Spencer is a city in the state of Iowa, United States, and the county seat of Clay County. It is located at the confluence of the Little Sioux and Ocheyedan rivers. The population was 11,233 in the 2010 census, a decline from 11,317 in 2000. Spencer has a notable Clay County Fair, held annually in September, which averages more than 300,000 visitors each year.
Susan Eloise Hinton is an American writer best known for her young-adult novels (YA) set in Oklahoma, especially The Outsiders (1967), which she wrote during high school. Hinton is credited with introducing the YA genre.
Cynthia Rylant is an American author and librarian. She has written more than 100 children's books, including works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Several of her books have won awards, including her novel Missing May, which won the 1993 Newbery Medal, and A Fine White Dust, which was a 1987 Newbery Honor book. Two of her books are Caldecott Honor Books.
Cap'n O. G. Readmore was the fictional character host of the American television anthology series ABC Weekend Specials during the 1980s. He was an anthropomorphic cat puppet, dressed in a nautical outfit, that encouraged children to read for pleasure. He hosted the show from 1984 through 1989, performing with guest stars including Vincent Price, Harry Blackstone Jr., Pat Morita, Joan Lunden and others.
Marguerite Henry was an American writer of children's books, writing fifty-nine books based on true stories of horses and other animals. She won the Newbery Medal for one of her books about horses and she was a runner-up for two others. One of the latter, Misty of Chincoteague (1947), was the basis for several sequels and for the 1961 movie Misty.
LibraryThing is a social cataloging web application for storing and sharing book catalogs and various types of book metadata. It is used by authors, individuals, libraries, and publishers.
Catwings is a series of four American children's picture books written by Ursula K. Le Guin, illustrated by S. D. Schindler, and originally published by Scholastic from 1988 to 1999. It follows the adventures of kittens who were born with wings. Catwings is also the title of the first book in the series. The series is in print from Scholastic as of August 2015.
The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966 is a novel by Richard Brautigan first published in 1971 by Simon & Schuster. In subsequent printings the title is often shortened to simply The Abortion.
Rebecca Fjelland Davis is an American novelist and children's book author who lives in Minnesota. She is currently an instructor at South Central College in Mankato, where she teaches Composition studies, Literature and Film, and Critical Thinking in Humanities.
Natalie Savage Carlson was a 20th-century American writer of children's books. For her lifetime contribution as a children's writer, she was United States nominee for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1966.
May Massee was an American children's book editor. She was the founding head of the juvenile departments at Doubleday from 1922 and at Viking Press from 1932. Prior to working at Doubleday she had been the editor the American Library Association periodical Booklist.
Dewey Readmore Books was the library cat of the Spencer, Iowa, Public Library. Having been abandoned in the library's drop box in January 1988, he was adopted by the library and gained local attention for his story shortly thereafter. His fame soon grew nationally, then internationally, and he was featured in a variety of mediums, including Paul Harvey's radio program The Rest of the Story and a Japanese documentary about cats. His story became so well known that, after his death in December 2006, his obituary was featured in more than 270 newspapers worldwide. Dewey's caretaker, head librarian Vicki Myron, published a book on Dewey's life in 2008, entitled Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, which became a New York Times number-one nonfiction bestseller which was translated into numerous languages. Myron adapted it for two children's versions, wrote the sequel Dewey's Nine Lives (2010), and published a third children's book, Dewey's Christmas at the Library.
Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World is a best-selling non-fiction book published in September 2008. The book recounts the life of Dewey Readmore Books, the cat in residence at the Spencer Public Library in Spencer, Iowa.
The Changeover: a Supernatural Romance is a low fantasy novel for young adults by Margaret Mahy, published in 1984 by J. M. Dent in the U.K. It is set in Christchurch in the author's native New Zealand.
Kathi Appelt is an American author of more than forty books for children and young adults. She won the annual PEN USA award for Children's Literature recognizing The Underneath (2008).
Kirstin Cronn-Mills is an American author of children's books, including the Minnesota Book Award finalist The Sky Always Hears Me And the Hills Don't Mind (2009) and Beautiful Music for Ugly Children (2012) which was a Stonewall Book Award winner and a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her third novel, Original Fake (2016), was a Minnesota Book Award finalist in 2017, along with her third nonfiction volume for high school libraries, LGBTQ+ Athletes Claim the Field. Her fourth novel, Wreck, will be published in 2019.
Library cats are domesticated cats that live in public libraries worldwide. The association of cats with libraries continued from the Middle Ages up to the present day.
Mary Wright Plummer was a prominent American librarian who became the second female president of the American Library Association (1915–1916).
Minerva Sanders was the first librarian of the Pawtucket Free Public Library in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Sanders earned a national reputation for innovative library services, including allowing open access to book stacks, opening the library on Sundays to accommodate working people, and permitting full library privileges for children.
