Meow Ruff

Citation

Sidman, Joyce, and Michelle Berg. Meow Ruff. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. ISBN 0618448942

Poetic Elements

Concrete poetry or shape poetry is defined as “...poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on...” Joyce Sidman does a convincing job with this book. Her spacing of words and size of font throughout this story does, indeed, affect the emotional impact and visually convey the meaning of the words in this story about a friendship between a dog and a cat. It is an impressive work of art to see the tree written in the shape of a tree and composed of poetry describing the same tree. Potentially overwhelming to younger readers with the crush of words on a page, this can be a fantastic shared experience for a parent or teacher to guide them through the story and point out pieces of poetry along the way.

Appeal and Overall Quality

This book is visually stunning, and to read how the poet herself laid out what she wanted on the page before turning it over to the illustrator makes it even more impressive. The developing storm is shown in the color and consistency of the clouds, at first a “...plump bright dome of sugary white sky-muffin...” floating off in one corner of the page to “...Cloudburst...” and “...Kaboom...” each colored darkly and stretched as a single word across a two-page spread. Children will appreciate the pleasing and simple color scheme of blues, greens, and browns while adults and older students will be able to discern the thoughtful correlation between the arrangement and layout of the words. One of my favorite pieces to follow throughout the book was the picnic table and how it changed purpose as the storm moved in, going from a “...platform for picnics and crumbs and ants...” to a “...platform that's splotting and splatting and dripping...”

As a side note, I will freely admit to the fact that I instantly disliked this story beginning on page 4, when the cat is dumped on the street. As a “mom” to two rescued dogs I had a reaction to an animal being dumped. I kept reading, though, and could appreciate that the cat had found a friend and a new home by the end of the story. Finding that Joyce Sidman had previously won the ASPCA Henry Bergh Children's Book Award which is given “honoring books that promote humane and compassionate respect for all creatures” made me a little more surprised to find an animal being abandoned in her book of concrete poetry.

Spotlight Poem

The book, in its entirety, would be used to teach concrete poetry, or really any two page spread from the book could be used to narrow focus down to certain aspects.

Follow Up Activity

I found a great website, called poetry4kids.com, that guides children through the experience of writing concrete poetry. Poet Kenn Nesbitt owns the website, and his is a great resource for any type of poetry. His explanation of concrete poetry, however, is geared for kids and easy to understand for someone just learning about the concept. We would study the book Meow Ruff, look to Kenn's website for further explanation, and then attempt to write our own concrete poetry, either as individuals or in groups.

Reviews

From School Library Journal

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

From Booklist

*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