Attack of the Paper Bats Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  INTRODUCTION

  THE LIBRARY

  CHAPTER ONE: THE BOOK LEFT OPEN

  CHAPTER TWO: A STRANGE WIND

  CHAPTER THREE: DARK WINDOWS

  CHAPTER FOUR: THE SCREAM

  CHAPTER FIVE: ATTACK!

  CHAPTER SIX: THE RIVER

  EPILOGUE: NOTES FROM THE LIBRARIAN

  A PAGE FROM THE LIBRARY OF DOOM

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  GLOSSARY

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  WRITING PROMPTS

  BUILDING THE LIBRARY

  EXPLORE MORE

  COPYRIGHT

  BACK COVER

  the boy opens his window.

  A small, dark shape falls out of the sky.

  “Ow!” yells the boy. A sharp piece of paper slashes his hand.

  THE LIBRARY

  Real name: unknown

  Parents: unknown

  Birthplace/birthdate: unknown

  Weaknesses: water, crumbs, dirty fingers

  Strengths: speed reading, ability to fly, martial arts

  The Library of Doom is the world’s largest collection of strange and dangerous books. Each generation, a new Librarian is chosen to serve as guardian. The Librarian’s duty is to keep the books from falling into the hands of those who would use them for evil.

  The location of the Library of Doom is unknown. Its shelves sit partially hidden underground. Some sections form a maze. It is full of black holes. This means someone might walk down a hallway in the Library and not realize they are traveling thousands of miles. One hallway could start somewhere under the Atlantic Ocean and end inside the caves of the Himalayas.

  There are entries to the Library scattered all over the earth. But there are few exits. Sometimes villains find their way into the vast collection, but the Librarian always finds them out!

  — From The Atlas Cryptical, compiled by Orson Drood, 5th official Librarian

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE BOOK LEFT OPEN

  A book lies open on the street.

  The book belongs to the Library of Doom. It was stolen from the Library many years ago.

  It traveled through many lands, passing from person to person.

  The breath of a thousand readers mixed with the ink and sighed through the paper.

  * * *

  After many years, a young boy saw the book in the window of a small store.

  “That’s the book I want,” said the boy.

  As the boy hurried home with his new purchase, the book fell out of his bag.

  Now, the book lies in the street. Its pages grow warm in the pale moonlight.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A STRANGE WIND

  From out of nowhere, a cold wind blows down the street.

  The wind shuffles the pages of the book. Several pages rip off.

  The wind’s invisible fingers fold and refold the pages into strange and deadly shapes.

  The pages are sharp. The pages fly by themselves.

  The pages are hungry.

  On the dark street, the wind rips off more pages.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DARK WINDOWS

  In another part of the dark city, the Librarian walks alone.

  The wind whistles down the street.

  The Librarian pulls up his collar. He lowers his head as he walks into the wind.

  As the Librarian stops in front of bookstores, he peers into the dark windows.

  “None of these have the books I want,” he whispers to himself.

  The Librarian is searching for books that were lost or stolen from the Library of Doom.

  A piece of paper flies overhead in the wind.

  A scream rips through the dark.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE SCREAM

  In another street, a young boy is reading a book.

  He hears something scratch softly against his window.

  The boy opens his window.

  A small, dark shape falls out of the sky.

  “Ow!” yells the boy. A sharp piece of paper slashes his hand.

  The boy tries to close the window, but the wind is too strong. More and more pieces of paper rush into his room.

  They move as if they were not pieces of paper, but bats.

  The boy screams.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ATTACK!

  The Librarian runs down a lonely alley.

  He runs toward the sound of the scream.

  Looking up, the Librarian sees a cloud of pages.

  Some of them are flying into a small window high above him.

  Somehow he must help the boy.

  The Librarian leaps and grabs the bottom of a fire escape. Quickly, he darts up the metal stairway.

  The Librarian crouches and then leaps. He flies across the alley.

  As he leaps into the swarming ball of paper, the creatures attack.

  He is surrounded.

  The Librarian leans backward. He loses his balance and falls into the alley.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE RIVER

  The boy leans out his window.

  He watches the paper bats leave his room and attack the man who tried to help him.

