Dewey Wish You A Merry Christmas? Dewey's Christmas at the Library by Vicki Myron

In the small town of Spencer, Iowa, Christmas was everyone's favorite time of the year.

Everyone, that is, except Dewey Readmore Books, the town's one-year-old library cat.

Dewey was just learning about holidays.

Anyone who has spent a Christmas season with a kitten around knows what it was like in the Spencer Public Library when their official library cat, proudly and appropriately named Dewey Readmore Books in a city-wide contest, encounters Christmas decor. Dewey has his nose in every one of the pre-holiday parties, delighting the kids when he manages to climb inside a gift bag and dash around the children's room like a frantic, fuzzy-footed Santa's elf. He's in the middle of all the crafts activities-glue and glitter and all--and is especially fond of the ball of red yarn used to make tree hangers, which soon becomes his personal property and favorite toy.

But it is when it's time to bring down the library tree and assemble the branches that Dewey becomes a truly hands-on (or paws-on) holiday helper. He rolls among the detached twigs and is amazed as they go together to become a tree! The tree is tempting to climb, one of his top talents, but Dewey's attention is diverted to the strings of tiny lights which twitch and snake enticingly across the floor as Librarian Vicki tries to spread them out for their annual test lighting.

And it is when the library lights go out that night and everyone leaves that Dewey finally gets to investigate this newest kitty playground, the completed Christmas tree. Dewey brings his red yarn ball along for the fun, and unconcerned that he is dragging the yarn along with him, satisfies his yearning to climb to the very top of the Yuletide tree and down again--many times.The next morning when Vickie comes to open up, she notices something different about their library tree. Among the ornaments and lights so carefully hung the day before, the tree is artfully festooned with garlands of Dewey's red yarn. The librarian pronounces it perfect--"a Dew-rific present!" and enters Dewey's creation in the city tree-decorating contest.

Vickie Myron's latest picture book about her famous library mascot, Dewey's Christmas at the Library (Little, Brown, 2010) is her holiday gift to libraries and library lovers of all ages. Dewey himself was a unforgettable real-life cat, and this picture series based on her best-selling memoir, Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, brings the impact that Dewey the cat had on the world to the very youngest readers. The picturesque small-town holiday scene is well captured by illustrator Steve Jones' slightly old-fashioned artwork, and his Dewey, pouncing and playing with the patrons and waiting lonely and alone in the closed and locked-up library through the long Christmas Day, catches the essence of what it is to be a one-and-only library cat.

And for a pet-loving pair of Christmas storytime animal tales, pair Dewey's Christmas doings with John Grogan's hilarious picture books A Very Marley Christmas, and Marley: Christmas Is Coming, Marley adapted from his best-selling memoir of life with "the world's worst dog," Marley & Me.