Bats Books

This is the absolute best book ever written. It should be required reading for anyone who has at least a marginal understanding of the english language. This is the epic tale of a young girl (her name is Bat/Bab) who is a sub-deb. A sub-deb, as the book so quaintly describes it, is a little girl who has yet to come out into society. When a girl makes her debut into society, she is called an uber-deb. An uber-deb is akin to a captain in the deb army, which, by a strange coincidence, is called The Deb Army.

The story of this book revolves around the trials and tribulations involved in becoming an uber-deb. An uber-deb, as everyone knows, is a very respectable position. When one is an uber-deb, one commands great respect. Bat/Bab is a siamese twin who wants more than anything to be an uber-deb, but his/her disability prohibits this honor from being bestowed. This story is the chronicle of his/her rise from lowly sub-deb to grand uber-deb.

When I read this book for the first time, I found myself weeping hysterically as Bat/Bab was mercilessly ridiculed and insulted. The cruelity of the uber-debs reflects our own trying times of moral decline. When Bat/Bab finally overcame his/her disability, i wept again, but this time it was tears of joy. This novel gives siamese twins, such as myself, hope for a future. After all, it's not every book you find that tells our particular tale. In short, I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone in search of a tear jerking novel about the human condition and man's inhumanity to man.

I have a copy of this book that once belonged to my grandmother, and it has been a favorite of mine for years! One can't help laughing at Bab's simplicity and superficiality, and yet her genuine sweetness. It also provides a charming glance into high society of the time. As for it being a "tear-jerker", as I have seen it described by another reviewer, it is pure comedy and very lighthearted. I'm glad to find it isn't out of print!

This is the most informative bat book that I've picked up so far. Lots of great information if you love bats and want to know more about them, or fear bats and are interested in learning to love them. Lots of great photos, but not a picture book at all. Probably too wordy for little kids, but great for adults.

Why don't baby bats fall off mom bats in flight? Hmmm? The answer to this and all of your other curious musings about the most successful and least understood of the mammals are presented in this latest volume of a Smithsonian series. For children or adults, with excellent close- up photos, this one is sure to foster a growing interest in our flying relatives. About 1/4 of mammal species have winged fingers, big ears and knees turned sideways to facilitate dangling from ceilings, and that doesn't include your weird Uncle Mort! Bats occur on every continent except Antarctica, and in eco-niches as diverse as blood sucking, fruit chewing, fish nipping and insect consumption. Some are excellent mousers. Several types may live for thirty years. As mentioned in my review of THE FORGOTTEN POLLINATORS (Stephen L. Buchmann & Gary Paul Nabhan, Shearwater Books, 1996), the bats include species critical to reproduction for many types of plant, and (along with other pollinator species) many are in steep decline. Here's one little piece of brain candy from this high quality sampler: Baby bats' milk teeth (they have two sequential sets like most other mammals) are hooked and pointy. They lock on to mom's nipple like a Voskod docked to Mir. Look Ma! No hands!

All right; I hadn't planned on writing a review for this book, but no one else has, and it definitely deserves one. The characters in these many short stories are all too human, from the man who liberates his wife from her sister only to suffer the consequences of a newly independent woman, to the psychotic cowboy who laughs at his pathetic state and battles a woman who keeps her deformed son under lock and key. The situations are almost all surreal, but the characters seem like people you know, only more honest. Hannah shows us the delight people take from cruelty, but also shows us how these people are no worse than us, and their transgressions simply make life more interesting. It's been a few years since I read the book, but I constantly find myself remembering stories, characters, and even lines. Where else would you find a story about a thinly-veiled William S. Burroughs that becomes a South-American voodoo tale? Where else do you find a story that is written solely to fit to the title, "Upstairs, Mona Bayed For Dong"? Also notable is the one about the man whose friend longs for a tragic ending, but the narrator himself ends up involved with the mistress of a German Nazi in the American South. The stories' endings are also worthy of comment: never does a story end the traditional, fairy-tale way, but somehow the stranger, more cryptic endings seem perfect. I admit that there are a few I had to trudge through, but there are also enough gems to make this a necessary purchase.

