Bats!: Strange and Wonderful

Introduces the behavior and unique characteristics of a wide variety of bats throughout the world and mentions some reasons and ways people are working to protect them.

Bats!: Strange and Wonderful Laurence Pringle takes a fascinating look at Earth's only flying mammals in this fun and informative book. Readers will learn how bats can pluck insects from the air, and even fish from the water. They will discover how bats help giant trees and other tropical plants to reproduce, and gobble up pesky mosquitoes. They will find out, too, how they can help to protect bats and their homes. Dozens of bats swoop through Meryl Henderson's striking illustrations. The colorful art and clear, concise text together demonstrate that bats may be strange, but that they are wonderful too, and well worth saving.

School Library Journal

Gr 1-3-A lucid text describes some general physical and behavioral characteristics common to all types of bats. The ways in which these flying mammals benefit world ecosystems (e.g., through insect consumption, seed dispersal, and plant pollination) are emphasized. Vibrant, realistic watercolors of representative species extend the text on every page. Some illustrations are enclosed in boxes and superimposed on larger paintings; in most, body parts extend beyond the frames, giving them a 3-D effect. A particularly effective series of paintings shows a vampire bat's ungainly walk on its hind legs toward a sleeping cow. While this title provides information similar to that in Betsy Maestro's Bats (Scholastic, 1994) and Gail Gibbons's Bats (Holiday, 1999), its simpler text conveys complex concepts in terms that most children understand. With its appealing illustrations in an eye-catching arrangement and clearly written text, Pringle's Bats! is equal to the best introductions on the subject for this age level.-Karey Wehner, San Francisco Public Library Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Laurence Pringle has written 108 books for young readers, many of them award-winning science titles. He is the recipient of three major awards for his body of work-the Eva L. Gordon Award for Children's Science Literature, the Washington Post-Children's Book Guild Nonfiction Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He lives in West Nyack, New York-a few miles from Rockland Lake, once "the ice box of New York City."

Meryl Henderson has illustrated more than 40 books for children, including Cicadas! Strange and Wonderful and other books in the Strange and Wonderful series. She lives in upstate New York.