Will Future Halloweens be Bat-Less? Author Mary Kay Carson's Newly Released Book, The Bat Scientists, Seeks an Answer.

Cincinnati, OH, October 23, 2010 --(PR.com)-- News from Houghton Mifflin Books for Children

Future Halloweens Be Bat-Less?

Newly released book features conservationists working to save bats from a devastating bat disease and other threats to their survival.

Bats and Halloween go together. But the scariest thing about bats is what’s happening to them. A deadly disease is wiping out entire caves of the winged creatures. White-nose syndrome is a fungal infection that kills bats while they sleep. The cave fungus first covers its victim’s face in a fluffy, white powder. The infected bats itch and twitch and wake often from winter hibernation, wasting away as their body fat dwindles. Emaciated bats wake and fly around outside in a futile attempt to find food. Entire bat communities starve to death during the winter, their dead littering the sparkling snow outside caves.

A newly released book for young people, The Bat Scientists, features the efforts of dedicated conservationists working to help bats around the world. Author Mary Kay Carson and photographer Tom Uhlman follow these bat crusaders into the trenches—and caves—of bat conservation as they fight to save their beloved bats from wanton killing, habitat loss, and the expanding bat plague. White-nose syndrome has spread from the Northeast into caves in 14 states as far west as Oklahoma, killing more than a million bats in the past four years. The abundant and widespread little brown bat is already predicted to go extinct in some regions, if not entirely. Now that’s scary.

[Images available of book cover, bats, and author/photographer.]

Hardcover · October 2010 · $18.99 · 80 pages · ISBN-13: 9780547199566

Available wherever books are sold or by calling 1-800-225-3362
Houghton Mifflin Company • Boston, Massachussetts • www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com

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