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The Wolfbat
Professor Shen is a scientific genius or a madman, depending on who you ask. He brings a hibernating Wolfbat back from Antarctica and revives it, determined to discover the secrets of nature and life itself. The Wolfbat gradually reveals its wisdom and strange superpower, and develops a special friendship with dinosaur obsessed Lily, who learns its language. But the adults are distrustful of the creature, especially when it seems to have swallowed the young girl. Time is running out for Lily and her best friend to save the Wolfbat’s life...
160 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 13, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 2, 2025
Antarctica calls to a sleepy Chinese scientist in the middle of the night, and at the very same time a little girl at home is having the exact same dream about a creature that should not exist. That is the moment I knew this book was doing something special.
I was not expecting a full on sci fi adventure wrapped inside a children’s book about Chinese science teams, dinosaur obsessed kids, and an ancient creature that can think in hibernation, but that is exactly what The Wolfbat is doing and it is so much fun. It feels big. It feels cinematic. And it also has a very soft heart in the middle, which is what made me like it.
The hook is wild right from page one. A legendary Chinese scientist, Professor Shen, drags a whole team to Antarctica because of a dream. Not a satellite photo, not a lab report, a dream. Everyone is cold, sunburned, grumpy, and wondering why they followed this man to the end of the earth, and then he tells them, very calmly, that he saw a creature with a wolf head and bat wings calling to him. I love how the author lets them doubt him. They complain, they roll their eyes, the poor dentist moans about his tooth. It is funny, but it also sets up what the book wants to talk about. Genius sometimes looks like madness before it becomes proof. That is a great idea to put in front of young readers.
Then we get the best scene. Shen hears the call in his head, walks ahead of everyone, finds an ice cavern that looks bottomless, and jumps. Everyone thinks he has gone crazy, but he has actually responded to a telepathic signal from an ancient being that has been waiting for 65 million years. That whole chapter is so atmospheric. Dark, echoing ice, a huge sleeping body, the scientist scrambling over the skin like an ant, lifting an eyelid that feels like wet cotton and finding an eye that has seen whole ages of the earth. I got goosebumps. The creature, Ai Mo, is both pathetic and grand. It is huge and powerful, but it has been trapped in time, lonely, thinking, talking to itself for ages, and suddenly here is a human smart enough to hear it. That is such a beautiful meeting.
I also liked that the story is not told from only one side. While Shen is doing reckless science in Antarctica, far away in China there is a little girl, Lili, who is having the same dream. She sees a pterosaur like creature fall, thinks a tyrannosaur will eat it, tries to wake it up, and the creature opens its luminous eyes and thanks her. It even tells her its name. She calls it the Wind God Pterosaur without ever having seen that term in a book. That is such a clever parallel. A giant prehistoric intelligence is reaching two people at once, an adult scientist and a child who still believes. It makes the story feel like destiny, not accident. And it makes Lili important in a way girls will love. She is not tagging along. She is connected.
As a beta reader, I want to praise how well the author balances science talk and wonder. There is real science in here. We hear about Siberian mammoths that must have been flash frozen. We hear about Pompeii and how Shen once reconstructed the story of a thief frozen with his gold. We hear about amber with two ants and how that helped him predict an earthquake. All of that is there to make us trust him. He has been “crazy” before, and every time it turned into a discovery. So when he says, I found a creature that is not a dinosaur, has wolf genes and bat membranes, and can distort space, we believe him. That is smart writing. It prepares the reader to accept the biggest fantasy piece.
Emotionally, the part that got me was Ai Mo’s voice in between the chapters. This ancient being is talking like someone in a dark room who is tired of being brave. It says things like, I have waited for so long, I am neither alive nor dead, I can think but I cannot move. It misses dinosaurs and calls them innocent. It wonders if any of them survived. It calls humans higher life forms but laughs at how weak they are in body. It even worries that Professor Shen does not have enough inner energy to help. That gives the whole book a tender, slightly sad tone under the adventure. The wolfbat is not a monster. It is a survivor asking for help. That is a very Chinese feeling in the story, this respect for old things, this urge to rescue the endangered, this sense that time itself is a character.
