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(More customer reviews)As a `long-time Californ,' Stanford-educated aerospace engineer, & former red-haired, freckled kid from the dusty San Joaquin Valley, Ken Renshaw has written a multilayered children's book that strikes chords in adults as well. A reviewer from 2005 (when "The Yosemite Adventure of Spotty Bat: A Magical, Metaphysical Journey for All Ages" first came out) focused on the playful interaction of the elemental forces of our world, Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and the way they nourish life and change among the creatures and plants and physical spaces of Yosemite.
I loved the lyrical narrative, surely able to capture even the young child's interest. Renshaw names beloved portions of Yosemite--the falls, river, etc. as seen by Spotty the Bat from granite-face peaks above the Valley. There is the anatomically-correct sense of ourselves located in the evolution of arms, thumbs, fingers in their diversity of functional forms, including the wings of bats. Renshaw fictionalized Spotty's learning to-soar-like-a-bird amid the air currents. Here one intuits the author's own boundary-blurring experience as a sailplane glider pilot!
But what makes this more than a disguised natural history of a rare bat species or a physics lesson is the way Renshaw plumbs humanity's problem with the concept of `difference' & otherness. The author actually elicits empathy with a questing female's incarnation in a bat's black furry big-eared body, a form in motion that even today evokes primeval fear & distaste & an impulse to harm, as if from some deep protective necessity built into our genes. "Bats-in-the-belfrey" = crazy; bats, swarming, in the hair = terror. Yet Spotty the Bat is drawn (and quite literally in Robert Rosenthal's marvelous etchings) as an adorable sensate being who `hears' a voice stamped in her instincts, limiting choice & creativity. In a moment of abandonment & crisis, she hears a new voice, of the yellow-eyed Crow, who guides her to a new affiliational community which she recognizes as `family.'
Along the way, Spotty learns from the voices of the `elements' that which gives her power to be `who she is to become.' She learns courage, persistence, & commitment, understandings & actions that free her also to teach & lead others. This is the layer in Renshaw's embrace of love & harmony in our complicated world that enchants me & I commend to others.
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Spotty is a lonesome bat who is led by a mysterious crow to Yosemite. There he meets and is transformed by the Spirits of Rock, Water, Air and Fire. Through his experiences in flying he learns Courage, Persistence, and Conviction. He meets other bats and becomes finds his lost family. Chikdren as well as adults will love this heart-warming journey.
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