Batty

Dyer’s story has a clever visual gimmick, but offers many other charms, as well. Batty is a zoo-dwelling, long-eared bat; Dyer (Monster Day at Work) draws Batty’s flowery pink snout and crenellated ears with a folk-naïve earnestness that extends to her bundled-up zoogoers and loosely developed backgrounds. Zoo visitors tend to drift past Batty toward the more popular, talented animals; he tries hanging out with the eager-to-groom gorillas and the raucous birds in the aviary (“it is far too noisy for his sensitive ears”), but he doesn’t fit in. The gimmick? The spreads in which Batty watches the other animals are upside-down, as a hanging bat would see them, with intervening spreads right-side-up—an entertaining way of representing Batty’s point of view. Batty’s talent, it turns out, is for making friends; the animals he’s visited (and a new human friend, too) are all hanging upside-down in his enclosure when he gets back. Dyer’s understated humor, both in her text and artwork, makes for a winning take on the be-true-to-yourself theme. Ages 3–6. (Nov.)