It’s about life and death and small-town values and, above all, love.Librarian Myron s popular adult memoir, Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, about the adopted cat who became the mascot of her Iowa library, finds yet another life in this middle-grade adaptation, which also follows Myron and Witter s 2009 picture book version. When Dewey died in 2006 at the age of 19, his obituary appeared in over 250 newspapers, including the New York Times, USA Today and the Des Moines Register, and was announced on the national television evening news. As his fame grew, people drove hundreds of miles to meet Dewey, and he even ended up the subject of a hit documentary in Japan! Through it all, Dewey remained a loyal companion, a beacon of hope not just for Vicki Myron, but for the entire town of Spencer as it slowly pulled itself up from the worst financial crisis in its long history. From that moment on, her life – and the town of Spencer – would change forever.ĭewey, as the townspeople named the kitten, grew into a strutting, affable library cat whose antics kept patrons in stitches and whose sixth sense about those in need created hundreds of deep and loving friendships. Recognizing the extraordinary strength and uniqueness of this kitten, Vicki received approval from the library board to adopt him as Spencer’s resident library cat. Her solution came in the unlikeliest of places when Vicki found a tiny, bedraggled kitten almost frozen to death in the library’s night drop box.

As the director of the Spencer (Iowa) Public Library, her biggest challenge was to raise the spirits of her beloved library’s patrons, the residents of an out-of-the way town deeply mired in the farm crisis of the 1980s.

Vicki Myron was a single mom who, after surviving the loss of her family farm and an abusive husband, went back to school and became a librarian (and her family’s first college graduate!).

Dewey, as the townspeople named the kitten, grew into a strutting, affable library cat whose antics kept patrons in stitches and whose sixth sense about those in need created hundreds of deep and loving friendships.ĭEWEY is the heartwarming, true story of an abandoned kitten who went on to live an extraordinary life, inspiring a struggling single mother, transforming a sleepy library and the inhabitants of its depressed Iowa farm town, and ultimately capturing the hearts of animal lovers around the world.

Dewey the library cat a true story