Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Sharon Creech's Love That Dog. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
Love That Dog: Introduction
Love That Dog: Plot Summary
Love That Dog: Detailed Summary & Analysis
Love That Dog: Themes
Love That Dog: Quotes
Love That Dog: Characters
Love That Dog: Symbols
Love That Dog: Theme Wheel
Brief Biography of Sharon Creech
Historical Context of Love That Dog
Other Books Related to Love That Dog
- Full Title: Love That Dog
- When Written: 2000
- Where Written: Maine, United States
- When Published: 2001
- Literary Period: Contemporary
- Genre: Children’s Novel; Verse Novel
- Setting: Miss Stretchberry’s classroom
- Climax: Jack reveals that the speeding blue car hit and killed Sky.
- Antagonist: The Blue Car
- Point of View: First Person
Extra Credit for Love That Dog
Animal Shelters. While Jack tells readers that dogs that don’t get adopted from his local animal shelter are euthanized, this has become way less common than it was when the novel was written. States still allow shelters to euthanize animals, but with many shelters shifting their focus to promoting spay-and-neuter programs (and offering these services at low or no cost to some pet owners), the number of animals euthanized in municipal shelters has decreased dramatically.
Reading is Not Optional. As the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Walter Dean Myers adopted the slogan “Reading is Not Optional” to guide his work. Disturbed by the decreasing writing proficiency he noticed in fan mail from young readers, he sought to impress upon his audiences that reading isn’t just a fun hobby—it’s something, he believed, one must be able to do in order to be successful in the modern era.