Bats at the Beach

June 1, 2006
PreS-Gr 3 -This is the quintessential book about going to the beach complete with overflowing picnic baskets, kite flying, singing around the campfire, and scratchy sand in places -where no sand should be. - Kids will certainly identify with the exuberant and familiar fun, but what will get them howling is the fact that the characters are bats that are visiting the beach in the moonlight. The rhyming text is grounded in reality with many inventive twists to keep the imagination rolling. There is moon-tan lotion, salted -skeeters, and bat kites. Where the book truly soars is in the dark yet luminescent art where bat wings glow in the light of the full moon and the sky is a steely blue. The faces on the bats are furry and friendly. These creatures use cocktail umbrellas for beach umbrellas; they hold wing-boat races in red-and-white checked food containers; and when it -s time for a late-night snack, they enter the ice-cream shack where a lit light bulb attracts a multitude of succulent bugs. Readers may not be tempted to try marshmallows with bug legs and gossamer wings but that won -t keep them from reveling in this grand adventure." -Martha Topol, Traverse Area District Library, Traverse City, MI"

Copyright 2006 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2006
K-Gr. 2. The trope of a day at the beach is turned on its head with a family of bats that spend a night there, complete with "moon-tan lotion." Young bats play with "the stuff [they] find" and bury each other in the sand; older ones sing around the campfire and toast "bug-mallows" (an episode accompanied by a slightly icky image of marshmallows with legs and wings). The rhyming text, which floats white against the dark backdrops, leaves no beach activity or experience unmentioned, right down to the unpleasant feel of itchy sand "where no sand should be." The acrylic paintings are appropriately dark but never muddy, and the gently anthropomorphized bats, every strand of fur sharply delineated, follow in the cute-but-still-batlike tradition of " Stellaluna " (1993). Readers will be swept right along until the sun comes up and the bats return home: "We sigh and snuggle close together / to dream about the moony weather." (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)