YA29: Memoirs of a Bookbat

Posted by: Emily on: March 5, 2005

• In: Books
• Comment!

I thought I was scheduled to work today, but it looks like I’m not, so I’m going to try to take advantage of some extra found hours and catch up on my homework so I can meet up with Dad & Jane in SF tomorrow.

First off, another great YA book to add to the pile:

Memoirs of a Bookbat
Kathryn Lasky
Harcourt Brace & Company, San Diego: 1994
215 pages

I had enjoyed Kathryn Lasky’s Star Split, but until I looked back on my blog entry just now I had forgotten that the author was a friend of Lisa’s!

The official summary is that “Fourteen-year-old Harper, an avid reader, looks back on her life and realizes that her parents’ public promotion of censorship has grown into a quest for control over her choices and decisions.” She has to hide her books from her born-again fundamentalist parents, who move around the country crusading against unfit books in schools. It fits wonderfully in my “Books and reading – Fiction” subject heading goal and sprinkles in the children’s books that help Harper get through her life (Brer Rabbit, Tom Sawyer, Narnia, Judy Blume, etc.)

Just that afternoon at the library storytime, Nancy had read a beautiful poem about a baby bat being born. It described bats’ “sharp ears, their sharp teeth, their quick sharp faces.” It told how they soared and looped through the night, how they listened by sending out what the poet called “shinging needlepoints of sound.” Bats lived by hearing. I realized, standing in front of Nettie right then, that when I read I am like a bat soaring and swooping through the night, skimming across the treetops to find my way through the densest forest in the darkest night. I listen to the shining needlepoints of sound in every book I read. I am no bookworm. I am the bookbat. (31-32)

PW explains, “In this very smart (and somewhat acerbic) book, Newbery honoree Lasky ( Double Trouble Squared ; The Night Journey ) combines fictional characters with real-life authors and religious groups (such as Operation Rescue) to create a credible and entertaining story of an emerging independent thinker.” School Library Journal was less impressed, calling it “a problematic story with a cast of disappointing, one-dimensional characters and a plot that misses the mark.” Booklist agress, writing: “Thinly disguised as a novel, this is an essay about the danger of the religious Right. Characterization is minimal: the fundamentalists are all caricatures of fools and villains. The free-thinking teenage narrator looks back at her life with her weird, religious parents and sees that reading books has made her wise and humane and broad-minded; even as a young child, she learned from Brer Rabbit to be cunning and to hide the books her parents crusaded against.” Kirkus hit closer to how I felt about the book, writing: “Lasky’s obvious sympathies are sure to strike a responsive chord among the like-minded; her many specific references to children’s literature enrich Harper’s accessible first-person narrative. “

Ages 12-up, Grade 6-9

It would be great in a display of censorship/intellectual freedom/Bill of Rights/decision making/family & duty related books. From Hinton to Hamlet also puts it in the categories of “The Wise Old Woman or Man. This figure protects or assists the character in facing challenges.” — Harper’s grandmother and various authors serve in this role — and “The Hero. The main character leaves his or her community to go on an adventure, performing deeds that being honor to the community. The journey of the hero.” The book, Using Literature to Help Trouble Teenagers Cope with Identity Issues includes the chapter “Identity through Self-Awareness: Kathryn Lasky’s Memoirs of a Bookbat.” I can imagine, however, that the book would not be popular among certain groups.