Mary Kay Carson's "The Bat Scientists" paves a way for children to understand that caving can be a career

Carson explains that men and women who study bats aren't scared of the dark or bothered by a bit of smelly guano. And they certainly aren't afraid of bats. They are fascinated by them, with good reason! Bats are the only furred animals-mammals-that can fly and many communicate and hunt using ultrasonic echolocation, gather in enormous colonies of millions, and live for more than 40 years. Many bat species are threatened with extinction and scientists work to save them.

Although Carson is not a caver, she ventured into the caver's world to truly understand it before writing the book. She spent a lot of time watching the evening emergence of millions of Mexican free-tailed bats at Bracken Bat Cave in Texas while we were down there researching the book. She also took a cave trip inside. She is a science major who served in the Peace Corps and enjoys writing children's books the most. "When I returned to the US [from the Peace Corps], I looked into science writing programs and ended up at New York University. From there I was hired by Scholastic to write for SuperScience, a classroom magazine for grades 4-6. The magazine really hooked me on writing for kids. It’s soooo much more fun than writing for big people!"

Thank you Mary Kay for this fantastic book and helping children understand why science is so fun!

SOURCES
https://nancyisanders.wordpress.com
http://bookstore.caves.org

#ewls #womencavers #speleology

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