, Ms. Creech put it this way: “I didn’t want to use a fictional writer. I wanted to show how these real, living writers, … who are writing books today, are affecting kids. So [my editor] said, ‘Let’s just send this to Walter and see what he thinks.’ And I said, ‘Good, because if he has any reservations whatsoever, we have no story and I’m putting it away.’ … So [Joanna] sent it to Walter–I had only met him once–and he read the book. … I think he was very, very shy about being the hero in this book, because he’s–as I’ve since learned–a very shy and humble man. And yet he could easily see why his presence was needed in that book, why aesthetically it was important. He gave his blessing; he said, ‘Fine, go ahead.’ If he hadn’t said that, there would be no book.”
Interviewed in the Leona
My 4th grade daughter, PickyKidPix, came home furious a few weeks ago. She said that she was the only person in her grade that got poetry for her MCAS open response standardized test. Worse, I had kept her home sick during the one day they practiced poetry open response essays at school.
I'm sure it went fine, but she will be forever scarred associating poetry as something designed to confound her for a multiple choice Common Core Standard test. I had felt the same way about poetry too until just a few years ago. Sharon Creech's Hate That Cat novel in verse had completely blown my mind. I had no idea that 1) novels in verse existed, 2) that novels in verse could tell a story and 3) that I would actually enjoy it.
I read Love That Dog next also by Sharon Creech (out of sequence, I know) to see if I'd feel the same way about another novel in verse. And, yes, the water was fine!
5 Comments on Poetry in Motion, last added: 4/28/2012
.jpeg?picon=2982)
I love Sharon Creech too and her latest The Great Unexpected is also superb! Sharon Creech's Hate That Cat got me to look at poetry as something that is not scary. So happy to see you post on her today!
Thank you, Mia. I still haven't read HATE THAT CAT but need to. Read THE GREAT UNEXPECTED just a few months ago and loved those characters.
I am just finding your site! Where have I been? I read the entire Love That Dog in one sitting to my 3rd graders. I wait until they have been immersed in poetry for months. Then I take a quiet chunk of time and the listen intently. The learn so much from Jack and Miss Stretchberry. They are aghast when he says in the beginning, boys don't write poems, girls do....they know better. I love how they see that there is a way to tell a story in diary form, in verse, that honors, poets, poetry, teachers and kids. I also read Hate That Cat when I can fit it in. I love Sharon Creech for two many reasons to name. You might be interested in what I do with kids and I was a guest blogger on Irene Latham's Live Your Poem on April 7 for the Progressive Poem 2013. The gist is that poetry is at the heart of my literacy program. During the course of the school year the children learn over 40 poems by heart as a group, read tons of poems and write them, too. We perform at a June poetry recital to the joy and amazement of family and friends, but mainly their teacher! I can't wait to go back and read more of your blog. I can tell that I am going to love it and learn so much. I was having tech difficulties with scrolling about, but I saw a Paul Hankins interview and your acrostic poems. I can't wait to get to know you better!!.
Janet F.
Janet, I adore this! I used to wrap up my poetry months with a "coffee house" for my sixth graders. It was such a celebration. Your room sounds like a place I'd love to spend time. And it sounds like your kiddos feel the same way.
Let me know if you'd like to be a part of National Poetry Month next year, I'd love to hear more via a guest post.
Oh, so sorry for the typos. A couple of theys are missing the y... if you can fix, thanks. I couldn't see how I could edit. Duh. When I rush I miss things.
Yes, I would love to be part of your site next year. My email is jfagal at gmail dot com! If you get a chance to read my guest blog on Irene's blog, there is a link to a video of my kids at a recital, though not the one in June!! It has slightly less sparkle, but this is actually the best part. They have not been together since June and is end of Sept. Barely a rehearsal, either. I have an old website called poetryonparade dot com if you want to check it out. There is a lovely poem written by a woman who does our school's PR, but she is someone who loves the poetry nights and it does capture what we do. I am going to subscribe by email so I can get your posts and keep up with what you are doing. I love to find kindred spirits online. I am looking for some closer to home. I am recently retired after a long career but am launching a second one as a visiting poet and poetry teacher in the schools! I volunteer in my old school in a friend's 3rd grade so I can keep on doing poetry. I always get the same reaction. The kids adore poetry "my way".....no pressure, no test, no homework....no requirement to participate yet they all do. And it teaches so much in such a short package. I could go on and on. Are you still teaching? I blend in poems the kids write with a wide variety of published poets' work. I also do not underestimate what 3rd graders will be interested in!!!
I stopped teaching four years ago, as I was having a hard time doing everything well. But I miss it. That's what makes school visits so fun. I'm writing down your email for next year. Off to see your post at Irene's!
Thank you for sharing this...and yep I am tearing up. It is so true what you say about the kindness of the childrens literature community. You all rock and are so good at what you do because of the passion that drives you.
Thank you, Deb. I was at a writing conference this weekend and tried to talk about LOVE THAT DOG and what it means to me. I didn't get far without tearing up. It is amazing that work that is so solitary to begin with can make such far-reaching and meaningful connections.