Book Review: Meow Ruff: A Story in Concrete Poems by Joyce Sidman

Bibliographic Citation:

Sidman, Joyce. 2006. Meow Ruff: A Story in Concrete Poetry. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN: 9780618448944

Review:

People always say to never judge a book by it's cover, but this time I did. I decided to pick up the book Meow Ruff by Joyce Sidman because the cover was absolutely adorable. The cover of this book is very appealing to a young audience, especially animal lovers. Meow Ruff is a book about a dog and cat who are sworn enemies and start chasing each other. As they go through the "big chase" a storm comes through leaving the dog and cat both scared and cold. This predicament leaves our main characters at a place where they have to decide to stick together or continue to be enemies. Meow Ruff is a silly story that children can really get into and have fun with poetry too.

Sidman does a excellent job creating concrete poems throughout the entire story. Every single picture in the story has a poem on it. From the clouds to the concrete to the picnic tables, Sidman doesn't miss a beat.  Her concrete poems were made up wonderful word choices, and I was impressed at how many words she can come up with to describe a cloud and tree. I also appreciated the fact that she didn't repeat her descriptions and she continued to think of new inventive ways to describe the surroundings.

The only down side that I saw to this book was that I felt it was a big overwhelming at times. I felt like I was missing out on some parts of the story because I was so transfixed by the concrete poetry everywhere. It took me several minutes to read each page because I felt that I needed to read every single word. I can see this being hard for students that struggle with focusing and would be worried that they might miss something because of all of the distractions.

All in all, I would still highly recommend this book to students who love animals and concrete poetry. I also think that it would be a great tool for teachers when explaining to students how to write concrete poetry.

Spotlight Poem:

large

white steamy

bread loaves rising

in the sun's bright heat, 

a billowing batch 

of cumulus

Activity:

I loved how Sidman wrote poems about every day things that you see outside. After reading this book, I think a great activity would be to go on an outdoor field trip. Once outside, the students can look at their surroundings and jot down descriptions about something in nature. For example: students can examine a tree and write down words or phrases that describe it. Once students have created a lengthy list of their observations, they can then sit down and create a concrete poem on that particular object.