Young Readers & Read-To

Little Bat can't wait for his first night of school. He is excited about everything: his new school supplies, learning amazing things, and making new friends.

But when he finally arrives, his world turns upside down.

Any little bat who's tried something new or gone somewhere they've never been before knows that first times can be scary. With the help of Little Bat and his adorable classmates, readers will see that spreading your wings is easy when you listen, act with kindness, and take a chance on new friends.

With his signature, gorgeous artwork, New York Times bestseller and Caldecott Honor winner Brian Lies brings his expressive bats back for the youngest readers.

Hardcover, 32 pages, ages 4-7 years.

Illustrated by Carly Allen-Fletcher. Text by Gordon McMillan. The tube-lipped nectar bat is the pollinator of a pale, bell-shaped flower found in the Ecuadorian cloud forests. First discovered in 2005, the bat is the only known pollinator of a pale, bell shaped flower called Centropogon nigricans . Due to the length of the bloom, no other animal can reach the nectar which rests at the flower's base. This is the story of one such bat and her nocturnal search for this rare flower whose nectar sustains her.

Carly Allen-Fletcher is a freelance illustrator living and working in the Midlands, UK. She studied Illustration at Loughborough University. Her work explores the combination of digital painting and traditional media, creating images by layering graphic shapes with painted textures and handmade elements. She is inspired by nature and geometric forms. In 2015 she won a silver prize (1,000 pounds) from the UK Association of Illustrators in the "London Spaces and Places" category. Carly is also the author/artist of two board books, Goodnight, Seahorse and Goodnight Forest. View her work here: http://carlydraws.com/ Gordon McMillan is an artist and writer living near Nashville, Tennessee who looks at everything from board games to textbooks as sources of inspiration. He is the author/illustrator of the children's book Scout, published in 2021.

The launch of a picture book series about the adventures of a book-loving bat and his buddies as they patrol and protect their library home. Hardcover, 32 PP. 

Booker the bat has completed his training and he's excited to report for duty as the newest guard at the Joanina Library in Coimbra, Portugal. His job is to fly through the stacks at night, gobbling down the bugs that are in turn eating the 200,000 antique leather books. It's the perfect job for Booker, because he loves to read. And now he's saving books! 

There's only one problem: how will he fit in with the other guards? They're so cool and confident, and what if they don't like him? But when Booker spots a human attempting to steal pages from one of the valuable books, he summons his courage, (echo)locates the other bat guards, and swoops in with a plan to save the day!

This creative thinking book promotes awareness and concern for these gentle and beneficial creatures. It is designed to help children think about bats and the issues facing them. By taking the time to foster this understanding in our young conservationists today, we will be saving a place for wildlife tomorrow.

This work of narrative nonfiction includes a 4-page For Creative Minds section in the back of the book and a 30-page cross-curricular Teaching Activity Guide online. Bat Count is vetted by experts and designed to encourage parental engagement. Its extensive back matter helps teachers with time-saving lesson ideas, provides extensions for science, math, and social studies units, and uses inquiry-based learning to help build critical thinking skills in young readers.

Katie Gillies, Director of the Imperiled Species Program at Bat Conservation International (www.batcon.org), and Catherine J. Hibbard, White-nose Syndrome Communications Leader with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, contributed by verifying the accuracy of the information in this book. 32pp, pb, early reader.

At the beginning the little bat is sleeping snugly on the porch with all his fellow creatures. But they move to the barn at the end of the summer and he suddenly does not see why he should go to the barn when he really wants to stay on the porch. He remains on the porch (alienation!) even though he sorely misses the others. And he also begins to feel the free curiosity and adventure of the creative spirit: the little bat stays awake in the daytime and looks about him. He ponders the coarse song of the mockingbird and wonders if he could sing too. He finds that he cannot do very well with the song, but feels drawn toward the creation of the words for songs. The first efforts of the bat-poet are judged adversely by the standard of bare reality, but he continues..

The few poems have a gravity and a melancholy sweetness. The mockingbird is an accomplished technician, able to instruct the bat in his craft. "The next-to-the-last line's iambic pentameter, and the last line's iambic trimeter," he explains at one point. In the most natural way certain critical concepts about poetry and also about the nature of the poet are brought into this little tale. The chipmunk says about poetry that "when it has all the things you do, you can't help liking it." At the end the bat-poet returns to his fellow bats, to sleep snugly with them again. Since it is the purpose of his poetry to tell them about themselves he cannot be separated from them forever or he would become unreal and shallow.

Mr. Jarrell's book is wise and childlike. The child who understands its lessons will be wise and they are easy to understand because they are found in life. The Sendak illustrations are beautiful, dark, wonderfully still and magical, in an old-fashioned way..

44pp, softbound.

A beautiful box of New York Times best-selling Bats books. Includes three captivating stories about the nighttime exploits of a crew of nocturnal adventurers--Bats at the Beach, Bats at the Library, and Bats at the Ballgame. With gorgeous illustrations to pore over and lyrical, rhyming text to read aloud, these books are made for repeat performances. 6 1/2 by 8 1/2 inch hard bound books. Includes a sheet of stickers.

Lies, who has ushered bats through a night at the library, the beach and the ballpark, invites a colony into a playhouse after lights out. There, he carves out a piece of the small hours for his readers, that strange time of collywobbles and spooky quiet. The playhouse is anything but, as the bats have decided to light up the dark with "a little night music." In tuneful couplets laced with fluid if demanding words like "sitar" and "improvise," the bats get busy with jazz--is that Dizzy, with those cheeks?--and rock--is that Leon Russell, in Uncle Sam's hat?--and a camellia-adorned bat woman with a broken heart: "Her feelings fill the room with blue," a room that Lies has draped with indigo. The paintings are full of mood and spot-lit color, the bats upside down and right-side up, the rhyme both casual and emotive. There is no doubt that Lies has made an effort to please adult readers with plenty of allusions: In what passes as their dusk, a bat takes his fiddle to the roof. But the bats never fly over young readers' heads. They are there to entertain, and that they do!