The Efficient, Inventive (Often Annoying) Melvil Dewey

by Alexis O'Neill

Melvil Dewey loved order (Organize mother’s jelly jars), efficiency (Why spell his name Melville when Melvil has fewer letters and sounds the same?), and keeping records (Height! Weight! Earnings!).

Melvil also loved books and numbers and decimals. When he realized every library organized their books differently (Size! Title! Color!), he wondered if he could invent a system all libraries could use to ORGANIZE them EFFICIENTLY.

A rat-a-tat speaker, Melvil was a persistent (and noisy) advocate for FREE public libraries. And he made enemies along the way as he pushed for changes. (Like his battle to establish the first library school with WOMEN as students.) Through it all he was EFFICIENT, INVENTIVE, and often ANNOYING as he made big changes in the world of public libraries—changes still found in the libraries of today!

Genres: Picture Books, Biography, Nonfiction, History, Childrens, Education, Biography Memoir

Audible Audio

Published June 27, 2023

About the author

Alexis O'Neill grew up in Boston and Wakefield, Massachusetts. She earned a Ph.D. in Teacher Education from Syracuse University. She teaches writing for the UCLA Extension Writers' Program and was a Regional Advisor for the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI) in the Central-Coastal region of California.
She has also been educator and consultant for a number of musea: Erie Canal Museum, Onondaga Historical Association, Everson Museum of Art, Museum of Ventura County and the J. Paul Getty Museum. (information obtained through the author's website)

Reviews

[Erica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Look.
Dewey did some pretty cool stuff in his life, as highlighted in this book, and I absolutely adore the functionality of the Dewey Decimal classification system, though it also frustrates me to no end for many reasons.
Dewey was also a pretty crappy person, so bad that baby librarians in library school learn about what a creepy white supremacist he was so that they know whose work they're representing once they become full-fledged information professionals.

This book, which has fun, vibrant illustrations, is rather disingenuous in its portrayal of the man behind USAmerican library science. In crowing about how he was an advocate for hiring women, it glosses over his treatment of them.
He thinks college-educated women would be TERRIFIC in this profession. They have clear heads, strong hands, and great hearts. (Also, they will work for less money than men)
It addresses his efforts in making knowledge and information available to the common people but not his religious biases and strong gatekeeping
Librarians would educate readers and guide them to the highest-quality books through "best books" lists (He was one of the dudes who felt fiction was trash that poisoned your mind and only he and his trained librarians could provide proper, uplifting, moral literature to the masses. He also is the reason we had quiet libraries for so long and why librarians, to this day, are synonymous with "Shhhh.")
Sure, the fact that he rubbed people the wrong way (only figuratively in this story, not literally like in real life) is mentioned a couple of times but it's in that "This man was so passionate that it often came across as annoying" sort of way. "Annoying" is not the term I would use for...well, let's get to that.

The author's note at the end touches on Dewey's foibles, such as being a sexual harasser, a racist, and an anti-Semite, but ends with despite his personal shortcomings before launching into all the swell things he accomplished.
You know what?
If you can praise a man for the good things he did - inventing a nice way to organize information, making a career out of librarianship, and really pushing for free (tax/patron-supported) public libraries - you can also be open and up front about how he molested his employees, how his classification system is racist and heavily focused on Christianity, how he actively barred Jewish membership from the library club of librarians, and how he controlled the information people could access in free public libraries. I mean, if I can learn all that (super late in life), it's not too early to start teaching kids that people are complex and just because they do some good things doesn't mean they're worth celebration.

Update, 9/21: Want to know more? HERE is an article by Anna Gooding-Call in BookRiot (9/3/21) that gives a nice overview of Dewey's racism and all-around crappiness.

A better subject to showcase an impressive library person could have been Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan, whose laws of library science are, as paraphrased by me:
Books are for use
For every book, its reader
For every reader, their book
Save the reader's time
The library is a growing organism

Or how about the horseback librarians during the depression? They're a hot topic right now, maybe we need a few kids books about them.

Or perhaps Pura’s Cuentos: How Pura Belpré Reshaped Libraries with Her Stories, the story of a librarian who did the opposite of Dewey, making the library a welcoming space for as many children as she could entice through the doors.