The characters around them are written with humor. The dentist who keeps complaining. The team members who are sunburned and have tiny stones stuck to their faces because of the polar wind and cannot even peel them off without taking skin with it. Lili’s mom who is so done with dinosaur talk and falls asleep while her husband is describing Jurassic ecosystems. Dean Chen who is a world class physicist with his shirt buttoned wrong. These small comic touches stop the book from becoming too serious and will make kids laugh. They will see their own teachers and parents in these adults.
What readers should take away from this, besides the coolness of finding a brand new prehistoric species under Antarctic ice, is the idea that listening matters. Shen listens to his dream. Lili listens to hers. The institute listens to Shen, even when he is demanding a freezer the size of a hall at one thirty in the morning. Ai Mo listens to their thoughts from inside the ice. Everybody is listening across time and distance. That is why the connection works. If one person had said, this is nonsense, the story would have stopped. That is a lovely, quiet message for children who have big, strange ideas. Keep them. Someone is listening.
From a craft angle, three things really work. One, the double storyline, Arctic expedition and city family. That lets the book jump between frozen danger and warm domestic scenes, and it keeps the pace lively. Two, the choice to make the creature telepathic. That allows the author to explain high level concepts, like spatial distortion and inner energy, without dumping science on the page. The wolfbat can just think it. Three, the way tension is built. First it is just a dream. Then a cavern. Then a fall. Then a real body. Then the freezer mission. Then we realise the creature is not dead. Every chapter increases the scale. That is very good plotting for middle grade.
Why should people read it. Because it is a rare Chinese children’s novel that puts Chinese scientists at the centre of a global level discovery. It says, yes, we can be the ones who find the ancient mind. We can be the ones who rescue it. It mixes polar exploration, dinosaur love, family warmth, and a brand new mythical animal in one story. And it does it with charm. I finished it feeling genuinely delighted, a bit awed by the 65 million year patience of Ai Mo, and very fond of Lili, who just wants to go to Antarctica to meet the creature from her dreams. That is a feeling I would love to pass on to young readers.
I was not expecting a full on sci fi adventure wrapped inside a children’s book about Chinese science teams, dinosaur obsessed kids, and an ancient creature that can think in hibernation, but that is exactly what The Wolfbat is doing and it is so much fun. It feels big. It feels cinematic. And it also has a very soft heart in the middle, which is what made me like it.
The hook is wild right from page one. A legendary Chinese scientist, Professor Shen, drags a whole team to Antarctica because of a dream. Not a satellite photo, not a lab report, a dream. Everyone is cold, sunburned, grumpy, and wondering why they followed this man to the end of the earth, and then he tells them, very calmly, that he saw a creature with a wolf head and bat wings calling to him. I love how the author lets them doubt him. They complain, they roll their eyes, the poor dentist moans about his tooth. It is funny, but it also sets up what the book wants to talk about. Genius sometimes looks like madness before it becomes proof. That is a great idea to put in front of young readers.
Then we get the best scene. Shen hears the call in his head, walks ahead of everyone, finds an ice cavern that looks bottomless, and jumps. Everyone thinks he has gone crazy, but he has actually responded to a telepathic signal from an ancient being that has been waiting for 65 million years. That whole chapter is so atmospheric. Dark, echoing ice, a huge sleeping body, the scientist scrambling over the skin like an ant, lifting an eyelid that feels like wet cotton and finding an eye that has seen whole ages of the earth. I got goosebumps. The creature, Ai Mo, is both pathetic and grand. It is huge and powerful, but it has been trapped in time, lonely, thinking, talking to itself for ages, and suddenly here is a human smart enough to hear it. That is such a beautiful meeting.
