Love That Dog by Sharon Creech*

I read this novel in verse to my boys in the morning for our poetry reading.
Initially Jack does not like poetry and expresses his disdain for the genre to his teacher Miss Stretchberry.  The reader witnesses how his attitude towards poetry is transformed over the course of the story.  Gradually, the reader also learns about his dog Sky.
Poetry by actual people (like Robert Frost, Walter Dean Myers, Arnold Adoff, William Blake, Valerie Worth, and William Carlos Williams) is incorporated into the story as Jack learns how to write it.  Parts of the poems are included in the back.
*Highly recommend.
-I own this book.
My eight year old especially liked this book.
Strategy: connections, building schema for poetry, predicting