A charming book! My husband found this and gave it to me for Christmas. I'm delighted that he did. This would be a wonderful introduction to poetry for children. It is a lovely story of a bat who wiles away his time writing poems about the creatures around him. It has really beautiful illustrations as well. A great starting place for children to begin to write their own poetry. ( )

I read this in a Junior Great Books, w/out illustrations, and it was lovely & powerful & funny even there.  If I'm ever lucky enough to find the stand-alone book I would enjoy reading it again.  Jarrell is under-rated; do seek out his other works as well as this. ( )

Watch the Bat-Poet learn about poetry, write his own (middling) poems, and eventually become a master bat-poet. This is a fun, charming, lovely book. ( )

The summary of the book is almost a bit off-balance since there weren't that much other birds fluttering around but the book was cute with the characters that were in it while catching the beauty of a natural world we don't take the time to stop and think about the way of its other inhabitants.

I wouldn't suggest the book to young children since some of the words and concepts would go over their heads even though they would love the pictures. Instead this would be a good for a bit older audience, especially those who are learning poetry for the first time.

The story covers the fact there is a colony of bats who roost on the roof of the porch. One day the rest of the bats get a wish to retire to an old barn while this little bat the color of coffee with cream just doesn't understand why. Instead of following the others he chooses to stay where home is for him.

By not following the others of his kind he finds himself wanting to explore an unknown world that is full of beauty although also not making sense to him. And the little brown bat is also trying to find his place and a way of explaining himself to others. This is definitely one of those good coming-of-age stories. ( )

I love Randall Jarrell and if you haven't read The Animal Family, you should. From a teacher view point, The Bat-Poet is such a good read aloud to accompany any poetry unit. Poetry is a hard concept to teach children when you try to convey why people write poetry. The Bat-Poet is entirely about why one writes poetry and how they pick their subjects. And best of all, this book is short, you could read it aloud in a few days. The book is so well written, so descriptive, each word so carefully chosen, that it almost feels like poetry itself. You will find the careful thought put into word choice makes it a very smooth read aloud. ( )