60 pages • 2 hours read
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Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Jack can’t shake the nagging hope that he might meet his new hero. Miss Stretchberry wants to publish the poem he wrote about anxious anticipation, but he insists he didn’t pay much attention to the words. Jack wishes to type his next work himself and Miss Stretchberry shows him how to do so.
Jack types a poem called “My Sky.” In the poem, Jack plays on the street with Sky and the neighborhood kids. Jack’s father returns home from work and distracts him at the moment a blue car whips down the street and hits Sky. Jack’s father moves Sky to the lawn, but the dog dies shortly after.
Jack is afraid the poem may depress his classmates, but he allows Miss Stretchberry to display it with his name.
The quality of Jack’s journal improves as he hones his skills. Jack doesn’t always write to publish, but Miss Stretchberry wishes to legitimize his work anyway. Jack doesn’t understand the significance of his anticipation poem, claiming that it’s “just words / coming out of [his] head / and [he] wasn’t paying / too much attention / to which words / came out / when” (65).
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