The Great Dewey Hunt (Mrs. Skorupski Story)

Great story to read with kids!

As am elementary librarian I love this story helps me teach 2nd grade the Dewey Decimal System.

I love the story and will use it during media class.

Fun

Love it

Every School library should won this book Toni Buzzeo is a master of all things.

As a school librarian, I find Buzzeo's depiction of librarians insulting. I do not appreciate her feeding the wingnut, crazy lady associations. It is unprofessional. This book would be great without the references to the librarian's odd appearance and nutjob ways. Buzzeo must have very low self-esteem. That being said, the rest of the book makes for a good read aloud. I will use with students in grades 3 & 4 while teaching about Dewey, shelf markers and shelving correctly.

This book reads more like an illustrated lesson plan than an actual story. I had just introduced my 2nd graders to Dewey classification and thought this book might be a nice way to expand on the foundational knowledge we'd built. Instead, I think it muddied the waters. Here are some (hopefully) constructive criticisms:1) This is not exactly a standalone book. It's part of a series, and there's no refresher if you're not already familiar with the characters and settings.2) The book is unusually long and poorly paced, for a picture book. I had multiple students raise their hands in the middle of the story and ask, "How much longer until the end?" Not a good sign.3) As I mentioned, the book is really more like an extended lesson plan (i.e., how to carry out a Dewey Decimal scavenger hunt) than an actual story with, you know, story elements: inciting incident, rising action, climax, etc.4) Even some of the examples of Dewey classification given in the book seem poorly chosen. For kids just learning Dewey for the first time, I wouldn't spend so much time lingering on the 000's, which is such a bizarre and nebulous category. Trying to explain an abstract concept like "general knowledge" to seven-year-olds is a slippery task. Instead, I would have liked to see more straightforward, concrete examples that young readers could grasp, e.g., the 400's are about languages. The 500's are where you can learn about space. Period.PROS: For a school librarian, this may actually be worth reading--to yourself. It might give you some inspiration for your own Dewey scavenger hunt or just give you another perspective on how to explain library classification to children.CONS: Not a good read-aloud by any stretch, and probably not accessible to younger learners (e.g., grade 2). If you're going to use this with your students, try grade 3 or 4.