I spent several hours yesterday after school cataloging books for my library. Most of the books were ones that we specifically ordered, but some of the books were donated by students, and this one was one that a student had donated. I wasn't familiar with the title, although we have a number of Sharon Creech's books in our library. There wasn't much of a description and I try to avoid books about main characters who are younger than my students (7th grade). So, I quickly read through this book this morning, trying to determine whether or not I would be putting it into the library collection. Because the story, what there is of one, is told in poems, it made for a very quick read.
The gist of the story is that Jack's teacher, who he had last year, expects them to write poems (and lots of them). She uses several famous poems (by poets like Edgar Allan Poe, Walter Dean Myers, William Carlos Williams, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and T.S. Eliot) to teach her students. Jack then uses these poems to inspire his own poems. Through the poems, Jack tells his teacher how much he dislikes cats and how much he misses his dog. The poems take place over the course of the school year and by the end of the year, Jack has changed his mind about cats....to the point that his parents got him a black kitten for Christmas. We also find out that Jack's mom is deaf and he wonders if she can hear onomatopoeia words and other similar. Or does she just have silence, like a silent movie?
There wasn't much meat to this story, as far as I'm concerned and I was not able to determine how old the protagonist is....the storyline indicates somewhere in elementary school, but some of the words used in the poems Jack "writes" indicate that he is more like in middle school....so I think I'm going to pass on putting this title in the library.
Happy Reading!!
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