ENGL 2810Y Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Kenneth Oppel, Eastern Red Bat, Animal Stories
23 Feb 2016
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Although oppel endows his bats with emotions and motivations that seem human, he still highlights the priorities and worldview that fit the world of bats, and especially the world of smaller bats like the silverwings. In the author"s note at the end of the novel, oppel says he liked the challenge of taking animals that many might consider ugly or scary and fashioning them into interesting, appealing characters. There is a long tradition of animal stories in children"s literature from aesop"s fables and the early folk and fairy tales (think puss in boots) to later books like. But the animals in these earlier books are reasonably cuddly: horses, mice, rabbits, pigs (although most of us don"t find spiders cuddly). Many adults perceive animals as belonging to a world without language at least without human languages. Yet many children seem to perceive a real connection even an ability to communicate with animals; so this is not simply an adult-driven phenomenon.
