The Words in Picture Books: Bat Loves the Night by Nicola Davies

In Bat Loves the Night by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Sarah Fox-Davies, we enter the liminal space between day and night and encounter one small creature that inhabits it. Nicola Davies lifts the reader into bat’s world with perfectly chosen words.

Bat is waking,/ upside down as usual,/ hanging by her toenails.

With every twitch and shake of “thistledown fur,” we move through the night with bat. I’ve never come across a better or more intuitively drawn account of echolocation.

Gliding and fluttering/ back and forth,/ she shouts her torch of/ sound among the trees,/ listening for her supper.

And when she dines on a moth, it’s all laid out in delicate detail—enough to enchant even vegetarian me!

Every page raises pipistrelle-sized mystery, then points the way to resolving it. When the night comes to an end, bat returns to roost. Perhaps the most engaging spread is the reunion with her batling—yes, batling. There’s a word to shout out loud! Even the sidebars are perfectly placed as unobtrusive asides with a conversational tone that’s distinct from the more dramatic, lyrical text.