Thursday, December 4, 2008

Puss in Books

Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World

As an animal lover, cat owner, and librarian, I couldn't help but love this book. It was laugh-out-loud funny in parts and heartbreaking in others.

Myron weaves her own memiors into the story if Dewey, the Spenser Public Library cat, as well as the history of this small "progressive" Iowa town.

I enjoyed how she snuck in information about the workings libraries, their changes in the past twenty years, and her own journey through a library science master's program and professional associations.

My only minor complaint was the chapter towards the end where Myron chronicles her family's hardships. Not because I don't want to hear that side of the story. In fact they enrich the story by showing the downs that we must all go through. I only wish that they had been spread out. The reader is smacked all at once with death and disease in person after person. I think that spread out chronologically would have kept the over-all tone cheerful, with the occasional appropriate dip.

But on the whole an excellent book