Three years ago, my dad bought me Brian Lies' Bats at the Beach,
a delightful picture book he'd heard discussed on National Public
Radio. Last week, while perusing the gift shop at the Tom Ridge
Environmental Center here in Erie, PA, I discovered that Lies had
written a sequel entitled Bats at the Library. Considering how
much I'd loved his first bat book - and that I'm a frequenter of the
library - I expected something delightful, and I was not disappointed.
In Bats at the Library,
the same benevolent nocturnal creatures who flocked to the beach for
some nighttime frolicking decide that their next field trip will be to
the library. The bats serve as the collective narrators in this rhyming
tale, and they explain the inspiration for their excursion: an open
window. Someone - probably inadvertently - has left the bats an entry.
There's a sense that they've done this before but that it's a very rare
treat, and for some among them, it's entirely novel. One youngster in
particular is featured on nearly every page; he appears to be wearing
water wings, perhaps an indication that the bats had been planning yet
another beach party until they got wind of the library's availability.
As with the first book, Lies does a marvelous job of making the bats
endearing, showing us the world from a slightly skewed but still very
appealing perspective. (For instance, the first page is upside-down, as
evidenced by the chimney hanging down from the roof at the top of the
page; the bats, meanwhile, appear to be standing up, when they're
actually dangling from a branch.) The bats are brown and furry,
resembling mice aside from the distinctive wings. For the most part,
they fly about proudly unadorned, though one bat - a tattered-looking
fellow with damaged wings and ears, which makes me suspect he's an elder
statesman who's been through quite a lot in his life - cheerfully
sports a pair of spectacles.
I love the poetic narration,
which has a lovely cadence to it. This pair of verses toward the middle
best sums up the magic of their outing: "And if we listen, we will hear /
some distant voices drawing near - / louder, louder, louder still, /
they coax and pull us in, until... / everyone - old bat or pup - / has
been completely swallowed up / and lives inside a book instead / of simply hearing something read." Its initial echoes of The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere
are a tip-off to the homages that will follow, though these are found
not in the text but in the outstanding acrylic illustrations, which
really tell most of the story.
This was the case in Bats at the Beach
as well, but it's even more pronounced here. While the words and
pictures work together for such activities as the bats duplicating
themselves on the copier, swimming in the water fountain and playing
inside a pop-up house, the most exhilarating details, particularly for
bibliophiles, are collected in two two-page spreads, accompanied my a
mere two lines of text. I rather wish that Lies had included, in the
back of the book, a list of all of the books to which he alludes in his
illustrations; there are about 20, most of which incorporate bats in
some manner as the eager readers imagine themselves as such characters
as Pippi Longstocking, Aladdin, Winnie the Pooh, Peter Rabbit, Arthur
Pendragon and Mr. Toad. One of the few book references without a
corresponding bat is The Hobbit, though I like to imagine a Bilbo
bat just on the other side of that attractive green door in the
hillside, eating a leisurely second breakfast.
The book is veritable treasure trove for book-lovers simple because of these four pages alone, but the rest of Bats at the Library
is also quite charming. If you want to appreciate literacy from an
unusual angle, take flight with Brian Lies' bats and prepare for
adventure.
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