About this Item
Randall Jarrell was an award-winning poet who sometimes wrote children s books. Maurice Sendak was an award-winning children s author and illustrator who sometimes created adult projects. In 1964, they thought it made sense to work on something together. The result was "The Bat-Poet," a slim volume of prose and poetry and pictures that s not quite a picture book yet definitely has children in mind. It tells the story of a bat quite realistically depicted by Sendak who decides not to move from his roost on the porch to the barn with his fellows when the autumn comes, just because. While he s there, on his own, he befriends a mockingbird and decides he wants to sing like him. What the mockingbird teaches him, of course, is how to write poetry his own, not an imitation of anyone else s. Learning how to do that is what eventually entices the little bat to rejoin the others in the barn, because, as the New York Times critic of wrote when it "The Bat-Poet" was first published: "Since it is the purpose of his poetry to tell them about themselves he cannot be separated from them forever or he would become unreal and shallow." And make no mistake, this little bat is a real bat, not simply a human in allegorical form he hangs from the rafters, he hunts flying insects, he hibernates…he s just as much a bat as his mockingbird tutor is a mockingbird and the chipmunk critic is a chipmunk. Sendak s beautiful black-and-white drawings show all these animals, and their surroundings, in great detail, and they come in all kinds of sizes, from small pictures of the small bat doing bat things in the top corners of the pages up to a two-page spread of the bat flying through a craggy forest in the moonlight. Our copy of the book is in top-notch condition, with no visible flaws whatsoever. It is bound in brown cloth with the title, the author and illustrator s names, and the publisher stamped in gilt on the spine. Blind stamping forms a beveled frame on both the front and back covers, and more blind stamping within that frame on the front features ovely botanic decoration forming a half-wreath along the bottom and sides. The end papers are light brown and the text block pages are off white. There are no marks, tears, or any other flaws on the pages and the text block is tight and square with no missing or loose pages. The front cover of the dust jacket features a Sendak drawing of the bat flying through the trees that is actually not included in the illustrations within the book it stands on its own. However, the dust jacket has done its primary job over the years of protecting the book itself and shows it, with some tears and signs of aging. There is a tiny closed tear at the bottom front edge and slightly larger ones at the top edge near the spine and at the bottom of the spine. A diagonal two-inch rip extends from the top back of the spine to the left. Finally, there is a chip at the bottom quarter of the spine of the dust jacket. The dust jacket also shows tanning along the spine, and to a much lesser degree along the top edge. The jacket is unclipped but does not have a price printed on the book flaps. The number 74762 appears on the bottom inner corner of the front flap. This is a first edition, with "Second printing 1965" noted on the copyright page. Given the condition of this copy, the name of the author, the illustrator, and the general quality of the text and of the pictures, this is a book any number of collectors would love to have. See our photos for more details.
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