I also liked that the story is not told from only one side. While Shen is doing reckless science in Antarctica, far away in China there is a little girl, Lili, who is having the same dream. She sees a pterosaur like creature fall, thinks a tyrannosaur will eat it, tries to wake it up, and the creature opens its luminous eyes and thanks her. It even tells her its name. She calls it the Wind God Pterosaur without ever having seen that term in a book. That is such a clever parallel. A giant prehistoric intelligence is reaching two people at once, an adult scientist and a child who still believes. It makes the story feel like destiny, not accident. And it makes Lili important in a way girls will love. She is not tagging along. She is connected.
As a beta reader, I want to praise how well the author balances science talk and wonder. There is real science in here. We hear about Siberian mammoths that must have been flash frozen. We hear about Pompeii and how Shen once reconstructed the story of a thief frozen with his gold. We hear about amber with two ants and how that helped him predict an earthquake. All of that is there to make us trust him. He has been “crazy” before, and every time it turned into a discovery. So when he says, I found a creature that is not a dinosaur, has wolf genes and bat membranes, and can distort space, we believe him. That is smart writing. It prepares the reader to accept the biggest fantasy piece.
Emotionally, the part that got me was Ai Mo’s voice in between the chapters. This ancient being is talking like someone in a dark room who is tired of being brave. It says things like, I have waited for so long, I am neither alive nor dead, I can think but I cannot move. It misses dinosaurs and calls them innocent. It wonders if any of them survived. It calls humans higher life forms but laughs at how weak they are in body. It even worries that Professor Shen does not have enough inner energy to help. That gives the whole book a tender, slightly sad tone under the adventure. The wolfbat is not a monster. It is a survivor asking for help. That is a very Chinese feeling in the story, this respect for old things, this urge to rescue the endangered, this sense that time itself is a character.
The characters around them are written with humor. The dentist who keeps complaining. The team members who are sunburned and have tiny stones stuck to their faces because of the polar wind and cannot even peel them off without taking skin with it. Lili’s mom who is so done with dinosaur talk and falls asleep while her husband is describing Jurassic ecosystems. Dean Chen who is a world class physicist with his shirt buttoned wrong. These small comic touches stop the book from becoming too serious and will make kids laugh. They will see their own teachers and parents in these adults.
What readers should take away from this, besides the coolness of finding a brand new prehistoric species under Antarctic ice, is the idea that listening matters. Shen listens to his dream. Lili listens to hers. The institute listens to Shen, even when he is demanding a freezer the size of a hall at one thirty in the morning. Ai Mo listens to their thoughts from inside the ice. Everybody is listening across time and distance. That is why the connection works. If one person had said, this is nonsense, the story would have stopped. That is a lovely, quiet message for children who have big, strange ideas. Keep them. Someone is listening.
From a craft angle, three things really work. One, the double storyline, Arctic expedition and city family. That lets the book jump between frozen danger and warm domestic scenes, and it keeps the pace lively. Two, the choice to make the creature telepathic. That allows the author to explain high level concepts, like spatial distortion and inner energy, without dumping science on the page. The wolfbat can just think it. Three, the way tension is built. First it is just a dream. Then a cavern. Then a fall. Then a real body. Then the freezer mission. Then we realise the creature is not dead. Every chapter increases the scale. That is very good plotting for middle grade.
Why should people read it. Because it is a rare Chinese children’s novel that puts Chinese scientists at the centre of a global level discovery. It says, yes, we can be the ones who find the ancient mind. We can be the ones who rescue it. It mixes polar exploration, dinosaur love, family warmth, and a brand new mythical animal in one story. And it does it with charm. I finished it feeling genuinely delighted, a bit awed by the 65 million year patience of Ai Mo, and very fond of Lili, who just wants to go to Antarctica to meet the creature from her dreams. That is a feeling I would love to pass on to young readers.
