Well, it's about time one of Brian Lies's famous bats buckled down. Until now, they've spent their time playing ball (Bats at the Ballgame), cavorting in the sand (Bats at the Beach), reading for pleasure (Bats at the Library) and making music (Bats in the Band). Little Bat in Night School, like its picture-book predecessors, isn't a story so much as an introduction to an experience. But this time around, Lies departs from precedent: he skips the rhymes and supplies readers with a first-rate young mammalian tour guide.
It's Little Bat's first night of school, and he's prepared for anything--he even has a nifty new batpack--except being snubbed by two bat classmates: "We're already playing... with each other." Fortunately, he meets someone who likes to cower upside down in cubbies as much as he does: an opossum named Ophelia. Together they go about their school night, which includes the occasional setback, such as a mortifying juice-spilling incident (Little Bat: "I didn't mean for that to happen!"). By the time dawn breaks and Little Bat is flying home with his mom and recounting the goings-on ("Somebody almost got in trouble for spilling juice"), he's eagerly awaiting the next school night, knowing that he can bend with any unforeseen curves.
Little Bat in Night School is fueled by disarming humor rooted in the universal queasiness about facing the unknown. As ever, Lies (Got to Get to Bear's) spikes his darkly glossy, neat-as-a-whisker illustrations with visual jokes, perhaps most winningly when Little Bat literally throws himself into his art. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author