Hate That Cat

Sharon Creech was born in South Euclid, Ohio, which is a suburb of Cleveland. She grew up in a large family—in fact, Mary Lou Finney’s brothers in Walk Two Moons and Absolutely Normal Chaos are named after and based off of Creech’s brothers. Throughout her childhood, her parents regularly took the family on road trips, once all the way to Idaho. It wasn’t until college that Creech discovered literature and writing. She taught high school English and writing courses in England in Switzerland and eventually began writing her own novels for adults. But since writing her third book and her first book for kids, Absolutely Normal Chaos, Creech has written mostly for young readers. Creech and her husband have lived in England and the United States. She and her husband returned to the United States in 1998 and currently live in Maine.

Both Love That Dog—Creech’s previous book about the same protagonist—and Hate That Cat are written in a style very reminiscent of William Carlos Williams’s work. Williams is most often associated with Imagist poets, whose poetry described everyday objects and happenings. Particularly early on in his career, Williams was also very concerned with using distinctly American vernacular (rather than copying what he saw as stuffy British poetry conventions), and it’s possible to see Jack’s clearly childish writing style doing much the same thing. Jack’s favorite poet, Walter Dean Myers, is actually better known for his young adult novels than for his poetry. But Myers, who died in 2014, advocated fiercely for more diversity in children’s literature (his final published piece was an op-ed in The New York Times asking where all the nonwhite characters in children’s literature were), and he also served as the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature in 2012 and 2013. During this time, he toured the U.S. extensively, visiting classrooms and encouraging kids to read.

Hate That Cat is the sequel to Creech’s 2001 verse novel, Love That Dog. Within the novel itself, Miss Stretchberry introduces Jack and his classmates to various 19th- and 20th-century poets, including Edgar Allan Poe (“The Bells”), Valerie Worth (Miss Stretchberry reads from her collection Small Poems), and Walter Dean Myers (Jack loves “Love That Boy,” though Myers is better known for his young adult novels like Monster and Scorpions). Jack also comes to appreciate William Carlos Williams, as Miss Stretchberry introduces him to “This is Just to Say” and “To a Poor Old Woman.” What’s more, verse novels, particularly those intended for young readers, have exploded in popularity over the last several decades; other notable examples include Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, The Crossover by Kwame Alexander, and The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo. Miss Stretchberry gives Jack Karen Hesse’s verse novel, Out of the Dust. Several of Sharon Creech’s other books also deal with themes of grief and loss, most notably her Newbery-winning novel Walk Two Moons.