Hate That Cat: a Novel, by Sharon Creech

Are you a dog or cat person? A common question, asked with the expectation of a definite answer. Dog or Cat. Never both. In Hate That Cat: a Novel, by Sharon Creech, Jack is definitely a dog lover and a cat hater; especially the big, fat, black type. In poems exchanged between Jack and his teacher poets and poetic concepts like alliteration, metaphor and onomatopoeia are discussed along with daily events.

As Jack learns about poetry he also learns to accept the loss of his yellow dog, sky, embrace his mother's deafness, and let the love he feels for a black Christmas kitten grow, in spite of this reservations. All of the poems that were used for inspiration throughout the book can be found at the back. This is a nice addition, though, definitions of the terms used throughout the poems would have been helpful.

Creech ends the book in wonderful fashion with this poem written by Jack for his mother:

I will listen
for you


I will hear
all the sounds
in the world


all the
delicious
ineffable
effable 
sounds


all the
thrumming
and 
humming
and 
tintinnabulating
sounds


I will hear
all the sounds
in the
world
and I will write them down 
so you
can 
hear
them
too. 


(p. 124-125)