What a fantastic book! I have always been intrigued by bats, so I couldn’t wait to read this book! I say this as I watch bats flitting around my Ceiba tree in my yard. If you have ever wondered anything about bats, you’ll find the answer in this book. It is absolutely clear to me that Alyson Brokaw knows her stuff. This book is well-written and easy to understand. It’s chock full of great information and the full color pictures are amazing!

Huge thanks to Timber Press and NetGalley for sending me this ARC for review! All of my reviews are given honestly!

I picked this book up and said "I wonder if this book can cure my depression." and I am not gonna lie, it did. Looking at the photos and reading about these super cute animals did help me lot! I didn't realize that rabies still killed so many people every year, but knowing that combined with bat facts, did not ruin bats for me.
The photos are so amazing!
My favorite chapter was about the babies.

The Weird and Wonderful World of Bats by Alyson Brokaw is a tremendously compelling, thoughtful and insightful book about what seems to me to be one of the most maligned and misunderstood animals there is. I regularly see bats flit around in evenings but have not researched them as I do other animals. I knew comparatively little and didn't know where to begin. Well, this book woke me up. Not only did it educate me more about various species but also about them as individuals and their characteristics. I view them differently and thirst to learn more! This feels like a whole new world to explore. I love that. The 180+ photos are startlingly vibrant and sharp.

Bats are smart. They are crafty, cunning and just plain interesting! I had no idea the pups aid in their own births or that the tiger moth issues high frequency clicks to disrupt echolocation of bat calls. The author describes negative perceptions, sleeping habits, what they eat (some are pollen eaters!), effects of pesticides, nomenclature, family tree, use of magnetic field to guide, heat sensing, disease transmission, conservation, home building, bite force and immunity to venom.

Those which stand out to me most include the unique looking wrinkle-faced bat, long-tongued bats which eat sugar, startling grey-headed flying bat, the cute juvenile fruit-eating bat, the singing Mexican free-tailed bat and Trefoil's horseshoe bat. But there are so many more. The handy list is a fantastic resource. I would actually like to build a bat house in our meadow in order to better observe these wondrous creatures.

My sincere thank you to Timber Press and NetGalley for providing me with an early digital copy of this compelling book.

Informative, well researched, and well written. Bat lovers will learn everything they want to know about bats with beautiful photographs to accompany it.

The perception of bats has been changing lately, although they are still feared and hated, especially after our recent pandemic. Brokaw’s book should be required reading everywhere, because it is an in-depth look at these wonderful furry creatures. In 14 chapters, the author explains their origins, biology, behavior and challenges, and includes amazing, gorgeous photographs of her subjects. I read a lot about animals, so some of these facts were not new to me, but I still learned a lot. This species is so vast that it’s not easy to discuss them all, so the author gives a few examples relating to what she’s trying to explain. Much of the information was obtained by Brokaw from working in the field, and she is very clear when a behavior is not widely observed, or when something is not known. There is a handy chart at the end with all known bat species, their family and scientific name. Highly recommended to animal lovers.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Timber Press!

I am shocked at how much there is to learn about bats. This book is an in-depth, highly-researched, comprehensive overview of the nocturnal creatures. I loved the pictures and diagrams to help explain the text based information. The visuals helped explain the content and break up the research findings. Very well done and enjoyable read!

This was a fascinating and informative book about bats! I feel like every time I read a book about bats new information has been discovered about them. While this book goes over basic characteristics of bats, it also includes recent discoveries, like the white-nose syndrome and viruses.

There are over 1400 species of bats currently known in the world and more are identified every year. They are the second most diverse group of mammals in the world. Bats are just fascinating creatures but are often misunderstood and targeted for food, macabre displays, and because they do carry viruses (but so do other creatures). This book goes over basic characteristics of bats like their body structure, echolocation, habitats, feeding habits, and mating.

A few fascinating facts from this book: different species of bats produce different echolocation calls; bats with large ears like the vampire bat, echolocate through their nose and not their mouth; and vampire bats have heat vision. There were a ton of other wonderful facts within this book but these were the three that I found the most fascinating.

This book also discusses experiments done by people on bats like Lazzaro Spallanzani, Louis Jurine, Donald Griffin, and Elisabeth Kalko. I really loved these sections because it was fascinating to learn about the different kinds of experiments that have been done on bats and what they learned over the years.

This also discusses white-nose syndrome, a fungus that grows on bats and spreads during their hibernation season and usually kills the bat. Since this fungus was first identified in 2007, the population of bats in North America has declined by 90%. It's a devastating fungus for bats and while attempts are being made to find a cure, it hasn’t happened yet. I will be really interested in seeing future research about this and if any new preventatives have been found that will help the bat population.

Overall, this was just a fascinating and informative book. If you like learning about bats or animals, I highly recommend checking out this book.

I didn't read the digital arc word for word, but I loved what I saw and read so much that I preordered a copy. The topics were well organized and written in simple language for the average reader. The photos and illustrations are amazing! I never thought I would be making heart-eyes at bats! I would recommend this book to readers who are curious about these mysterious creatures

We love bats and reading about bats, and this book was no exception! I didn't read every section with my 8 yr old, but he enjoyed what we did read together. The pictures are great!!! It's the kind of nonfiction that is written with great information and facts but is very, very readable to enjoy with kids. I read this as a digital book, but I'm anxious to see what it's like in print. It would be a great addition to a homeschooler's library or for the nature loving bookworm family.

Thank you to NetGalley and Timber Press for e-arc to read and review honestly and voluntarily.

The Weird and Wonderful World of Bats is another excellent book from the reliable Timber Press. Alyson Brokaw is a passionate, knowledgable expert who is also fun. He writing is sufficiently expert for the layman but isn’t obstructed. She delves deeply into technical minutiae (how to vampire bats keep from getting iron poisoning) sufficiently to interest and amaze but without getting too obscure. The book covers a huge range of topics, from bat senses, to diet, group behavior, flight, communication, and habitat. Profusely illustrated with photos and instructive drawings. Excellent.

I received an ARC of this title in exchange for a fair review.

I received an arc of this title from NetGalley for an honest review. An amazing new book about the world's bats.

I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

The Weird and Wonderful World of Bats is a photography and information book all about bats. The author has put so much time and research into this book, which is clear from the very first few pages, and her love of these creatures really shines through. The photography is absolutely amazing and captures the bats and their habitats with such character and detail. The author does a great job of demystifying the knowledge we generally have of these creatures and shows how interesting, evolving, and clever they are. Some are really cute and some are quite scary to see but the information is very interesting.

I really enjoyed reading this. The book was informative, easy to read, and the topics were clearly explained. I would buy this book for the photos alone.

As someone who loves bats (but also other animals), I find this book gives the reader a good, a very good insight into the different species of bats, their history and how unique echolocating is. I am amazed of all the knowledge being broken down into a mostly understandable phrasing, so that even I can get it - the different types, the way some bat families developed this kind of way to use echolocation in a different way than another. It is an incredible book which really conveys the love for this animal. I definitely recommend it to anyone who loves them and who wants to know more.

This is a very informative book that crushes a lot of the popular myths about bats, a very misunderstood species. Definitely give this one a read!

I very much appreciate this Non-Fiction narrative and its author for demystifying the nature and existence of Bats, and clarifying all that Science has discovered about these various much-maligned species. I hope to purchase this title to study it further, as there's much to be learned here, and knowledge is so often the key to understanding and mitigating fear of the unknown. Culturally bats are feared and despised, perhaps often unreasonably. (Bram Stoker's DRACULA certainly didn't help.) Author Alyson Brokaw's strong enthusiasm shines through and makes me want to study further.