Dewey the Library Cat: A True Story - Hardcover

Myron, Vicki; Witter, Bret

3.86

60,354 ratings by Goodreads

9780316068710: Dewey the Library Cat: A True Story

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316068713 ISBN 13: 9780316068710

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2010

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In the tradition of Marley: A Dog Like No Other, this is the story of a cat who was more than a pet, and the amazing effect he had on the people around him. This middle-grade adaptation of the Grand Central bestseller Dewey features an 8-page photo insert, including exclusive, never-before-seen photos of the Dew!

Now everyone's favorite library cat can inspire a new audience of young readers with his story of courage and love. Abandoned in a library book drop slot in the dead of winter, this remarkable kitten miraculously endured the coldest night of the year. Dewey Readmore Books, as he became known, quickly embraced his home inside Spencer's public library, charming the struggling small town's library-goers, young and old. As word of Dewey's winning tail, or rather his tale, spread, the library cat gained worldwide fame as a symbol of hope and proof positive that one small cat could change a town, one reader at a time.

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About the Author:

Vicki Myron was born on a farm fifteen miles from Spencer, Iowa. At the age of thirty-four, she graduated summa cum laude from Mankato State University and she has a masters degree from Emporia State University. She worked at the Spencer Public Library for twenty-five years, the last twenty as director. She lives in Spencer, Iowa. Her website is www.deweyreadmorebooks.com

Bret Witter has collaborated with Vicki Myron since 2006 and has enjoyed every minute. Raised in North Alabama, he currently lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife and two children, Lydia and Isaac.

Review:

An abandoned kitten serves as balm, comic relief and social director to a hard-pressed Midwestern town.

The feline came in through the book drop on a bone-crackingly cold winter's night. The place was the public library of Spencer, Iowa, where the corn grows nine feet high and the earth is so fertile "you would swear the ground is about to push up and tip the sky right out of the picture." But this was in the 1980s, when the farm crisis was in full tilt; lenders had foreclosed on 50 percent of the family farms in northwest Iowa by the end of the decade. Local librarian Myron paints a town in crisis: economically, socially and in terms of the human spirit. She was in crisis too and neatly tucks her own recovery into the larger story of the town's gradual rejuvenation. Named Dewey (after the decimal system), the kitten became the library mascot and a synecdoche: "He never lost his trust, no matter what the circumstances, or his appreciation for life...He was confident." Myron doesn't overplay this metaphor, but works it subtly as she depicts the town's fortunes reviving and shows Dewey playing his role in that revival with composure, social skills, patience and a measure of mischief. In an easeful voice and with an eye for detail, she delineates Spencer: its economic swings, the lay of the land, the Prairie Deco downtown. Dewey is the pivot; he even became a bit of a national celebrity, and the New York Times ran his obit. He was, this loving account demonstrates, the right cat in the right place for Spencer and most certainly for its librarian.

Intimate portrait of a place snugly set within its historical moment, preserved in Myron's understated, well-polished prose.

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