Finally, the bat writes a poem about a baby bat and a mother bat that he feels the other bats will appreciate. The bat then befriends a chipmunk who is a more enthusiastic audience. He works up the nerve to say his first poem to the the mockingbird who politely encourages him. Inspired by the mockingbird's songs, the bat attempts to write songs of his own, but he decides to switch to poems due to his lack of range. As a consequence, he experiences and learns a lot of things that the other bats don't, which creates a gulf between him and them. Because he is alone, he has no one with whom to snuggle and fall back asleep if he wakes up during the day, and he begins staying awake if he wakes up before dark. When the colony of bats moves from the porch to the barn in preparation for hibernation, one bat stubbornly remains behind. And then also there’s a volume called Randall Jarrell’s Book of Stories, aka The Anchor Book of Stories, the description of which begins: “Storytelling as a fundamental human impulse, one that announces itself at the moment, hidden in infancy, that dreams begin-this is what the poet and critic Randall Jarrell set out to illuminate in this extraordinary book.”Ī little brown bat begins staying awake during the day and writing poems about the daytime world. I’m looking forward to re-reading The Animal Family, and, for that matter, Jarrell’s other two children’s books, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: A Tale From the Brothers Grimm, and The Gingerbread Rabbit, which, come to think of it, I’m sure I have read, maybe more than once, but perhaps I didn’t realize it was written by Jarrell since I was more focused on Garth Williams’s illustrations. I may have read this when I was young, because I loved The Animal Family so much when I was a child, but I didn’t really remember it. Maurice Sendak’s illustrations are lovely I was particularly taken by a two-page spread of a “peaceable kingdom” sort of picture late in the book. The poems are lovely the story itself is written in the spare style common to poets, so every word has a place, and the book is quite short (I think it could easily be read and even savored in half an hour, even though it’s not a picture book). Of course, once convinced to listen, both the mockingbird and the chipmunk like hearing the poems about themselves, as we are all prone to greedily enjoy observations of ourselves. First, the mockingbird, then the chipmunk, both of whom are the subject of poems by the bat, who was initially inspired by the singing of the mockingbird.

Our furry brown hero begins staying awake during the day (when all the other bats sleep), noticing other animals. Besides being a perfect vehicle for a poet to share their gift with children, The Bat-Poet also ends up being a paean to bats in general.

Poet Randall Jarrell’s story of one small, extraordinary bat who sees the world differently from the other bats.

The Bat-Poet by Randall Jarrell