Dewey Book Review

3^rd Quarter Outside Reading Book Review

Dewey By Vicki Myron with Brett Witter. Grand Central Publishing, 2008 Genre: Non-Fiction

Dewey is a cat who was found in a library drop box on the coldest morning of the year. He lived in the library after that, and the whole staff loved him. They went through tough times, involving getting people to accept Dewey, and the make things as easy as possible for their patrons. The story of Dewey is told, about his whole life, as well as the lives of people around him, like the author, Vicki Myron. She also talks about her personal problems; her difficult marriage, her daughter, her schooling, as well as other obstacles she faced.

“What an extraordinary story of love, courage, and devotion. I will not soon forget the good people of Spencer, Iowa, and their wonderful library cat. DEWEY is truly inspiration for the soul,” says Jack Canfield, co creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul.

The author, Vicki Myron, speaks in first person about Dewey, her past, the library, and the town of Spencer, Iowa, where the book takes place mostly. She doesn’t speak with very large words, so it was easy to understand, but it wasn’t so lacking that it was boring. I thought the author did an okay job of describing each situation. There were a few points in the book where I was kind of confused as to where they were, if she was talking about that situation or something following it. This is different than most books that I read because I usually read fiction stories, but it was interesting for a change and read something that had actually happened.

“I wanted to tell him Dewey wasn’t just any cat, but Rick had been taking pet photographs for the past week. He’d probably heard it a hundred times already” (144).

I was split on how much I liked this book. I liked it a lot because I love cats and have a cat, so I liked reading about one, and it was cool how Dewey could almost have little conversations with Vicki. On the other hand, it was a lot of historical facts, which I found boring. I didn’t like reading about the history of Iowa, at least the way she described it.