Gr 4-6‘The plot of this book sounds like the perfect adventure for a noble hero: a dangerous journey with a cryptic map and a trusty companion. But here's the catch: the hero is an undersized bat. Shade, a newborn Silverwing, is separated from his colony during their winter migrations. With the help of an exiled Brightwing, he must find his colony and save them from marauding cannibal bats imported from the tropics. In an author's note, Oppel writes that he "liked the challenge of taking animals that many might consider `ugly' or `scary' and fashioning them into interesting, appealing characters"; he has done just that with Shade and his comrades. While these characters are not particularly well rounded, readers will sympathize with the young bat's sometimes foolhardy efforts to prove that he's more than the colony runt, and the villains‘fire-carrying owls and six-foot, flesh-eating bats‘will keep even reluctant readers engaged. However, the greatest strengths of this story lie in its fast-paced, cliff-hanging action and its setting within the hollow trees and bell towers of the bats' monochromatic nighttime world. Recommend this one to fans of Avi's Poppy (Orchard, 1995); they won't be disappointed.‘Beth Wright, Edythe Dyer Community Library, Hampden, ME (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(Intermediate) Michael Dorris's adult novels Yellow Raft in Blue Water and Cloud Chamber chronicle the deceptions and betrayals that nearly destroy a family, generation after generation. Yellow Raft in Blue Water moves from the present generation of fifteen-year-old Rayona back through two generations of women on her maternal side, while Cloud Chamber opens in nineteenth-century Ireland and moves forward through five generations of Rayona's paternal family. Whereas these two books convey how suffocating and harmful relationships can be, The Window throws itself open to the strengths of familial bonds. From the moment eleven-year-old Rayona sits by the window waiting for the return of her frequently delinquent mother, this novel pulsates forward with an energy and wit that never falters. In lively contrast to Dorris's more somber historical novels for children, the seemingly cocky but vulnerable and emotionally needy Rayona narrates this short novel with a breezy, spunky voice. When her Indian mother does not return from her latest binge to declare their usual "National Holiday" (on which she and Rayona can eat breakfast for supper and practice being best friends), Rayona's philandering black father informs her that her mother has checked into a rehab center, but that he is unable to care for Rayona. Her foster placement with the relentlessly cheerful Potters (Rayona is amazed to discover that "there are actual people like this who aren't on a weekly sitcom") proves short-lived and disastrous; placement with the stolid Mrs. Jackson turns to unexpected fun for them both but is likewise cut short. Rayona senses that her father, in talking with her about his family (with whom she will live next) is "leaving something out, some detail, some secret within a secret, but I am so anxious to find out what happened next, to get to the 'me' part, that I let it go by." The Window is all the "me part," keeping the exuberant narrator squarely in the middle as she finds her place in the secrets of her family. Rayona soon learns that her grandmother (her father's mother) is white-a fact he tells Rayona when he is taking her to meet her grandmother for the first time. Rayona resolves not to miss another word for the rest of her life. Sitting in the window seat of the airplane, she understands that she will never again "be able to look out a small window and see [her] whole world from it." With the introduction of Rayona's great-grandmother, the ancient and proper Mamaw, her sensible and wise Aunt Edna, and her grandmother Marcella (a "vanilla Hostess cupcake" of a woman), Dorris's novel becomes yet more unguarded as these three women embrace their young relative with unconditional love. No scene feels more genuinely celebratory than when her aunt and grandmother travel west with Rayona to return her home. Having installed a device atop their car to provide cool air-a contrivance that re-quires the windows to be rolled up-the three must shout to be heard, causing a cacophony of "beg your pardons." When Grand-mother opens the window, thinking to be chastised but instead winning the approval of everyone as the cooler sails away, all three break into hilarity and song. Without glos-sing over the hurt and pain of parental abandonment, this novel of open win-dows is a joy, a "national holiday" to which we can return any day of the week. s.p.b. Picture Books Marc Brown Arthur's Computer Disaster; illus. by the author (Preschool, Younger) Arthur knows he's not supposed to be using his mother's computer, but the lure of Deep, Dark Sea, "the greatest game in the universe," is irresistible. Predictably, the computer breaks; luckily, it's easy to fix; reassuringly, Mom is not mad, just disappointed. She decrees that there will be no computer gaming for a week-at least for Arthur: "'I'll be right up,' called Mom. 