November 2, 2025
This book reads like boards are already drawn. Opening in blue white Antarctic light, scientist in red jacket, complaining support team, then the drop into the ice cave and the reveal of a creature the size of a small aircraft is pure screen. The telepathic voice of Ai Mo gives you instant voiceover. Cut from the frozen cavern to a warm Chinese apartment where a little girl wakes up from the same dream and sketches the animal she saw. Intercut those two strands and you have pacing for an animated feature. The secondary characters are written broad enough to animate easily, the dentist, the distracted physics dean, Lili’s sleepy mom, even the snow burn on the team’s faces is visual.
What makes it stronger for adaptation is the emotional core. Ai Mo is not a monster to be killed, it is an intelligent, lonely survivor asking to be helped out of the ice. That is straight into the How to Train Your Dragon and Iron Giant emotional space, but with a Chinese research institute and an Antarctic backdrop. You even get a ready made child viewpoint character in Lili, who wants to meet the creature she dream talked to. So you have wonder, science, family, and a never before seen animal design in the same story. That is a combination you do not get often in children’s fiction.
What makes it stronger for adaptation is the emotional core. Ai Mo is not a monster to be killed, it is an intelligent, lonely survivor asking to be helped out of the ice. That is straight into the How to Train Your Dragon and Iron Giant emotional space, but with a Chinese research institute and an Antarctic backdrop. You even get a ready made child viewpoint character in Lili, who wants to meet the creature she dream talked to. So you have wonder, science, family, and a never before seen animal design in the same story. That is a combination you do not get often in children’s fiction.
November 4, 2025
This is the kind of book you hand to the kid who already knows the difference between a pterosaur and a dinosaur and keeps correcting adults.
What makes The Wolfbat fun for that crowd is that it admits right away that this creature is weird and does not fit neatly into existing charts. Professor Shen says what he found is not a dinosaur, not a dragon, and not a mammal, but something ancient that mixed traits and then survived by freezing itself. For dino nerds, that is catnip. It is basically saying, “Here is a new branch your encyclopedias did not show.” And it is a Chinese team that finds it, not a Western museum. That matters.
Lili makes it even better. She dreams the creature first, recognises it, gives it a name, and does all of this without a single grown up explaining it to her. Kids who sketch dinosaurs in their notebooks will see themselves there. The book is telling them, if you keep paying attention to prehistoric life, you could be the first person the creature talks to. That is a very cool promise.
What makes The Wolfbat fun for that crowd is that it admits right away that this creature is weird and does not fit neatly into existing charts. Professor Shen says what he found is not a dinosaur, not a dragon, and not a mammal, but something ancient that mixed traits and then survived by freezing itself. For dino nerds, that is catnip. It is basically saying, “Here is a new branch your encyclopedias did not show.” And it is a Chinese team that finds it, not a Western museum. That matters.
Lili makes it even better. She dreams the creature first, recognises it, gives it a name, and does all of this without a single grown up explaining it to her. Kids who sketch dinosaurs in their notebooks will see themselves there. The book is telling them, if you keep paying attention to prehistoric life, you could be the first person the creature talks to. That is a very cool promise.
November 2, 2025
I love when a kids’ book thinks in IMAX.
The Wolfbat does that. It hands the big discovery moment to Chinese characters, lets a girl be the one who actually gets it, and never once apologises for mixing science talk with dream logic. The mood is chilly and glowing at the same time, which makes it such a fun read aloud you can boom the creature’s voice and then laugh at the grumpy grown ups.
The Wolfbat does that. It hands the big discovery moment to Chinese characters, lets a girl be the one who actually gets it, and never once apologises for mixing science talk with dream logic. The mood is chilly and glowing at the same time, which makes it such a fun read aloud you can boom the creature’s voice and then laugh at the grumpy grown ups.
November 5, 2025
Big brain science meets ancient sky lizard and I am here for it.
Telepathic creature, kid who actually understands it, adults scrambling to keep up vibes immaculate.
Telepathic creature, kid who actually understands it, adults scrambling to keep up vibes immaculate.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews