Stellaluna

Stellaluna is a 1993 children's book written and illustrated by Janell Cannon. It is about a young fruit bat, Stellaluna, who becomes separated from her mother and finds her way to a nest of birds. She is adopted by them and learns bird-like behavior. Eventually, Stellaluna finds other bats and reunites with her mother, and she learns how to behave like a bat. She introduces the birds to her bat family. Stellaluna and the birds decide that, despite their many differences, they are still friends.

Cannon was interested in writing a story about bats because of the negative perceptions that many have of them, as well as because not many children's books featured them. She created the illustrations first, inspired by photographs of Gambian epauletted fruit bats. The art for the book was made with wax-based pencils, as well as airbrushed acrylic paint. These illustrations in particular were praised for their scientific accuracy, as well as for making the bats appealing.

Themes in Stellaluna include friendship, overlooking differences to find common ground, and the universality of feeling like a bat in a bird's world. One philosopher interpreted the book as showing that children are not either good or bad: children with non-conforming behaviors may be expressing their abilities and needs. Stellaluna's behaviors, though discouraged by mother bird, were not actually "bad behaviors", but rather an expression of her identity as a bat.

Stellaluna was a New York Times bestseller, appeared on the National Education Association's list of "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children", and won several awards, including the 1996 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children. The book has been translated into thirty languages and was adapted into a short film, a puppet show, and a musical.

Author Janell Cannon grew up in rural Minnesota; her parents shared their enjoyment of nature with her and her siblings. She stated that she was a "free-range kid, able to gain an appreciation for animals like frogs, salamanders, snakes, and bats". She empathized with bats, as they are maligned by many cultures. She said, for bats to be "misunderstood and mistreated by humans, out of fear, really affected me". Later, when working at a library in California, Cannon noted that only three books in the children's section featured bats, of which two were eventually removed.

Cannon later took a trip to Thailand, where she felt that she belonged despite not knowing the Thai language. The connection she felt to the Thai people despite their differences in language and culture caused her to ask herself, "How can we be so different, yet feel so much the same?" This question lead her to consider writing a story where the theme was "overlooking differences in order to find common ground." When she returned to California, she began to create a children's book with this theme that featured bats; creating this book took several years. She credits the work of bat scientist and photographer Merlin Tuttle as part of her inspiration for Stellaluna. Specifically, she referred to Tuttle's 1986 National Geographic article, "Gentle Flyers of the African Night", which was about epauletted fruit bats. Cannon's characters were Gambian epauletted fruit bats, which she chose for their dog-like qualities and friendly-looking features.

Cannon signed with a literary agent, Sandra Dijkstra, who placed Stellaluna with the now-defunct publishing company Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (HBJ) in 1993.

In a jungle of Africa, a mother fruit bat has a new baby, and names her Stellaluna. One night, an owl attacks the bats, knocking Stellaluna out of her mother's embrace, and she falls into the forest below. Soon the baby bat ends up in a sparrow's nest filled with three baby birds named Pip, Flitter and Flap. The mother bird will let Stellaluna be part of the family only if she eats bugs and worms, does not hang by her feet and sleeps at night.