'As soon as I blast these skeletons from the treasure chest.'" "Adapted by Marc Brown from a teleplay by Joe Fallon," this story of mild disaster followed by mild reproof will be a pleasant diversion for fans of the popular TV personality. r.s. Eve Bunting Ducky; illus. by David Wisniewski (Preschool) David Wisniewski's Caldecott-winning paper-cutting talents get a comedic workout here, illustrating Bunting's slightly sly text about a plastic duck who, along with thousands of fellow bathtub toys, is washed overboard when a storm hits the freighter ferrying them across the ocean (Bunting supplies a note about the factual event that inspired the story). The duck tells the story ("Our ship has disappeared. The sea is big, big, big. Oh, I am scared!"), including an unfortunate encounter with a shark ("It shakes its head and spits us out. I expect we are not too tasty, though we are guaranteed non-toxic") and the basic existential dilemma of a bathtub toy out of its element: "I wish we could swim and get away. But all we can do is float." The ocean's currents eventually bring the duck to shore alongside many of his compatriots, and he finally achieves his destiny, floating in the security of a bubblebath. This is an out-of-the way excursion for both author and illustrator, and if Wisniewski's pictures are sometimes too weighty for Bunting's buoyant text, they are certainly splashy enough. r.s. H Peter Collington A Small Miracle (Younger) The creator of On Christmas Eve (reviewed 11/90) revisits that significant night in another masterfully executed wordless picture book. The artist's trademark sequential frames make the experience of turning the pages like watching a movie; this time it's a gripping, matter-of-factly magical story of charity and selflessness rewarded. In the midst of a bustling, prosperous contemporary village, a desperate old woman loses every-thing when she sells her sole prized possession-her accordion-and then is robbed. On her way home, she encounters the same thief attempting (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A small bat's curiosity touches off a war of extermination against all his kind in this action-packed odyssey from the author of Dead Water Zone (1993). In satisfying his desire to catch just a glimpse of the sun, young Shade defies a punishment imposed millions of years before when bats refused to fight in the Great War Between the Birds and the Beasts. In swift retribution, owls burn the ancient nursery of the silverwing bats, forcing them to depart early for Hibernaculum, their winter roost. A sudden storm blows Shade away from the flock; in the chase to catch up, he meets Marina, a faithful companion of another bat species; acquires a nemesis in Goth, a huge, seemingly indestructible tropical bat with cannibalistic tendencies; escapes capture above ground and below; encounters a host of allies and enemies; and finds several mysteries to pursue--why other animals are so ready to wipe the bats out, what the silver bands humans give some bats portend, and especially what became of his banded father. Replete with appealing characters, scary adversaries, bat lore, natural history, unanswered questions, and conflicting theologies, the story takes on a promising epic sweep; readers will look forward to the sequels that Oppel's ending guarantees. (Fiction. 11-13)

Oppel (Dead Water Zone) turns to animal fantasy with this mostly absorbing adventure story about a bat named Shade, the runt of the Silverwing colony. Although Shade is small for his age, he is curious and a bit obsessive, in some ways a Jonathan Livingston Seagull of the bat community. He longs to see the sun, strictly forbidden to the bats by the other animals; he even wishes to bring sunlight to his colony, as "the greatest gift of all." His obsession, he learns later, was shared by his missing father, who thought Humans would help bats return to the daylight. His actions cause their bitter enemies, the owls, to burn his colony's nesting site just before the bats migrate south. Shade is separated from the others during a storm, and the bulk of the narrative chronicles his attempts to rejoin them. Along the way, he meets and befriends Marina, a bat of another species, driven out by fear of the band that Humans have placed on her wing. Together they escape a squad of pigeons, marauding owls and carnivorous bats seeking to return south to the jungle, among other hazards. This epic journey is gripping, and details of bat life are inventively and convincingly imagined, though Shade's (and other bats') quasi-religious yearnings and struggles over tolerance, intellectual freedom and other abstractions get a little too much emphasis. As in Watership Down and other examples of this genre, the animals provide a conduit for their creator's social concerns. Ages 8-12. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved