Meow Ruff: A Story in Concrete Poetry - Hardcover

Sidman, Joyce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0618448942 ISBN 13: 9780618448944

Publisher: Clarion Books, 2006

Synopsis

On a clear, sunny day, a small adventure begins. First, a dog slips joyfully out of his house. Next a car pulls up to the curb, leaving a white cat alone. Then, slowly, a storm begins to brew over the park.

Watch as an unlikely friendship takes shape in this one-of-a-kind book that combines story, art, and delightful concrete poetry.

About this title

About the Author

Joyce Sidman lives in Minnesota, where she has frequent conversations with her dog. joycesidman.com

 

 

Reviews

Grade 2-4–Using concrete poetry as the vehicle, Sidman relates a simple story. A small dog escapes from its house and a little cat is abandoned at curbside. These natural enemies meet at a neighborhood park where, forced to wait out a thunderstorm under a picnic table, they take comfort in huddling together and later emerge as buddies. The adjective-loaded unrhymed verse is actually a series of descriptive phrases that have been compressed and arranged to create elements of the artwork. For example, the words large/white steamy/bread loaves rising/in the sun's bright heat/a billowing batch/of cumulus are printed in white and presented in the shape of a cloud, while patchwork, rabbit-nibbled, mower-cropped, wind-whispered grass fills a green border along the bottom of the page. Computer-generated cartoon graphics of the cat, dog, three crows, and other animals are set against a sky-blue background. Some details (the dog's tail and ears; a bird's wings) have gray-toned shadows that indicate movement. Some of the language is creative, and the beat is catchy, but occasionally the crowded monochromatic text is difficult to read, and many of the pages are cluttered with words and graphics. Joan Bransfield Graham's Flicker Flash (1999) and Splish Splash (1994, both Houghton) and J. Patrick Lewis's Doodle Dandies (S & S, 1998) are better examples of concrete poetry for the same age group.–Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH
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*Starred Review* Gr. 1-3. It's typically said of picture books that art and text are inseparable, but the truth of that has rarely been more evident than it is in this introduction to concrete poetry--which, unlike most books about the form, doesn't just collect unrelated poems, but tells a story through them. With the same creativity of expression that marked Song of the Waterboatman (2005), a 2006 Caldecott Honor Book, Sidman develops a simple tale about a cat and dog trapped in a rainstorm, coding much of the substance right into the physical landscape. Indicating the coming downpour, for instance, cloud-poems build from a single word (wisp) to free verse dense with ominous imagery ("Thunder-plumped seething mass of gloomy fuming"); raindrop-poems, descending vertically from the clouds, intensifying from the merest "drips" to "monster splats" to "stinging ropes of water." Berg, who created the pictures digitally and is also the book's graphic designer, intelligently showcases the concept of words as building blocks in a stylized landscape of flat colors, two-dimensional forms, and wildly mutating typefaces. A novel entree to concrete poetry for children not ready for Paul Janeczko's fine A Poke in the I (2001), offering a glimpse of the world as a poet sees it: in images cloaked in words. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarion Books
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0618448942
• ISBN 13: 9780618448944
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Berg Michelle
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 32