POETRY FRIDAY Picture a poem

By Joyce Sidman; illustrated by Michelle Berg

Okay, I'm joining the "Poetry Friday" meme. Finding poetry that breaks free of the monotony of rhyming couplets or Seuss rip-offs is hard to do, so I feel obligated to highlight anything that holds up to repeated scrutiny.

I can't promise every Friday will bring such a review, and certainly none will be quite like this multi-layered story about a cat and a dog making friends during a rain shower.

Sidman wrote it as concrete poetry, where the lines take shape as pictures.  Watch for free verses buried in the grass or woven among leaves and branches or circling the cat and dog.

She found a fortuitous partner in Berg, who used simple shapes and flat colors to keep our focus on the words. But the best feat is with the typography, a favorite trick of graphic designers even when it's not so central to the storytelling.

A cloud starts out  with a few pale, wispy words:

just
a tiny puff
a swirl of frosting-
cloud

and builds to a bold-faced, fat crescendo:

THUNDER-PLUMPED SEETHING MASS OF GLOOMY FUMING
BLACK BOTTOMED STORM BREWING

This one's kept my son busy hunting threads of the story and he can't even read.

Rating: *\*\*\

Comments

[Kelly]

Hi Anne:

This book looks very interesting! The lines, THUNDER-PLUMPED SEETHING MASS OF GLOOMY FUMING
BLACK BOTTOMED STORM BREWING are excellent.

[Anne]

I love how she paints with words, to borrow an overused expression.

She doesn't pander or get cutesy, which is what I really appreciate.

[brettdl]

My son and I keep finding new things in the book each time we read it. That's unusual in children's books.