Dora's Book of the Month: August: DEWEY: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron (with Bret Witter)

DEWEY: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the WorldDewey was an abandoned kitten who would one day become world-famous. Only a few weeks old, on the coldest night of the year, he was stuffed into the returned book slot at the public library in Spencer, Iowa. He was found the next morning by library director Vicki Myron, a single mother who had survived the loss of her family farm, a breast cancer scare, and an alcoholic husband. Named Dewey Readmore Books, the little cat won her heart, and won over the staff, by pulling himself up and hobbling on frostbitten feet to nudge each of them in a gesture of thanks and love. For the next 19 years, he never stopped charming the people of Spencer with his enthusiasm, warmth, humility (for a cat), and, above all, his sixth sense about who needed him most. In this inspiring, moving story, Myron tells how Dewey became more than just a friend; as his fame grew from town to town, then state to state, and finally worldwide, he became a source of pride for an extraordinary Heartland farming town pulling its way slowly back from the greatest crisis in its long history.

Pros and Cons: OR Prose verses Cons: Defining them first!

Definition of PROSE:

1. the ordinary form of spoken or written language, without metrical structure, as distinguished from poetry or verse. 2. matter-of-fact, commonplace, or dull expression, quality, discourse, etc. 3. Liturgy . a hymn sung after the gradual, originating from a practice of setting words to the jubilatio of the alleluia.

Definition of VERSE:

1. (not in technical use) a stanza. 2. a succession of metrical feet written, printed, or orally composed as one line; one of the lines of a poem. 3. a particular type of metrical line: a hexameter verse. 4. a poem, or piece of poetry. 5. metrical composition; poetry, esp. as involving metrical form. 6. metrical writing distinguished from poetry because of its inferior quality: a writer of verse, not poetry. 7. a particular type of metrical composition: elegiac verse. 8. the collective poetry of an author, period, nation, etc.: Miltonian verse; American verse. 9. one of the short conventional divisions of a chapter of the Bible.

Meaning of it all:
Prose is considered one of the two major literary structures, with the other being verse. Prose lacks the more formal metrical structure of verse that is almost always found in traditional poetry. Poems often involve a meter and/or rhyme scheme. Prose, instead, comprises full, grammatical sentences, which then constitute paragraphs and overlook aesthetic appeal. Some works of prose do contain traces of metrical structure or versification and a conscious blend of the two literature formats is known as prose poetry. Similarly, any work of verse with fewer rules and restrictions is known as free verse. Verse is considered to be more systematic or formulaic, whereas prose is the most reflective of ordinary (often conversational) speech.