Darn it all. This should have been wonderful, especially for me. But it was so frustratingly incomplete and uneven. I don't mean simply that there are only 26 letters, and so C had to be library Card and couldn't be Carnegie, but also details. It refers to Dewey 'in those days' without a date. It refers to 'even in our country.' It assumes some children won't know what the word Online means, and also that the readers will have a home computer with access to reference works. It doesn't acknowledge that the free public libraries further than NYC and Canada were also called Carnegie libraries.

My recommendation if you're curious - check it out from the library, note whatever information is new to you, research the rest of the answers.

For example, Dewey was born in 1851, and was a young man when he invented the DDC system. I'm in the process of reading a great 'Straight Dope' article about it all right now. (fyi, I prefer Straight Dope, in many ways, to Snopes. It's more fun, and I love the weekly newsletter in my inbox and the archives.) http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2238/whats-so-great-about-the-dewey-dec... ( )

This is a nicely done alphabet book that features libraries, but I suspect that it is one that will be enjoyed by more adults than children. The author seemed to be stretching a bit when coming up with words for certain letters. For example, the letter "Y" is yellow. Why? Because the academic regalia color for degrees in library science is lemon yellow. I was happy to see genealogy featured in the letter "q" for quest and again in the "Did You Know?" section at the back of the book with a mention of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Each letter has a short rhyme and then a larger narrative section that explains more. Some of the things are certainly things kids would enjoy; some of them are probably trivial in the scope of things. It's the type of book that might be used in a unit on libraries in elementary school. ( )

Summary: This is a beautifully illustrated book that gives students vital information about everything they have ever wanted to know about a library. Each page is a different letter of the alphabet, which presents information about something related to a library.

Critical Response: The book is very colorful and makes a person want to learn about libraries.

Classroom Connections: I would read this book to my class at the beginning of the school year before we took a field trip to the library. I would give students a list of important concepts from the book and they would take this list with them when they go to the library. Next, I would have students write a short paper on one of the topics from the list. ( )