Bats in Books Part II

How can we help kids avoid chiroptophobia—fear of bats—and grow to appreciate the diverse and talented members of the order, Chiroptera? Cyd from Field Marking comments in Bats and Books Part I that her family plays tennis (of a sort) with bats on balmy evenings. We haven’t tried that yet; my son has taken a more artsy craftsy approach. Eli has built a bat box, sculpted bats out of clay, and been a bat on Halloween. And not just any bat, but a scorpion-devouring pallid bat from the desert southwest. Clearly, creepiness isn’t always a negative in kid-bat relations.



Maybe the plethora of bat children’s books is beginning to assuage old prejudices and fears. Bats at the Beach, a fanciful, rhyming picture book hit the New York Times best seller list last summer. Furry, mouse-faced bats rendezvous on a moonlit shore to fly kites, sing by the campfire, and toast bug-mallows. Much of the humor relies on un-batlike behavior (e.g., bats applying moon-tan lotion), but art which School Library Journal calls “dark yet luminous” introduces young readers to a world after dark that’s festive, not frightening. Author Brian Lies’ website goes further, with bat facts, activities, and a teacher’s guide to music, science, writing, and other enrichments to the text. The site also invites kids to concoct pseudo-bat treats from marshmallows, gummy worms, pretzels, licorice, chow mein noodles, etc., and post photos of their creations in the Bugmallow Hall of Fame.

Here are a few more favorite bat picture books:
Barbara Bash’s Shadows of the Night follows the life cycle of little brown bats from spring births in an attic maternity colony to six months huddling in a hibernation cave.
Betsy Maestro’s Bats: Night Flyers is a fast-paced overview of bat
distribution, anatomy, behavior, and ecology, described in jargon-free but scientifically accurate prose.
Bats: Outside and Inside is part of Sandra Markle’s successful series that looks closely at animal behaviors and the anatomy that makes them possible. Photo illustrations range from a vampire bat lapping up chicken blood to a mom-baby fruit bat pair that is awwww-inspiring.
Bats! Strange and Wonderful is by prolific kids’ nature writer Laurence Pringle. While presenting a crash course in bat biology and behavior, Pringle dispels myths and emphasizes the ecological values of bats to underscore his urgent message of bat conservation.

Titles for older kids are even more varied. For artsy kids like Eli, there’s The Bat-Poet, by Randall Jarrell. It’s a wise fable about a little brown bat who sees the world differently than his friends and writes poems to share his vision. My middle schooler loves another fantasy novel, Silverwing (Kenneth Oppel), in which the questing hero in a talking animal universe is a runty bat. Reality-book fans might prefer Batman: Exploring the World of Bats. That's Laurence Pringle’s young adult biography of Merlin Tuttle: mammologist, photographer, and revered bat advocate who founded Bat Conservation International. Kids and adults can sign up at the BCI website for a free monthly newsletter, get plans for a bat house, access outstanding photos by Merlin Tuttle himself, register to visit a Mexican free-tail maternity colony near BCI's Texas headquarters, and buy books, dvds, bat t-shirts, and more.


Soon, I hope, BCI’s online store will be carrying my own contribution to bat literature. It's the aptly titled upper-elementary-level Bats, just published by NorthWord Books in May. If you squint at the cover image, you’ll see that author credit goes to “Julia Vogel,” a pseudonym I use so far mostly for titles in NorthWord's Our Wild World series. Research for Bats last year led me to read all of the books mentioned above and many more, as well as interview bat researchers and rehabilitators, track down local bat-watching venues, and, especially, long for a trip to Bracken Cave, home to the world's largest bat colony. I'm still watching, yearning, and reading, all part of my personal journey toward chiroptophilia.

Bats in Books Part I

Memorial Day weekend is the start of summer picnic season, and at my house at least, bat watching. What could be more relaxing after a late dinner on the deck than gazing at bats overhead, snatching bugs so that we can lounge outside a little longer?

Tonight’s rain is grounding (or tree-ing) our little brown bats, but I’m still thinking about them. It’s Rachel Carson’s 100th birthday, and I’m celebrating by writing about an insect deterrent more powerful than DDT. Researchers have calculated that bats from one cave in central Texas gobble 200 tons of insects on a summer night. Merlin Tuttle, the patron saint of bat conservation, emphasizes the pest-control value of bats to combat prejudices that lead to poisoning, shooting, and even dynamiting bats in their roosting caves. Yet fear of bats still often trumps recognition of their economic value, and killings and habitat destruction persist. Understanding that attitude change is key to bats’ survival, Tuttle founded Bat Conservation International in 1982. That makes this year BCI’s silver anniversary as well as Carson's Centennial.

I wish I knew of an action adventure tale, perhaps something like Sy Montgomery’s Journey of the Pink Dolphins: An Amazon Quest, for readers interested in bats. Despite an intense period of bat study last spring, I haven’t found any bat-centered novels, either. There are so many children’s books about bats that I’m planning a separate post about them. Here, I’ll just recommend three nonfiction works for adults that I've found quite useful:

Walker’s Bats of the World, by Ronald Nowak (1994). It’s the most comprehensive guide to the world’s 1000+ bat species, addressing taxonomy, distribution, behavior, and ecology. It features an extensive bibliography and black-and-white photos.

America’s Neighborhood Bats, by Merlin Tuttle (revised 2005). Tuttle’s spectacular photos quickly convey the diversity and grace of his subjects. Part ID key, part how-to (for tasks ranging from evicting bats from your attic and to building bat boxes for your yard), this brief book dispels myths and urges a fact-based change in public attitudes as essential for long-term conservation.

Beginner’s Guide to Bats, by Kim Williams and Rob Mies (2002). Williams and Mies are co-founders of another major bat protection group, the Organization for Bat Conservation. They focus on 45 North American species, providing range maps, habitat preferences, and typical behaviors to help you find and identify neighborhood species. I especially appreciate the state lists that narrow down the possibilities to a manageable few.


If the rain blows over, we’ll be outside tomorrow night, munching chips and checking the sky for bats. Someday, we hope a small colony will shelter inside the box my son built as a homeschool project. Eight-year-old Eli could symbolize the success of Bat Conservation International, which Tuttle says in Neighborhood Bats “was founded in the hope that when the shrouds of myth and superstition are stripped away, bats will be appreciated as fascinating and likeable animals.” Rachel Carson certainly liked them as long ago as 1944, when she published one of the first popular treatments of bat echolocation in Collier’s magazine, “The Bat Knew It First.” But Carson would also agree with Tuttle’s sober assertion, “Even more important, we need bats whether we like them or not; their loss poses serious, potentially irreversible consequences to the environment that we all must share.”