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Find a listing of the latest arrivals of books, audio and video items at the Wauwatosa Library, as well as information on upcoming events and staff suggestions for timely information you can use every day on the library’s blog.
July 2008 - Posts
By Wauwatosa Public Library
Wednesday, Jul 9 2008, 09:31 AM
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To all of you who linked to the Wauwatosa Public Library’s recent online survey through WauwatosaNOW.com and offered your comments and suggestions, thank you. Within 24 hours of posting it, more than 1,000 people had completed the survey. Once again, I found myself humbled by the generosity of this community. I’m very grateful for the time and thought you gave to completing the survey. We are in the process now of compiling the data and comments/suggestions for our planning committee and Board of Trustees. Your help was so important. Thank you.
Mary Murphy, Director
Wauwatosa Public Library
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By Wauwatosa Public Library
Tuesday, Jul 1 2008, 09:25 AM
 A popular choice for summer gardens is the sunflower (Helianthus Annuus). It’s easy to grow and the large flower with its distinctive rows of seeds is both beautiful and useful. Did you know that people have been growing sunflowers for over 5,000 years? Some archaeologists believe that the sunflower may have been domesticated even before corn.
Sunflowers were grown by Central American cultures in Mexico and Native Americans around the Mississippi valley. Spanish explorers took the exotic plant back to Europe sometime around 1500, where it became popular as an ornamental plant. Developing sunflowers as a commercial crop for oil and seeds began in Russia in the 1800s. By the 1900s, sunflowers had come back home to the United States and they were a lot bigger than they were when they left!
Native sunflowers have many small flowers and are considered a weed in some states. What most people think of as a sunflower today is mostly the result of breeding for seeds and oil. The cheerful face of a blooming sunflower has an undeniable appeal, as you can see on calendars, coffee mugs and in summer gardens everywhere. If you’d like to learn more, a great book on the history of sunflowers is Sunflowers: the unauthorized biography of the world’s most beloved weed by Joe Pappalardo.
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By Wauwatosa Public Library
Tuesday, Jul 1 2008, 09:23 AM
Books
America America by Ethan Canin
Cheeses of Wisconsin: a Culinary Travel Guide by Jeanette Hurt
 Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
Freewheelin’ Time: a Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties by Suze Rotolo
My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekov to Munro
 O, the Oprah Magazine Cookbook: 175 Delicious Recipes to Savor with
Friends & Family
Physics of NASCAR: How to Make Steel + Gas + Rubber = Speed by Diandra Leslie-Pelecky
Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan
Uniquely Felt: Dozens of Techniques from Fulling and Shaping to Nuno and Cobweb by Christine White
We Would Have Played for Nothing: Baseball Stars of the 1950s and 1960s Talk
About the Game They Loved by Fay Vincent
Audiobooks on CD
 Death and Honor by W.E.B. Griffin
Not in the Flesh by Ruth Rendell
One Minute to Midnight by Michael Dobbs
Other by David Guterson
Rogue by Danielle Steel
Music on CD
Bring Back the Funk/Brian Culbertson
Grammy Nominees 2008
South Pacific: the New Broadway Cast Recording
Violin Concertos/Schoenberg, Sibelius/performed by Hilary Hahn
 Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends/Coldplay
DVDs
Jumper
Persepolis
Puccini Gold
Semi-pro
Walk Slim. Fast & Firm: 4 Really Big Miles
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By Wauwatosa Public Library
Tuesday, Jul 1 2008, 09:13 AM
 Children’s literature throughout the ages and across cultures has depicted complex relationships between humans and animals. Dogs are typically portrayed as helpful and protective whereas wolves are shown as dangerous, even deadly. Lassie and Old Yeller gave their lives for their human friends. The wolves in Little Red Riding Hood and White Fang, on the other hand, viewed humans as food.
Two books by Jennie Bidner, Is Your Dog a Wolf? How Your Pet Compares to its Wild Cousins and Is My Cat a Tiger?: How Your Pet Compares to its Wild Cousins explore the differences between dogs or cats and their relatives in the wild. Bidner writes that the way to understand our pets is to study their wild counterparts in nature.
Cats, lions and tigers have more mixed representation in children’s books. It is not unusual for children’s books to have cat characters that are naughty or even downright dangerous, such as the menacing feline in The Improbable Cat by Allen Ahlberg. Interestingly, lions are sometimes portrayed as sympathetic towards humans. Consider Androcles and the Lion, for example. In her novel for children, Tiger, Tiger, Lynne Reid Banks depicts the friendship between a Roman slave and a tiger.
Bidner writes that it is much easier to train a dog than a cat, although it is possible to train a cat to do tricks as long as the cat is rewarded with food. Dogs are easier to train because they are pack animals. Dogs need training to become well-behaved members of a household.
The Milwaukee Dog Training Club will present two programs with real dogs in the Firefly Room of the Wauwatosa Public Library on Thursday, July 31 at 10:00 am and 1:30 pm. This program is appropriate for students in Kindergarten through 8th grades. No registration is required. For more information, call the children’s library: 414-471-8486.
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