Blog Posts by Subject: Animals

After a short hiatus, I hope to bring another joyous book recommendation! 

The Pic Pick of the day is Hugs from Pearl By Paul Schmid.

Have you ever wanted to do something that makes others feel better, but don't know how to do it?

Sometimes things that are easy for some people can be very difficult for others.

Dog stories was the January theme for Mixed Bag: Story Time for Grown-Ups, the read-aloud program I do on Wednesdays at lunch-time every other week. (I promised to read cat stories later this year in rebuttal.) Most of the stories I chose to read in January were selected from the book The Best Dog Stories. Since I included a list of 25 

On Saturday, December 3, 2011, Phyllis Newman, the Tony-award winning actress and illustrator of What's New at the Zoo? by Betty Comden, came to the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building's South Court Auditorium to read from the book. Kids from PS 212 sang the book, which is actually the lyrics to the song in a Broadway Show, 

Hey animal lovers! Yeah, I'm looking at you.

Welcome to Truth is Stranger than Fiction — an occassional BiblioCommons list devoted to special topics in non-fiction. The focus of this month's list is on quirky animal stories! From elephants to oysters, pandas to puppies, there is sure to be a story to make even the greatest of grinches smile. 

For most of us, it would be quite difficult to just hop over to Australia to spend time with a 

Silence in this court, here comes the judge, this court is in session.

Jen and I will attempt to judge the book Whales on Stilts by M.T. Anderson by its cover and its cover alone.

Rob says: The ocean has dried up and the earth is a vast desert wasteland... and the whales are quite angry about it since they don't have legs. June 8, 

Once a month, the Mulberry Street Library hosts R.E.A.D. with Mudge, a special program in which children read aloud to a registered therapy dog and licensed handler. Named in honor of the national Reading Education Assistance Dogs program and Cynthia Rylant's beloved boy and dog books, Henry and Mudge, Mulberry's Street's team is made up of the wonderful Kimberly Wang and her amazing dog Theo. We recently caught up with Theo's owner 

Once a month, Beth Neuman and her dog Forest, an 11 year old toy poodle, volunteer at Ottendorfer Library’s Paws ‘n’ Books program. The literacy program offers children ages six and older the opportunity to read aloud to a four legged friend for 15 minutes, helping to boost their reading confidence. We interviewed Beth before one of their Paws 'n' Books sessions.

NYPL: How did you meet Forest?

Eleven years ago a friend I worked with 

The first Earth Day was proclaimed on April 22, 1970 by one of its principal founders, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. Already frustrated by the attitudes of big business, Senator Nelson, as the chairman of the White House Conference on Small Business, wisely noted that "the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around." He became greatly influenced by John McConnell, a grassroots organizer from San Francisco and Harvard graduate student, Denis Hayes. He asked the latter 

Do you plan to come to the next Handmade Crafternoon on March 5th to make your own tiny avian sculpture with artist Abby Glassenberg, author of The Artful Bird? Want to brush up on bird characteristics in advance?  Then the Library's Digital Gallery is a great place to spend some time.  Here 

Some fine feathered friends named Putter, Topper, Hedwig and Evie dropped by the Tottenville Library this week and they didn't look like our typical library visitor. Their beautiful feathers and razor sharp talons wowed Staten Islanders of all ages as Environmental Educator Bill Flynn and his assistant Henry brought a little bit of their Connecticut nature center to NYC.

The Brown Pelican (Pelcanus Occidentalis) is described on many web sites as one of seven or eight species of pelicans with a wing span over 7 feet...

It is the smallest of all the pelicans. One of the features that make this brown bird so distinctive is its large bill; when resting, the neck bends in two places. Standing out from the pack, the Brown Pelican dives directly into the water, beak first, for its food. The habitant of the Brown Pelican is along coastal waterways.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology captured the sights and sound of the

On September 5, 1928 ten-year-old Nathaniel Fludd’s parents are declared lost at sea. Alone in the world with no other close relatives and a governess eager to abscond with her Tidy Sum from the Fludd estate, Nathaniel is sent to live with Phil A. Fludd–a mysterious cousin Nate has never met, let alone heard of in Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist: Flight of the Phoenix by R. L. LaFevers with illustrations by

Although I don’t keep bees, I’ve lately found myself being drawn into their curious world—looking into New York City’s beekeepers; investigating honeybees in history, literature, design, and in the kitchen; even incorporating 

My friend and I have a longstanding debate over whether kangaroos run or hop. Regardless of who is correct (I am), it’s true that many urban dwellers develop a curious understanding of the natural world. Here’s a small sampling of how some people, city folk and others, relate to animals or view the animal kingdom.

Marina Belozerskaya’s The Medici Giraffe: and other tales of exotic animals and power (Little Brown, 2006) has a truly striking cover, I even had someone on the train comment 

With new technologies that can make images of molecules, biology has been returning to its origins as a visual science, according to Moselio Schaechter, writing on his blog Small Things Considered. Biologists can now “see” how an enzyme works or how macromolecules interact with molecules large and small, and the revolution is leading to a specialist field called Structural Biology. The visual origins of biology are abundantly illustrated in the holdings of The New York Public Library, including