Bat and the Waiting Game

Elana K. Arnold's Bat and the Waiting Game is a quiet family story for 6 year olds about a boy, a baby skunk and a change nobody asked him about.

What happens

Bixby Alexander Tam is called Bat. His mum is a vet. At the start of the book he's in his beanbag chair with a six-week-old skunk kit asleep in his hands, and he can't quite believe his luck.

The kit is called Thor. Bat feeds him formula from a tiny bottle and carries him about in a sling.

Then Bat's sister Janie gets the part of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland. Rehearsals are every day after school for three weeks.

Which means Janie can't look after Bat on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Which means Bat goes to his friend Israel's house instead. Which means Thor stays at the clinic without him.

"That sounds like a terrible idea," Bat says. "Tell Janie she can't do the play."

You are right inside his head the whole way through, and it's a very particular head to be inside. Bat tells you exactly how many skunk facts he knows. He corrects people. When Israel says they were running late, Bat says no, you weren't late, you were almost late, and then walks into class.

He also notices everything. His mum's hug is described by the pressure of it. A truck is "like looking into the heart of a dragon".

Waiting is the hard bit, and the book is honest about that. There's an afternoon in Israel's garden, full of wind spinners and chimes and glass, where it's all just too much and Bat wants to go home. There's an evening where a plastic pen won't click together and everything tips over into a noise he doesn't like making.

His mum knows what to do. She squeezes his arms and lets go, squeezes and lets go, and waits.

Nobody in this book labels Bat. It simply shows you how he works and lets the people round him get on with loving him.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Worth knowing that Bat's parents are separated and he spends every other weekend at his dad's flat, which the book treats as ordinary and slightly annoying rather than sad.

If you've got a child who feels things at full volume, or who gets very attached to a routine, quite a lot of this will land. It's gentle. Nothing dreadful happens. The stakes are two afternoons a week, which at this age is plenty.

What to read next

For another child whose closest friend has four legs, try The Girl Who Thought She Was a Dog. Fennel is brought up alongside a boxer called Twiglet, decides she'd rather be one, and finds that school has firm opinions about that.