Hate That Cat Is a Worthy Successor to Love That Dog

Several years ago, I stumbled upon the slim volume Love That Dog, a mid-grade novel written by Sharon Creech in the form of a poetry journal. The journal belongs to a young boy named Jack who initially resists the efforts of his teacher, Ms Stretchberry, to embrace poetry. Eventually, however, he warms to the idea, using his journal as an outlet for his feelings regarding his dog Sky, who was involved in a tragic accident.

In this book, it’s the next year, and Ms Stretchberry has moved up a grade, so Jack’s doing another poetry journal for her. This time, he’s more open to poetry, and his topic of greatest interest is a neighborhood cat that he hates, which leads to the revelation that his teacher has a cat who just had kittens, in which he swears he has no interest whatsoever. This book has a somewhat lighter tone than the first, which is largely about working through grief; Sky still comes up in Hate That Cat, but only occasionally, and Jack’s pain is no longer so acute.

Creech references many of the same poets as she did in the first book and some of the same poems, including Walter Dean Myers’ Love That Boy and William Carlos Williams’ The Red Wheelbarrow. As before, Jack fills his journal with free verse as well as several poems imitating the above poems and others, such as Williams‘ This Is Just to Say and T. S. Eliot‘s The Naming of Cats, which are reprinted in the back of the book. Once again, he is especially taken with the work of Myers, who visited his classroom in the first book.

In this sequel, Ms Stretchberry introduces him to several poetic devices having to do with sound, such as alliteration and onomatopoeia, and he seems to be especially preoccupied with the question of how those who cannot hear might experience such poems differently. We eventually find out why he is so hung up on this, and it forms a subplot that eventually becomes just as prominent as the main plotline and is the most poignant portion of the book.

Through Jack’s writing, we get a good sense of the way in which Ms Stretchberry teaches. It’s almost as though we can hear her speaking, since Jack frequently responds to her questions and comments. Clearly she is someone who is very good at what she does. She excels at driving her lessons home in an interesting way, and she also displays tremendous patience and understanding for the issues her students face.

Though Jack likes poetry at this point, he struggles with a lack of self-confidence, especially after his uncle Bill disparages what he has written because of its lack of rhyme, meter and other such devices. His very narrow notion of what constitutes poetry and his utter insensitivity to a child’s budding creativity make him an interesting stumbling block. Ms Stretchberry takes on the challenge of reassuring Jack that the type of poetry he has been writing is valuable while also convincing him that the poetic flourishes his uncle likes can also be worth incorporating.

While it’s about a third longer than its predecessor, Hate That Cat is a pretty quick read. Though there are 125 pages, the font is large, and most of the lines are pretty short. Creech captures the voice of a young boy very well, conveying excitement, anger, vulnerability and appreciation. Jack is quite a lovable young man, and some moments in the book are truly touching. Others are comical, like The Yips, a poem inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s The Bells: “Hear the dogs with their yips / squeaky yips! / What a funny squeaking sound / coming from their lips! / How they ripple ripple ripple / in the shadow of a pickle / In the yipyipabulation / through the air / from the yip yip yip yip / yip yip yip / from the squeaking and the rippling / of the yips.” This poem aptly demonstrates the dangers of rhyme purely for rhyme’s sake, and I laughed out loud at his post-poem admission that “I’m not quite sure how that pickle got in there.”

When I read Love That Dog, I was surprised to find myself tearing up, as I’m not a very outwardly emotional person. I‘m sure the fact that my own dog had died several months before strengthened my reaction, but I suspect the book would have moved me whenever I read it. Hate That Cat was a slightly less cathartic experience, but I was no less caught up in Jack’s wonderful poetic voice. I had no idea that Creech had written a sequel and am grateful to jpolhemus for alerting me to its existence. Jack may hate that cat - or think he does, anyway - but I sure love this book.