First review for BATS AT THE BALLGAME! A starred review in Publishers Weekly (July 22):

Baseball stadiums have an innate magic, never more so than in the hands of Lies, whose latest has the winged creatures gathering for an epic game, complete with “beenuts and Cricket Jack,” and an upside down audience. Smooth, unhurried rhymes illuminate a hidden world where bats, like humans, “feel a magic shift,/ and ride the currents of the game/ as time is set adrift.” Each gleaming page is thick with detail, from the bats' first arrival (“We wing from dark to dazzling bright,/ startled by the stunning sight”) to the final play. Fans of the other baseball bats will certainly enjoy these ones. Ages 3–7. (Sept.)

• Bats at the Ballgame has a September publication date, but it has an official release date of July 28th. It will begin showing up in bookstores in August. I’m going to do book events around the U.S., beginning with dates in Maine and on Cape Cod in August (tour dates here), and then the main book launch event, featuring a new BATSmobile, at the Marshfield (MA) Fair on August 25th (Children’s Day). More national dates are coming in September and October. Look back at the Events/Tours link in a month or so to see how the tour calendar is shaping up.

• Here’s a nice blog entry about the Riverside Public Library, the model for the building in Bats at the Library. Writer Jerry Peterson visited the library, and talked with Library Director Janice Fisher...

• The Japanese edition of Bats at the Beach has arrived, as well as the Brazilian, Korean and Spanish editions of Bats at the Library.

• Here is the Bats at the Beach plushie bat from Merrymakers Inc., in stores near you now. They turned out really well. It’s pretty neat to see your 2-D work turned into a high-quality 3-D stuffed animal!

• April 18: Many thanks to all of the independent bookseller friends who have supported the bat books so strongly, and who chose Bats at the Library as winner of the Indies Choice Book Award Best New Picture Book! Click on the ABA logo below for a full list of winners and honor books.

• The Bats at the Beach videobook was named a Notable at the American Library Association Annual Winter Conference on January 26th. Find out about it at Nutmeg Media’s website.

• Bats at the Library was declared the #3 Best Picture Book of 2008 by Time / CNN.

• Bats at the Library was declared “a good thing” on the “Martha Stewart Show” on October 29, 2008!
Martha Stewart gave copies to her studio audience, showed some of the interior artwork and did a craft I created for the Bat to Basics Tour. You can see the video in the “Martha Stewart Show” archives here.

•  Bats at the Library spent 12 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in 2008.

• The second official launch event of Bats at the Library was held at the Riverside Public Library in Riverside, Illinois on October 10, 2008. Many thanks to Janice Fisher, and all of the library staff and volunteers who made the event so bat-tastic.

• The official launch of the book took place at the Duxbury Free Library in Duxbury, MA on September 28th, 2008. If you missed, it, you can find signed books at Once Upon a Time (St. George Street, Duxbury—right next to FarFar’s Ice Cream), and Westwinds Bookshop (on Depot Street, Duxbury). Many thanks to the Duxbury Free Library and the Friends of the Duxbury Free Library for hosting the event, and to all of the volunteers who helped out for their enthusiasm and their time!

•  The first review for Bats at the Library was a starred review from Publishers Weekly (7/14/08):
Bats at the Library
Brian Lies. Houghton Mifflin, $16 (32p) ISBN 978-0-618-99923-1
Lies’s (Bats at the Beach) much-lauded bats are back and the library’s got them—thanks to a window left open by an unsuspecting (or perhaps sympathetic) librarian. Although the young ones initially misbehave (they make photocopies of their bodies and turn the water fountain into a splash pool), Lies cuts them a little slack: “It’s hard to settle down and read/ when life flits by at dizzy speed.” Story time settles everyone (upside-)down, and soon the furry creatures are “completely swallowed up” in books, giving Lies comic license to bat-tify the signature visuals from classics like Make Way For Ducklings; Pippi Longstocking; Goodnight, Moon and Peter Rabbit. As with its predecessor, this book’s richly detailed chiaroscuro paintings find considerable humor at the intersection where bat and human behavior meet. But the author/artist outdoes himself: the library-after-dark setting works a magic all its own, taking Lies and his audience to an intensely personal place. Ages 4–8. (Aug.)