Love That Dog

by Sharon Creech
New York: Scholastic, 2003 (orig. published in 2001).

Jack doesn't want to write poems, because that's girl stuff. But as he continues writing in his English journal over the course of the school year, he records his reactions to what he's learning, talks to his teacher, and - yes - even writes a poem or two.

Despite Jack's protestations, the whole novel is in verse and took me less than an hour to read. It's a fairly simple story that incorporates both famous poetry and the story of Jack's dog. The poems read by Jack's teacher that he reacts to in his writing are included in the back, making it easy to use this as an introduction to poetry for elementary school kids. Overall, it strikes me as a book that would tend to appeal more to adults than children.