Love That Dog

On the last day of second grade, my teacher Mrs. Schumacher (who remains one of my favorite teachers to this day), gave me a gift.

This book. 



Written by Sharon Creech in blank verse, it tells the story of a boy named Jack who hates poetry. He loathes the poems that he is forced to read in his poetry class and rolls his eyes at the assignments given to him by his wonderful teacher, Mrs. Stretchberry. In the course of the book, however, he learns that he has something to share with the world through his words. The book culminates in him telling the story of the dog that he loved and then lost.

It's a funny, sad, whimsical book. Mrs. Schumacher gave it to me because she knew that I loved poetry. This book, which explores Robert Frost and Walter Dean Meyers and Arnold Adoff, is filled to the brim with poetry, in a way that allows the reader to decide what he or she finds beautiful, which poems evoke emotions, which poems seem inexplicable.

Today, when I decided to write a post about Love That Dog, I pulled it down from my bookshelf and took it outside to take some pictures. When I opened it, I found a folded note inside.



It turns out that the note was my response to one of the suggested activities in the back of the book: Choose your favorite poem at the end of Love That Dog, and in your own words, explain what the narrator is trying to say. 
























I had chosen Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," and this is what I wrote:

You must take chances in life, and be persistant [sic]. Sometimes the only way to enjoy life is to live on the edge. 


I have to remember to take my younger self's advice. She knew what she was talking about.

(Images taken of Sharon Creech's Love That Dog.)