60 pages • 2 hours read
Sharon CreechLove That Dog
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Middle Grade | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Pages 1-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 1-9 Summary
Jack, a young boy in Miss Stretchberry’s class, opens his journal by insisting that only girls write poetry. For the first few weeks, he refuses to engage with his lessons. The first poem Jack considers is William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow,” but he doesn’t understand what makes it a real poem as the lines are too short and don’t rhyme.
Jack begrudgingly writes a poem on the condition that Miss Stretchberry not post it on the class board. Using the same structure and meter as Williams’s poem, he writes about “a blue car / splattered with mud / speeding down the road” (4). Jack becomes defensive when asked about the blue car’s significance.
The class reads Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and William Blake’s “The Tiger.” Jack doesn’t understand the poems’ literal meaning but increasingly appreciates their rhythm and sounds.
Pages 1-9 Analysis
Jack’s first poem clearly responds to a teacher’s instructions: “I don’t want to / because boys / don’t write poetry. / Girls do” (1). This entry establishes his attitude toward poetry. Because of the book’s journal format, readers only hear Jack’s side of any given conversation or question. The next entry, which further elaborates on the previous one, only spans three lines: “I tried. / Can’t do it. / Brain’s empty” (2). Jack rejects this assignment; he increasingly defies grammar, dropping subjects and possessive pronouns. He follows the archetype of many a classic novel of a stubborn youth who resists convention—who resists effort.
When reflecting on “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams, Jack is confused about what makes it a real poem. If Williams can write about chickens, he reasons, “then any words / can be a poem. / You’ve just got to / make / short / lines” (3). Jack mimics the writing style of his class’s mentor texts (literature studied for craft) as depicted in his own short lines. The next entry shows Jack mirroring Williams’s poem further; he borrows the poem’s format and inserts his own image, a “blue car” (4). In these first few entries, Jack appears unimaginative, as though he only participates out of obligation. The story later reveals a genuine, heartfelt motive behind this resistance, his choice of imagery being more precious to him than he originally suggests.
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