I love to imagine a little mewling ANONYMOUS dope at Publishers Weekly taking Barry Hannah to task! Saying that Barry Hannah spends more time on his titles than his stories! What a cutesy, preening little canary, packed into his sad cubicle. And anyway, the titles he mentions are anything but pompous... "Upstairs, Mona Bayed for Dong." There are a lot of adjectives to describe that title, and "pompous" is far, far down at the bottom of the list. I would love to give Mr. Anonymous a fat lip, entirely metaphorically. These are big, exciting stories, whole novels crammed into compact packages, bombs of insight, literature as fireworks, dangerous and irresistible.

Fred did a great job describing our life that year. I can attest to the B-52 foul ups with TFA etc and know of the nav who inadvertently bailed out.I was eager to learn of the "Bat" training methods since ours were very informal.We did have a tactics book, but we were lucky to have very senior aircrew. Bottom line 4 missions and you go!Thanks again for the memories!Candlestick (Head Beagle)

This book takes you to the cockpit of a C-130A flying Blind Bat flare missions. I thought I knew everything there was to know about Blind Bat, but this book proved me wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. If I had to make any complaint I wish it was much longer.

Bus 9 to Paradise offers a collection of insightful and entertaining short stories, told with the wisdom of Buscaglia. Although any one of these stories could comprise an entire library of knowledge, the collection as a whole exerts a synergistic effort on the reader to explore inner feelings and emotions to which very few authors can even come close.

In this book, Leo tells us what a lot of us are afraid to say about love. The world could use the wisdom of this easy read.

This is a book for people of all ages.

Jeffrey McAndrew

author of "Our Brown Eyed Boy"

This is a great book about a lonely eagle who learns that to have a friend is to be a friend. A must for anyone who lives in, grew up in, or loves Michigan.

By the Light of the Moon is a delightful book that is sure to be enjoyed by any child who has visited Mackinac Island or Mackinaw City, Michigan. The illustrations are also wonderful!

Rebeccasreads highly recommends this Visions in Poetry version of the beloved poem vividly & thrillingly illustrated by Joe Morse.

This time we see a youth, lean & tall, with earphones attached to his CD player, watching an urban baseball game & the fans as the poem, set in cartoon clouds, plays out, just as the game does.

This is for everyone who loves baseball & the poem, which will, in its turn, become a classic.

Canadians. Is there anything they can't do? The publishing house of Kids Can Press has given the world all sorts of interesting titles, but perhaps none so interesting as those from KCP Poetry, a small poetry-laden division. Reinterpreting classic poems like "The Lady of Shalott" and "The Highwayman", someone along the way must have suggested "Casey At the Bat". But not in an old-timey handlebar moustached way. More of an inner city struggle to leave the streets behind kind of way. It doesn't sound very good, does it? I personally found it a tepid idea at best. The crazy thing is, it works. Works like gangbusters. I never really realized it, but Thayer's poem is remarkably elastic, allowing it all kinds of interesting interpretations. Take into account the beautiful binding and you've got yourself a classic work of poetry that's been reinterpreted by artist Joe Morse into an entirely original beast.

Do I really have to summarize it? The story's exactly as we've always known it. Heck, my own father has it memorized. "The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville Nine that day". Mudville is down and unless Casey can get to bat everything shall truly be lost. Fortunately Flynn and Jimmy Blake manage to get on base and Casey's up. He's up and he's hot. Heck, he even misses the first two balls for the fun of it. Then the moment comes, everyone's ready, and Casey swings like he's never swung before. "But there is no joy in Mudville - Mighty Casey has struck out". The last shot is of a dejected Casey, brought to his knees, the stands around him abandoned.

In my travels around New York, the Bronx, and Brooklyn I've never stumbled across an inner city baseball game. But in the conteest of this story, it works and I'm sure that there are some somewhere. Now the illustrations themselves are not my style, but this isn't to say that they aren't well done. First of all, you have to respect an artist who paints outside in a gas mask because his materials are so very very toxic. THAT is dedication, ladies and gentlemen. The oil and acrylic used on the paper gives Joe Morse's black a blueish tinge. Figures are exaggerated for the sake of the narrative. The pages are even occasionally split into comic book panels to sometimes allow the story the feel of a graphic novel. How well the poem adapted to its new setting is sometimes shocking. When we read that, "From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar", we wonder how else it could be taken. Ditto the surreal moment when we learn that two other ballplayers, the much maligned Flynn and Jimmy Blake are, respectively, a hoodoo and a cake. The words "hoodoo" and "cake" are written in graffiti under their headshots, giving these once archaic terms a kind of contemporary cache.

Rarely have I ever read a children's book that praised its own illustrator so highly at the story's end, by the way. Here's a bit of it: "More's images paint a compelling portrait of human nature, particularly the psychology of the hero and the crowd. Indeed, this interpretation of `Casey' transforms Thayer's caricatures into flesh-and-blood people with real hopes and dreams - and real vulnerability". The book goes on to describe how in this particular version we see Casey "ultimately confined by the batting cage and the concrete boxes of his surroundings, deserted by even his most ardent fans". Couldn't have said it better myself (and it looks as if I don't have to). Suddenly this isn't a story about a guy so full of himself that he causes his own downfall. It's about a kid who's pride gets the better of him and who ends up bitter and alone without any recourse or escape at the end of his day. Cheery.

One of the libraries in which I worked had low shelves for easy child access. At this branch I would continually display Christopher Bing's illustrated version of the Thayer poem standing on top of the shelves in the hope that someone would give it a glance. I must have put that puppy out for maybe five or six months and not ONCE did it ever get checked out. Holding Joe Morse's new version, I feel confident that if I put his book out for people to look at, it would disappear instantaneously. It's even beautifully bound. A lot of the smaller presses are favoring simple bindings without covers these days. The Vision In Poetry series, to which this book belongs, also has a lovely format with silver piped words along the spine. Classy city.

So let's sum up. You want to get your kids interested in some classic poetry but you don't know how? Hello, answer to your prayers! I may not have mentioned this before, but not a single word in this book has been changed to suit its new station. It's the classic poem in its original form and done in such a way that it reads like it was made yesterday. Poetry has never been better packaged for the kiddies. This is a poem that has a lot going for it. Even if you're not a fan of the art or the format, you have to respect its energy. An amazing idea and an even better result.

My oldest son loves to lay in his bed and read stories with Daddy just before lights out. I found this book for them when they'd just started their nighttime ritual and knew my husband would love it. He's always loved to play sports and is very excited about sharing that love with his sons. This version of Casey at the bat is so beautifully illustrated - it really takes you back in time. Turns out that I enjoy listening and looking at the pictures just as much as my two year old. It's the kind of book you know will be saved and handed down. My husband loves it so much that when we were recently invited to a birthday party he suggested it as our gift. You can't go wrong with this version, it's great.

When you can take a classic and apply it 100 years after it was written, then you know you've truly written a piece of art. This is by far one of the best illustrated books for this poem that I've ever seen. It's partially a cartoon, but partially real life so it really makes for a great story and not just a poem. I've read this over and over again and my little one wonders why on earth Casey let the first two balls get by without even trying. What an educational little poem for little ones and even adults. The illustrations alone are worth the cost of this book, especially when they show smoke coming from Casey's ears! Since it is a classic, I think this should be in every little one's library and what a great way to introduce some education without them even knowing it. I didn't study this poem until the 6th grade, but with publications such as this, little guys and gals can get ahold of it much earlier. If you have a little leaguer in your life, this book would be a fabulous gift. Even mighty Casey, talent and all can strike out! Highly recommend!

Insightful! Full of excellent relationship advice. It was written a long time ago, so substitute the word "marriage" to "relationship". Amazing! Now I understand!

What amazed me about this book is how down-to-Earth it is. It was originally published more than 50 years ago, yet it does not read like a manual from a bygone era, with no relevance to today. It simply talks about what most people in marriage are trying to achieve, and the very real challeneges that come at them and that they put before themselves. It doesn't preach and it doesn't propose to have all the answers. And Chapter 4, "Choosing a Mate", should be required reading for everyone.

I read several "how to plan a Bar Mitzvah" books and this was the best. It was well written and well organized. Just about all my questions were answered within this one book. I recommend this book for anyone planning a Bar or Bat Mitzvah.

This is a fantastic guide! It coveres every aspect of the process in a easy to understand fashion. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would highly reccommend it to everyone.