Let's acknowledge the work Dewey did while also holding him accountable for his misdeeds and then let's move on to celebrate other librarians who did amazing work in their own right.

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adore this ode to libraries from one of my favorite nonfiction authors, Alexis O’Neill, paired with the uber-talented Edwin Fotheringham.

With that said, to put it mildly, Dewey was a difficult person and a bigot, which makes writing about him for children difficult. O’Neill addresses these issues in her back matter while focusing in the main text on Dewey’s contributions to the field of library science and the growth of the public library system.

[Donalyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Accessible introduction to Dewey, his work , and his lifelong commitment to libraries. The author’s note includes more information about Dewey’s history of bigotry and harmful behavior including sexual harassment, anti-Semitism, and racism.

[Aliza Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dewey is extremely problematic. He was antisemitic, a racist, misogynist, sexual harasser, and shady businessman. But he also helped create the organizational library system (Dewey decimal system) and the American Library Association.

People of great creativity, brilliance, and invention can also be horrifically hateful humans who oppress others based on their gender, race, and religion. Both can be true at once. So how do we deal with this dichotomy that exists within an individual? How do we separate the art from the artist...or should we do that? How do we reconcile a harmful person with their contributions to the world?

I feel this is a huge challenge with picture book biographies. How do you share the details of a person’s life, but gloss over problematic elements in the name of appropriate content? People are complicated. They embody several truths at once, some conflicting to an incomprehensible extent. I mean, a man who was obsessed with words and knowledge, but was so completely ignorant about his fellow humans? I wanted to see the problematic aspects incorporated INTO the text, not as an afterword or end note. Though, I am grateful the author was mindful to include and name his transgressions and hate by naming the groups he targeted and excluded. We should absolutely learn about figures in history, exemplar humans or not, but when they are not (especially egregiously so), that needs to be part of the stories we tell children. That humanizes them the most authentically.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was Melvil Dewey who set out to put libraries in order by creating a helpful system of numbers to organize books into categories, and who then promoted the idea of creating and maintaining free public libraries for the education of all. Both of these ideas did much to improve the world, and it is on these improvements associated with Dewey that we often look today, and for which we thank him, though we also keep in mind the weaknesses of Dewey that promoted racism and sexism as well.

A first look at Melvil Dewey for the youngest of readers.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm torn about how to rate this book. It was interesting to me to learn how Dewey created the Dewey Decimal system and all of the other inventions, systems, etc to make a library function efficiently and effectively. However, I did not realize he was known for harassing women and was forced out of the ALA, or that he was racist against Jews and people of color until I read the author's note at the end. If this book was used with students, I would want to make sure that the study of Dewey's professional successes were balanced with his harmful personal actions.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an electronic ARC from Calkins Creek through Edelweiss+.
O'Neill shares Dewey's life - his good and not so good characteristics. Readers see him first organizing items in his home and moving on to much larger projects. He dreamed up and put together a library organization system that is still used today. The illustrations are full of motion and clearly show Dewey's high energy and aggressive personality. Informative text included at the end.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This will be a nice additional resource for my intro to the Dewey Decimal Classification Unit with my 3rd Graders. I will be sure to read it to them BEFORE I show them the Dewey Decimal Rap. They typically lose their minds after that and beg for me to show it again and again. :) Reading this beforehand will help solidify some of the history of the classification system, how it works, while lending some background knowledge on a controversial figure in library history.

[Kris Asard · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's so weird that this book was published a year after that the council of the American Library Association passed a resolution to rename their top award so that it would no longer be called the "Melvil Dewey Medal".
In 2019 the very organisation that Dewey helped found felt that they could no longer stand by him as a person; their exact words were “the behaviour demonstrated for decades by Dewey does not represent the stated fundamental values of ALA in equity, diversity, and inclusion”.
But, sure, let's call him "annoying" and leave it at that.
Maybe the existence of this book serves best as a cautionary tale, about how dangerous it can be to spin a "larger than life" yarn around flawed people who have played important parts in historical turning points.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oy. He was a racist and anti-semite, but extremely organized....and sounded a bit manic. I know I should know more about the man who helped created not only the cataloging and classification system I know so well, but many of the foundations of American librarianship. But I don't think I can read more than a children's book about him because he was such a jerk.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good information about him and the beginning of the DDC, free libraries and librarian training.

