• Q:  Do bats really do the things you show in the bat books? 

A:  No, I’ve taken a lot of license in the illustrations.  Bats can’t walk on their feet, for instance, and it would take an awful lot of bats to be able to move or lift a real book.  But it’s fun to think of our familiar world from a very different point of view.

• Q:  Why is that little bat wearing water wings?  Isn’t that the same one from Bats at the Beach?
  
  A:  Yes, it’s the same bat.  I call him Little Bat, and I gave him the water wings (you might call them floaties or swimmies) so that readers could see the different things he was doing over the course of the night at the beach.  It’s a way of marking him.

• Q:  But why does he still have the floaties on?  They’re not at the beach in this book!
  
  A:  Have you ever seen a little girl in a princess dress at the grocery store—and somehow you know there ISN’T a birthday party going on?  Little Bat really likes his floaties, and they’re sort of a security blanket for him.

• Q:  What’s happening when Little Bat jumps over that broken bridge? 
  
  A:  If you read a lot of books, you’ll know what it’s like to forget that you’re actually holding a book in your hands, and to feel as though you’re actually IN the story with the characters (if you’ve never had this experience, it means you need to read more books!).  Look at the illustrations before and after Little Bat is on the horse, and you’ll figure it out! 

• Q:  The library in the book looks real.  Is it? 
  
  A:  Yes, it’s the Riverside Public Library, in Riverside, Illinois.  My father grew up in Riverside, and when I was a kid, we drove out from New Jersey and visited my grandparents every few years.  I used to visit the library, and it’s still one of my very favorite library buildings anywhere.  I’ve changed the layout of some of the rooms in the book, in order to make it work better with the story, and to simplify the pictures.  The outside of the building looks the way it does in real life, though.

• Q:  Why are the young bats misbehaving in the library? 
  
  
• A:  They don’t know any better.  I remember libraries feeling like enormous playgrounds—with icy cold water fountains, and fun things to climb on.  My childhood library, in Princeton, NJ, had a broad spiral staircase with a real garden in the center of it, which changed from time to time.  Sometimes the center garden had a pond or fountain with real water bubbling in the center —indoors!