by Tina Haapala

Created on: September 22, 2009

Vicki Myron had already experienced a good amount of pulling herself up by the bootstraps by the time a small kitten fell into her life in 1988. She was a single mother who had left her alcoholic husband even as she struggled with her own health battles. The traditional paths of wife and mother her high school counselors had advised to her failed to provide security, so at twenty-eight she enrolled in college and ended up graduating with the highest honors.

Vicki was working hard to prove herself in her newly acquired position of Library Director, as well as working toward her Master's degree, when someone abandoned a dirty kitten in the library's outside book return. On that bitterly cold winter morning, the kitten's disheveled appearance and vulnerability touched Vicki's heart. After all that she'd been through, she could certainly relate.

Eventually, most of the town of Spencer, Iowa bonded with the cat they named Dewey. Vicki Myron and Bret Witter tell the story of just how far the story of this cat traveled, even as the cat (usually) stayed in one place. "Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World" is a tribute to a cat that somehow had the ability to bring people together and put smiles on their faces.

Spencer's community leaders were indifferent to Dewey at first. Like many other things related to improving the library, the city council wasn't convinced that what happened in the library could improve the community. The town had more important things to worry about. The farming that had kept the community going was in a crisis. Unemployment was at an all time high. But as Dewey's popularity increased, the city started to see the library in a more positive light.

Vicki's love for Dewey is evident in her descriptions of his rubber-band eating, shelf-climbing antics. Dewey becomes the focal point for all things positive that happen around her- from helping her teenage daughter and her find common ground to growing the popularity of her library. Dewey seemed to relish in the attention, posing for photographers and playing up the role of Supreme Library Cat when the news cameras started to come around.

Pretty soon, it wasn't just the town of Spencer that loved Dewey. The information highway went through all areas of the United States, and people followed it back to this lovable cat. Vacationers would make special trips just to stop my the library. A film crew from Japan came to spend a whole day with Dewey, and that wasn't even his first documentary role. Dewey was a Spencer's star.

Cat lovers and library lovers will enjoy this story. If you've ever had a cat settle into your lap when you are having a bad day, you'll understand Dewey's impact on so many of Spencer library's patrons. Hearing Vicki tell it, Dewey understood how he was paying for his room and board- by keeping the library a happy place. If you love wandering the stacks of your own local library, you'll cheer for this little cat ambassador and his owner that worked hard to make the cold concrete building a place of wonder and learning.

And no matter who you are, you'll need a tissue or two for the ending, even though you know the story covers almost two decades of a cat's life. By the end of the book, you'll miss Dewey, too.

Learn more about this author, Tina Haapala.
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