[Jenn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nevermind what a horrible person Dewey was, the book isn't well written. Why are some words on some pages bolded and capitalized but others aren't, and some pages don't have any special text? There is no consistent tone and it jumps around. Skip this one and read about someone who isn't a sexist white dude.

[Judy]

I appreciate the notes at the end which briefly discusses that Melvil was racist dick even if he presented the foundations of modern librarianship.

[Ben Truong · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Efficient, Inventive (Often Annoying) Melvil Dewey is a children's picture book written by Alexis O'Neill and illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham. It is a panegyric for modern library science's most renowned and despicable founder.

Melville Louis Kossuth "Melvil" Dewey was an American librarian and educator, inventor of the Dewey Decimal system of library classification, and a founder of the Lake Placid Club. He resigned from the American Library Association due to allegations of sexual harassment, racism, and antisemitism in 1905.

O'Neill's text is rather simplistic, straightforward, and informative. O'Neill's breezy biography caroms through Melvil Dewey's quirks of efficiency and achievements by advocating for public libraries, establishing the Dewey Decimal System, founding a school for librarians at Columbia, and educating women against the trustees' will. Backmatter includes a timeline, a breakdown of the Dewey Decimal System, and information on the figure's other reforms. Fotheringham's crisp pictures, however, capture Dewey's whirlwind energy, showing him on the move and transformed into a speeding train.

The premise of the book is rather straightforward. It presents Dewey as a man on a mission – obsessed with efficiency, determined to make the biggest difference in the world in the least amount of time, and fired up with the notion that success for this country's immigrants hinged on free public libraries that were professionally staffed and filled with materials that could actually be found.

This biography is written well, albeit disingenuous as it leaves all reference to Dewey's long history of sexual harassment, open racism, and antisemitism are confined to two sentences in the small-type afterward, which few would read. While Dewey revolutionized libraries for the masses and organization – his character was much to be desired.

All in all, The Efficient, Inventive (Often Annoying) Melvil Dewey is a nice biography of Melvil Dewey, albeit a disingenuous profile.

[Stephanie Tournas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m curious what kid readers will think about this odd man, the Marie Kondo of his era. Librarians know of his contributions and his foibles, which were many. O’Neill depicts Dewey as a hyper focused, almost maniacally efficient and hardworking advocate for free libraries and consistent shelving plans. She makes a good case for Dewey filling an important need, promoting women as librarians (partly because they could be paid less!) and helping to create a library association for service to children. And I like that his foibles are exposed: that he was controlling, demanding, and manipulative. I think kids will enjoy hearing about his push to simplify spelling, even changing his name from Melville to Melvil. The dynamic digital art uses realistic and fantastical elements to portray this man who was a force of nature, and the generous use of words in bold helps to characterize his personality as well. The substantial back matter makes this book report-worthy, including an author’s note, which elaborates on Dewey’s worst traits, namely his antisemitism, racism and sexism. There is a timeline, information about his other reform ideas (shorthand, metric reform, spelling reform), a bit about DDC, and a bibliography.

I would have liked a complete list of the Dewey Decimal system in the back matter. I guess I would have preferred listing his worst traits in the body of the text, instead of in the back matter, but I bet it was a tough decision where to put it.

[Sandy Brehl · Rating 4 out of 5]

All lives are complex, and Dewey's was certainly that. The namesake and creator of the Dewey Decimal System as an organizing approach to public library access was quite an obsessive and even controversial characters. His love of books, information, and order drove him into libraries of the time, and then drove him WILD with frustration about the inaccessibility and uselessness of random (or nonexistent) organizational patterns.
His analytical mind, carefully reasoned and reasonable proposal, and his tireless campaigning resulted in ubiquitous adoption as well as the creation of university library science departments. His strongly held opinions, relentless demands, and problematic treatment of others are addressed within the main text, with more detailed explanations in back matter. The system he developed and the man himself are recognized as paving the way for modern libraries, including his insistence that women could and should enroll in training programs and serve as librarians. His outspoken racism and anti-semitism should also be incorporated into discussions about Melvin Dewey.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes! This is the way to do a biography on a less than perfect person for young readers. I know--should we even HAVE biographies for not perfect people? I jest of course but I've grown very weary of cancel culture in the last few days.

