Enthusiastic Bats Play Ball in Brian Lies' Bats at the Ballgame

We’re creeping up on Halloween, and one of the animals most associated with that spooky holiday is the bat. Hence, when I saw recently that Brian Lies, who has already written and illustrated two adorable books imagining the secretive nighttime wanderings of bats, had come out with a new picture book, I jumped at the chance to read it. Well, I would have no matter what the month was; these books are thoroughly endearing. But the close proximity to Halloween made the book even more irresistible.

Brian Lies, whose previous books include Bats at the Beach and Bats at the Library, takes on the national pastime in Bats at the Ballgame, which involves a large gathering of bats at a baseball field, where one team of underdogs dreams of glory. As with his previous books, the illustrations are wonderfully detailed, with expressive characters who couldn’t be further from terrifying. Yes, the book takes place in the dark and so everything looks a bit shadowy, but the bats are as cute and fuzzy as any mouse in the Charming Tails line of figurines. You just want to reach into the pages of the book and hug them. Or at least I do.

Bats at the Ballgame is narrated in rhyme, from the perspective of a spectator rooting for the losing team. The rhyme and rhythm are consistent, the wordplay clever, and Lies incorporates several references to the classic baseball poem Casey at the Bat. Additionally, traditional baseball elements get the bat treatment. For instance, “A flying vendor flutters near. / ‘Mothdogs! Get yet mothdogs here!’ / Raise a wing and catch a snack: / ‘Perhaps you’d like some Cricket Jack?’” Other parts of the book feel more universal, such as this stanza, which taps into the nostalgia and sense of intergenerational connection that baseball can inspire: “Grandbats talk of better times, of fields and heroes past. / Their thoughts slide homeward through the years, across eternal grass.”

As great as the narration is, the acrylic paintings are the best part of this book. The bright-eyed bats watch the game with rapt expressions; I especially love one illustration of a young bat reaching out plaintively to his bespectacled grandfather, a ball caught on the fly clutched in his wing, clearly worried that his team is going to lose horribly. Also noteworthy is the series of sepia-toned images representative of Grandpa’s memories of the game when he was young. Meanwhile, there are expansive two-page spreads showing that everyone in the audience is watching the game upside-down, and the ability of the players to glide to the next base makes the game even more exciting.

Of the three bat books that Lies has published thus far, Bats at the Library is my favorite, since it contains so many clever references to great works of literature. But Bats at the Ballgame is a wonderful addition to the series, especially for those who have soft spots in their hearts for baseball.

Bats at the Library Offers a New Perspective on Classic Literature

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.

Stellaluna Explores the Beautiful Mystery of Friendship

Ever since the day when I visited my great-aunt's house as a toddler and witnessed a bat frantically flapping from a little-used room when she opened the door, I've had a fascination for the maligned nocturnal creatures. So I couldn't help but be drawn to Janell Cannon's celebrated Stellaluna, which tells of a little fruit bat who loses her way after she and her mother are attacked by an owl and ends up in the care of a bird, who insists that she behave like the rest of her children, denying her innate batty ways.

Because bats tend to rank with spiders, snakes and other creepy-crawlies as creatures that generally don't receive much public approval, it may seem a strange choice to write a story about one. But Cannon is drawn to these misunderstood mammals, and her vibrant illustrations actually manage to make Stellaluna even more lovable-looking than the birds she comes to think of as siblings. We see her wings as the graceful apparatus they are, and we gulp along with her when she cowers under the mother bird's glare, clinging to the nest by her thumbs and promising not to teach her nest mates any more bad habits.

Every page of text features a tiny pen-and-ink drawing of a bat going out into the world and meeting various other creatures. I have my suspicions as to the identity of this bat but will keep them to myself since they reveal a key plot point if I am correct. The main illustrations, however, are in full glorious color, detailed and expressive with pale brown bats and birds standing out against deep blue skies.

The story turns out to be one of tolerance, of learning that it's okay to be different, that you are the way you are for a reason. It's very much an Ugly Duckling story except that while the mother bird is harsh toward Stellaluna, her pseudo-siblings are kind, even wanting to emulate their new friend's strange habits. The story is told in fairly simple but lyrical prose ideal for a bedtime read-aloud; school-age children won't find too many troublesome words to trip over, and the lesson on bat biology in the back enhances the book's educational value.

"How can we be so different and feel so much alike?" one of the birds wonders late in the book. "I think this is quite a mystery," another chirps. It's no mystery why children have flocked to this gentle story despite the fact that bats are not generally seen as residents of the realm of cute and cuddly. Cannon helps us to see that all creatures are beautiful. If children can be taught to respect the differences of those with feathers, fur and wings, can a more understanding approach to their fellow humans be far behind?