When I Lived with Bats

Hello Reader Level 4

by Faith McNulty, Lena Shiffman (Illustrator)

A girl describes how she spent a summer observing the bats around and inside her house and what she discovered about their characteristics and behavior. By the creators of Dancing with Manatees. Original.

Genres: Animals

48 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1999

About the author

Faith McNulty was an American nonfiction author, probably best-known for her 1980 book The Burning Bed. She was born "Faith Corrigan" in New York City, the daughter of a judge. Young Faith attended Barnard College for one year, then attended Rhode Island State College. But she dropped out of college once she got a job as a copy girl at the New York Daily News. She later went to work for Life magazine. She worked for the U.S. Office of War Information in London during World War II.

McNulty was a wildlife writer at The New Yorker magazine for several years. In 1980, a collection of her New Yorker work was published as The Wildlife Stories of Faith McNulty. For many years, she edited the annual New Yorker compilation of the year's best children's books.

She also frequently wrote children's books on wildlife, including How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World in 1979 and When I Lived with Bats in 1998. Her 1966 book The Whooping Crane: The Bird that Defies Distinction was written for adults.

Her husband, John McNulty, was also a writer for The New Yorker and with Thomas Wolf, Truman Capote, and Gay Talese, a major figure in the development of the literary genre of creative nonfiction, which is also known as literary journalism or literature in fact. After her husband died in 1956, she remarried, to Richard Martin, a set designer and an inventive designer of set props.

The Burning Bed told the true story of Francine Hughes, who set fire to the bedroom in which her husband was sleeping. Hughes defended herself by saying that her husband had been abusing her for 13 years. The jury at her trial ruled that she had been temporarily insane, and she was found not guilty.

"I can remember my father in his nightshirt, digging for worms for the baby robin in the bathroom. That's the kind of household it was; I had woodchucks in the bathroom, cats, squirrels, chipmunks," McNulty once said.

Toward the end of her life, she wrote a weekly column for The Providence Journal on a local animal shelter run by the Animal Welfare League. Her mother had founded the Animal Welfare League in southern Rhode Island. McNulty had long been known for taking in stray animals at her farm.

She suffered a stroke in 2004. She died at her farm in Wakefield, Rhode Island.

Reviews

[我是🌹 · Rating 4 out of 5]

So bats aren't or haven't been one of my favorites...until now.

This book has a warm and inviting approach to all things bats. The combination of fiction mixed with the non-fiction based facts, makes for a very friendly and enlightening experience. The characters being very true to life and relatable in many instances, gave the story a strong sense of familiarity (to many of those supersitious tales, i.e. bats being evil and dangerous) while drawing in the reader's involvement in the family's somewhat of an unwanted adventure in housing a family of bats.

I truly enjoyed it, and...I also learned a lot about bats, despite my age (don't judge me). This book was exciting, engaging and so heartwarming in many parts. My favorite portion was toward the end, where the brother realized by his overreacting and uncalculated response, it put the baby bats in far more danger than if he would have just left them alone, even though they were in his family's attic. And it was here, where I saw myself a great deal in the actions of his mom. Although these bats may not necessarily be in their "true" environment or habitat-inside of your home instead-it doesn't make any sense to kill the creature if they're not bringing any type of harm or danger towards you.

Bats maybe creepy and scary even, but the truth is, unless it's a vampire bat species (which deliberately bites humans) then they are for the most part, harmless and feed on either insects or fruits; and they're kind of cute, seeing that they do resemble that of a mouse. (Or maybe it's just the book's illustrations)

Overall, I think this book was well written and excellent for both reader's, young and young at heart.

So always remember, looks sometimes can be deceiving; what may appear to be harmful and untrustworthy, simply because of its appearance, could very well be a sweet and loving creature, who is just looking for a warm & cozy place to call its' home.❤️

[Todd LaMontagne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Synopsis: When I Lived with Bats is a Level 4 Hello Reader and recommended for grades 2 and 3. Written by Faith McNulty and illustrated by Lena Shiffman, When I Lived with Bats is the story of a ten-year-old girl and her family who rent an old farmhouse one summer. The book is part memoir and part non-fiction science text. Filled with interesting facts about bats, the book also tells the interesting story of how the narrators young brother learned a valuable life lesson, when he hurt a bat that had been nesting with other bats in the attic of the old farmhouse. The boy, who decides to go off on an adventure to "hunt" bats breaks the wing of a nursing bat when he hits it with a tennis racket. They take the bat to a veterinarian who advises the boy that he will be able to save the bat but not in time to save its nursing baby. Understanding that he has been the cause of the death of the bat's baby, the young boy vows never to hurt an animal purposely again. The Hello Reader series is a collection of leveled readers that are designed to help young readers select books that are appropriately complex and challenging.
Themes/Curriculum Connections: Animals, bats, life lesson, non-fiction.
Age/Grade Recommendation: Elementary

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

unedited review

quick notes:
-pretty art, cute bats
-lil preachy, IMO
-evolutionary theory is mentioned
- some facts misleading "bats are the only flying mammals". technically true, but may be more accurate to say bats are the only mammals that use wings to fly, or that they fly while there are other animals that glide. as a child, id assume that if I heard "bats are the only flying mammals" means they are the only ones who can be in the air.
-very basic overview of bats
-theme seems to be you shouldn't be afraid of bats and you shouldn't hurt them


read this as a filler book for my reading challenge. 2.5 to 3. interesting read, felt a little preachy, but idk if thats just because im me, and bc im an adult.

[Carli Erickson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book would be great to teach students more about bats and mammals. While the book is a realistic fiction story, there are many facts and details given about bats that are very educational. This book also gives young readers a longer book to read with fairly easy words, helping them to read for longer and increase knowledge about a topic.

[Tammy Knowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book When I Lived With Bats, by Faith McNulty is about a little girl that lived with her family in a rented farmhouse. As the days went on the family begin to notice bats flying through out their house and all over their yard. Eventually the whole family got use to seeing the bats. This book would be good for teaching students about bats and mammals.

[Deborah Harris]

AR Quiz No. 36449 EN Nonfiction
Accelerated Reader Quiz Information IL: LG - BL: 3.8 - AR Pts: 0.5
Accelerated Reader Quiz Type Information AR Quiz Types: RP