Ahem. This is a stellar biography of Melvil Dewey who, of course, is the genius who came up with the Dewey Decimal System. It is fast-paced, fun, informative and with great illustrations by Edwin Fotheringham. The author (Alexis O'Neill) touches on the fact that not everybody liked this man and he could be annoying and pushy but she lets his accomplishments take center stage. At the conclusion of the book we have the author's note which explains to the readers that he was forced out of ALA for harassing women, that he excluded Jews and others from a resort he owned and that an award that was named after him has been rebranded. She also goes on to succinctly list all that this man did for librarianship and libraries and it is perfectly done.

[Leona · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m glad there is a children’s book about Dewey. He was a contradictory complicated person and that was somewhat addressed in the author's note and afterword. I didn’t know much about Dewey despite working in a library for almost 20 years. I became interested after reading ’A Place for Everything' (about the alphabet) which referenced Dewey briefly. It’s hard to find library books about him, ironically - for all the good he did for library systems and other innovations he seems to be just a blip. His focus, drive and lack of social skills are typical of someone with Asperger Syndrome.
I don’t know that this book would be appealing as juvenile literature but would be a good option for an assigned biography exercise. I thought the illustrations were cartoonish. I recommend this book for classroom use.

[Maria Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

With a casual feeling, conversational, present tense text and bold illustrations, this book examines the creative, perhaps obsessive, drive of Melvil Dewey to organize and make a difference in the world. Determined to fix the "hodge-podge" manner in which colleges and libraries organized their collections, Melvil created the Decimal System still used today. The book also examines his push to create a school of librarians, the American Library Association, and other achievements.
The author's note briefly discusses the personal and professional censure of Dewey because of his racism, anti-Semitism, and harassment of women. A timeline, a primer on the Dewey Decimal System, and sources round out this fascinating book.

[Janie Emaus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alexis O'Neill is an accomplished writer and storyteller. This book showcases her ability to tell a story about a complicated man in a simple form that young readers can understand and enjoy. The text is both humorous and educational. I believe in today's world it is so important to learn about how things worked before everything went virtual. The illustrations are a perfect compliment to the text. This book should be every library.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the effort to make a child-friendly book that doesn't paint Melville Dewey as a hero. There are hints that Dewey is a misogynistic jerk but really, based on my own reading about Dewey, I'm not sure that it's actually possible to write an accurate AND elementary friendly picture book biography about him. If you feel a burning need to have a biography of Dewey for children, this is a good choice.

[Bethe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Learned a lot about Dewey, a controversial figure who made great contributions to libraries, but wasn’t a very nice man. Love that this aspect is detailed in the back matter of the book. Love that the direct quotes are marked in the source materials. Colors and illustrations are perfect for the book.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well crafted picture book biography of an extremely accomplished and seriously flawed man who did much to establish my profession. Wonderful dynamic illustrations by Edwin Fotheringham reflect Dewey's nonstop approach to organizing and improving. Sadly, Dewey's flaws were deep and much more than annoying.

[Heidi Doyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great introductory book about Melville Dewey that doesn’t hide his quirkiness or his annoying traits. As a librarian who hasn’t ditched Dewey, this is a great addition to my unit on the Dewey decimal system.

[Ellen L. Ramsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book written by one of my favorite authors. The book focuses on why and how Dewey created the library classification system, but also acknowledges his "odd, annoying, and often unacceptable" behavior.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good introduction to Dewey's important contributions to library organization, librarianship standards, and education of librarians. O'Neill offers a well-rounded portrait in noting Dewey's considerable flaws, too, in his harassment of women and bigotry.

[Julie]

Speaking as a children's librarian, I'm not sure why we need a biography of Melvin Dewey. Not a fan of the typography or illustrations, but appreciate the author's note about the controversy surrounding Dewey.

[Norkett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting as it was news to us he led the charge for free libraries and so much more. Unfortunately, he had a dark side but the book was very informative and had more information about him at the end and what a mark he made.

[Marlene Wagman-Geller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Letter to Librarians.

Delightful investigation on Dewey-a great but flawed man. A love letter to librarians and bibliophiles. The excellent written text is complemented by engaging sketches.

[Andréa]

Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss.