Meow Ruff: A Story in Concrete Poetry

Sidmin, Joyce. Meow Ruff: A Story in Concrete Poetry. Illustrated by Michelle Berg. Houghton Mifflin, 2006. ISBN: 0618448942. $16.00. Ages 4-8.

A small dog escapes from his home while a cat is left at a curbside and the two meet at the park. While starting out as enemies, a thunderstorm brews up and they seek refuge under the picnic table. As the storm continues, they become cold and huddle together. When the storm is over, they emerge as friends. The adjective loaded concrete poetry with unrhymed verses goes on to describe what is happening in the story as well as playing the part of illustrations. The wording is rhythmic and creative and does a wonderful job at describing the scene. The illustrations, mostly put together with words that describe the inanimate objects, are simplistic and require some imagination to be seen as objects. The poetry hidden within the illustrations also describes what is going to happen, for example, the cloud is made of words saying, “Thunder-pumped seething mass of gloomy fuming black-bottomed storm brewing” to indicate that a thunderstorm is quickly approaching. To indicate movement, there are subtle tone variations to show where the dog and cat have been. While the text is great at putting together several descriptive words to describe the events, the words sometimes become tightly spaced and difficult to read and seem to leave some pages cluttered with graphics.

Jennifer Moser, BGSU student