Resource Links – April 23, 2018
BAT CITIZENS, DEFENDING THE NINJAS OF THE NIGHT
By Rob Laidlaw
ISBN: 978-1-77278-039-0
Rating: E
“Did you know that over 20 percent of all the mammal species in the world are bats?”
Readers of any of award winning Rob Laidlaw’s previous books will agree with the description on the jacket cover of Bat Citizens: Defending the Ninjas of the Night “Rob Laidlaw has devoted his life to protecting animals and empowering others to do the same.” One of the ways that Rob protects animals and empowers others is by producing excellent information-packed books.
Bat Citizens combines an impressive amount of research about bats with snapshots of many ‘bat citizens’, children and young adults, helping bats world-wide. Rob states in his introduction “Bats are disappearing because of threats like habitat destruction, roost disturbance, disease, and wind turbines.” The purpose of the book is to inform readers, to think good things about bats, and to provide inspiration and advice to help bats.
One of the many ways to help bats is to understand them. The comprehensive chapters ‘It’s a Bat World’ and ‘Unbelievable Bat Biology’ explore bats, their lives, habitats, and biology. There is a tent making bat!.. and a bat that fishes! The Mexican free-tailed bat weighs less than a quarter! Vampire bats do exist!
The following chapters ‘Bats for a Healthy World’, ‘Bat Challenges and Solutions’, ‘Being a Friend to Bats’ explore bat problems and solutions. Each chapter highlights individuals helping bats such as American Truth Muller who started Buddies for Bats to raise awareness of the importance of bats and the negative effects of white nose syndrome and Northern Ireland’s Dara McAnulty who builds bat boxes for schools, gardens and local organizations and contributes his bat detecting data to scientists. Each chapter’s easy to read text is enhanced by colourful photographs, and side bars with catchy titles like ‘Batty Ideas’ and ‘Bat Facts’. The book concludes with a glossary, an index, and photo credits.
This book is highly recommended for both school and public libraries. Each ‘Bat Citizen’ article could be a starting point for individual or group projects, such as learning mapping software to study local bat ranges, conducting experiments to understand echolocation, building bat-houses in shop class for the school, and community. Students could host a bat festival educating and encouraging others to understand bats. The world needs bats.
Thematic Links: Bats; Bat Conservation; Animal Activists; Animal Welfare
— Laura Reilly
