Pug and Other Animal Poems

I love children's literature, poetry, and pugs (not necessarily in that order, mind). So when the three came together in one tidy package, I knew I had to read it. A companion book to Animal Poems (Worth and Jenkins' first collaboration), Pug and Co. more than holds its own. Worth has constructed a number of exquisitely simple poems about everyday animals, the kind a child is likely to see while out and about, such as rabbits, geese, toads, and even the humble fly. The only featured animal a child would be unlikely to meet in town or countryside is the Bengal tiger, and even that creature is seen at a zoo, so there you go.

Jenkins, with his bold collages, does a marvelous job of showing each animal off to its advantage. The bull, "hacked-out, rough-hewn, from the planet's hard side," has its massive bulk placed against an intensely red background. Sparrows and pigeons cavort above silhouetted city buildings, while a cat winds its mysterious way through shadowy bushes, "like an old familiar spirit."

As for my favorite canine, Worth describes pugs as having "goggling eyes and stumpy noses, wrinkled brows and hairy moles." And if some people consider them "plug-ugly," perhaps that's because "for dogs, they look a lot like people." How true!

Pug and Other Animal Poems
by Valerie Worth
illustrations by Steve Jenkins
Farrar Straus Giroux, 40 pages
Published: March 2013