Amara and the bats by Emma Reynolds

 

 

 

2021  

Amara becomes interested in bats when one is trapped in the attic. The animal rescue comes and helps the bat.  She then moves house and visits a local park where the bat population has diminished because more and more land is being built upon.  She and her school friends raise money in order to buy bat nesting-boxes for the park. And the bats return.

The text is somewhat denser and more sophisticated than normal for the preschool child.  However, the pictures both illustrate and tell more story.

There is a lot of information about bats throughout the text and in a really dense section at the end. The caring adult who reads with the child has their work cut out.

The text uses mainly an adult serif font with difficult ‘a’s but with an easier ‘g’. Some parts of the text use a simple font, without a serif and with simple ‘a’s and ‘g’s.  These are labels on pictures and in some of the material at the end of the book. The text is ragged right throughout apart from in the back blurb and the author bio.