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Bats on the Bedstead (1988) by Norma Tadlock Johnson ⭐⭐⭐
I read Bats on the Bedstead. It was published by Avon Camelot in 1988. It was my big brother’s book, and I had kept it because it was his, just like I did with The Ghost Children. I had never read it til now, though you really don’t have to, since the blurb on the back gives everything away.
First, let’s talk about the writing. It’s really atrocious. I had to read some sentences over multiple times to understand what they were trying to say. There was also a typo that I noticed, though I guess this would have to be the fault of the editor. There is also an inconsistency in the story. At one point, Rick is talking to Voro the bat, telling him that it’s their house and that they bought it after an old woman died. Rick is the one who brings it up, and later he asks his mom to tell him about the old lady that lived in the house before them. He then says to us, “So Voro wasn’t making it up. There really was an old woman who died here.” YOU were the one who said it in the first place, not Voro!
The story goes that a family of four moved to a new house in a different state for job reasons. Father and mother Dick and Jane (yup!), and brothers Rick (11) and Sam (5). On the first night, a bat that we later find out is named Voro, visits Rick, telepathically communicating to him. He threatens him that if he doesn’t get his family to move out….. What? He never specifies, but Rick fills in the blanks. He tells his parents, and, of course, they don’t believe him. Throughout the entire book, Rick keeps comparing this place to his old home in Livington City. The entire book. I thought it would stop eventually, but we were over 70 pages in and he was still mentioning Livington City.
At one point, the father and mother are talking, and the father addresses the mother by her first name, Jane. The boy feels the need to tell us that Jane is his mother. Yes…. we gathered that when you said your mother and father were talking. We didn’t think he was calling you Jane.
“Mom, who lived in this house before we bought it?” I asked.
“We told you, it was an old lady, a very old lady. Her name was Mrs. Lewis. She finally died, quite some time ago, and the house sat empty for a long time.” She finally died? What a weird way to say that!
Instead of saying “God!” as an exclamation, he says “Gol!”, I guess because he feels like that’s cursing? They don’t even go to church on Sundays or say anything about religion in the book at all, they only say how it’s unfair that adults are allowed to curse around their kids and they expect the kids not to curse.
“Mom doesn’t like me to go to horror movies. She says they give me nightmares, and anyway, she doesn’t approve of them.” Rick, we got that feeling when you said she doesn’t want you to go to horror movies. We figure she doesn’t like them.
My biggest WTF moment is the hinting that the father has an underlying anger issue.
“Dad got home late that night. I waited until he’d had a beer and read the sports page. He gets mad if anything interrupts him before he reads the sports page. Even mom doesn’t tell him things, like about the car breaking down or me getting in trouble, before he’s had his beer and read about the Seahawks, his favorite team. I don’t know why they’re his favorite team. They make him mad too. The trick is not to get in trouble on the same day the Seahawks lose. Mom hid the car for 3 days the time she dented the fender because the Seahawks had just lost the game by doing something stupid in the last 30 seconds. As mom said, we all walked on eggshells for a little while.” Really? His mother is so afraid of his father’s wrath THREE DAYS later after his team loses before she can tell him about something negative that happened to her in her day? YIKES!
A strange thing is said about motels, too. The family has to stay at a motel because of a home renovation. “Sam and I peeked out between the curtains because Mom wanted to keep them shut. She said she didn’t want people to see us eating breakfast since we really weren’t supposed to do that in a motel, but I didn’t see why anyone would care. What were the table and chairs there for anyway, if people weren’t supposed ot eat?” I’ve never heard that they don’t like you to eat in motels. Just clean up after yourselves. There’s even room service in a lot of them.
They mention Penney’s so I thought that was interesting. He even compares it to the Penney’s in his old town, as if there’s one in every town. I guess there must have been, back then!
Well, the bats keep visiting Rick, and there’s more each time. Each time they threaten him and tell him to get out because it’s their house. He sleeps in the same room as Sam, but Sam sleeps like the dead, so he never wakes up. No one believes him except Sam; they even take Rick to a therapist. (That’s a great way to make sure your child decides not to go to you when they have a problem!) Finally, on that last night, Rick stands up to them. Sam wakes up and sees them, too. Standing up to the bats seems to weaken them, and Rick captures Voro, who agrees to leave his family alone if he releases him. When he decides to let him go, they turn to see that their mother was watching the scene. Finally, everyone believes him, and it’s all over. HOORAY!
There’s no explanation as to why Rick was picked to try to make his parents leave. It would have been more efficient if the bats visited his parents, instead. They probably would have gotten the desired results if they had. But NOPE!
This book wasn’t good, but it gets points for all the true information about bats that is piled into this little book. I’ll give it three stars for laugh value and the fact that it led me to look up some weird ass bats that I probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise. At the back of the book, they advertise for other books that were published by Avon Camelot. The titles tickled my funny bone. They are such gems as There’s A Batwing In My Lunchbox and The Hunky-Dory Dairy, but it’s kind of cool that Indian in the Cupboard and its sequel The Return of the Indian is advertised in there.
According to the bio about the author in the front of the book, this was Norma Tadlock Johnson’s first delve into children’s fiction. Before this, she had been a romance novelist.
Honestly? I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone.
