To build a bookstore...

 With the unfortunate times many of even the largest of chain bookstores have fallen upon as of late, it is extremely refreshing to see a bookstore being built instead of being torn down, going out of business. 

 This video is from Half Price Books, and shows, in sped-up time, the creation of their new bookstore in San Antonio, Texas.  

YouTube User: HalfPriceBooks

"Love That Dog" by Sharon Creech

 Waiting for my partner, in the car on a hot summer day that fell into what appeared to be an oncoming storm with night, I read this novel my mother had given me, which ended up in my bag. "Love That Dog" by Sharon Creech.


 This small novel told through a series of poems is a small, but great, beauty. In these few shorts pages, the reader is witness to a child's assignments and discussion with a teacher, who is teaching poetry. The child responds poetically, begins to write poetry, and reveals wonder in life's big emotions through terse, deep bits of poetry based around well know poets from Blake to Frost to-- of course-- Walter Dean Myers. 

Throughout the narrative, our young poet Jack picks up on themes, phrases from the poems he is reading in school and employs them to describe his life, his feelings on what he is learning and his dog. 

"We were going for a drive/ and my father said/ We won't be long--/ You come too" he writes, of going to the "ANIMAL PROTECTION SHELTER" to find a dog. "And that's where we saw/ the yellow dog/ standing against the cage/ with his paws curled/ around the wire/ and his long red tongue/ hanging out/ and his big black eyes/ looking a little sad/ and his long tail / wag-wag-wagging/ as if he were saying/ Me me me! Choose me! / And we did. / We chose him." 

Sharon Creech has, with so few words and such large talent and art, created a beautiful portrait of childhood love for poetry, and a child's love for his dog.