  On the floor of the alley, the Librarian covers his head and face with his long, dark coat. Then he runs.

  He cannot see where he is going, but he knows he cannot fight the swarm of pages.

  The Librarian rushes down the alley. The alley drops off into a dark river.

  The Librarian stops at the end of the alley and then dives.

  The pages dive after him.

  In the water, the pages lose their sharp edges. The paper falls apart.

  Everything sinks to the bottom of the river.

  * * *

  In his room, the young boy looks through the closed window.

  Where is the strange man who tried to rescue him?

  EPILOGUE

  NOTES FROM THE LIBRARIAN

  The books stolen from the Library of Doom are dangerous and evil. Like other evil things, these books prefer the darkness. The darkness hides them, protects them, and often gives them power.

  My hunt for these books takes me to many dark and forgotten corners of the world: dying cities, secluded small towns, graveyards, and empty deserts.

  The book I hunted this time — titled Proteus — was clever as well as hungry. Each time the book attacked, its pages turned into another shape. Sometimes the pages became serpents or cockroaches — or grinning masks with teeth.

  During the events in this adventure, it was bats. Now the book’s pages are dissolved, and its cover lies buried beneath a river. I won’t reveal the name of the river, but strangely enough it rhymes with . . . “beast.”

  A PAGE FROM THE LIBRARY OF DOOM

  PAPER

  The word “paper” comes from “papyrus,” a plant that grew along the Nile River in Egypt. Ancient Egyptians peeled strips from the tall plants and pounded them flat to write on.

  Ts’ai Lun, a member of the Chinese emperor’s court in 105 AD, is honored as the inventor of paper. He chopped up bamboo, bark from mulberry trees, and even fishing nets, to make a pulpy substance. When the pulp dried, it looked like our modern paper.

  Today, paper is made from fibers that come mostly from trees, but can also come from straw or cotton.

  Every year, the average student in the United States uses seven hundred pounds of paper!

  Paper is dangerous! Brothers Homer and Langley Collyer never threw anything away. One day in 1947, they were found dead in their New York apartment buried under fallen stacks of old newspapers. It took rescuers eighteen days to recover the bo
dies from beneath all the paper.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Michael Dahl is the prolific author of the bestselling Goodnight Baseball picture book and more than two hundred other books for children and young adults. He has won the AEP Distinguished Achievement Award three times for his nonfiction, a Teachers’ Choice Award from Learning magazine, and a Seal of Excellence from the Creative Child Awards. Dahl currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  Martín Blanco was born in Argentina and studied drawing and painting at the Fine Arts University of Buenos Aires. He is currently a freelance illustrator and lives in Barcelona, Spain, where he is working on films and comic books. Blanco loves to read, especially thrillers and horror. He also enjoys soccer, the Barcelona football team, and playing the drums with his friends.

  GLOSSARY

  dart (DART)—

  to move quickly

  peer (PEER)—

  to stare or look carefully

  shuffle (SHUF-uhl)—

  to move something quickly from one place to another; a person might shuffle through the pages of a phone book, searching for a certain telephone number

  swarm (SWORM)—

  to move together in a big group; sharks swarm and so do bees

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  The boy who bought the book at the shop dropped it on his way home. Do you think that was an accident, or did something make the book fall out of his bag on purpose?

  The Librarian used water to defeat the paper bats. How else do you think he could have defeated them?

  Why do you think the Librarian was in the boy’s city? What was he looking for? Use the text to support your answer.

  WRITING PROMPTS

  Write a paragraph about what happened to the boy after the paper bats left his room.

  If you saw a cloud of paper bats flying toward you, what would you do? How would you escape them? Or would you stay and fight? Write down your adventure!

  The boy was rescued by the Librarian. Write about a time when someone rescued you — or when you rescued someone else.

  BUILDING THE LIBRARY

  Some words from author Michael Dahl

  One of my favorite writers is John Bellairs. In his spooky thriller, The Dark Secret of Weatherend, the heroes are attacked — by a swarm of dead leaves. The sharp dry leaves whirl around them, cutting their skin. What a scary scene! Those images were in my brain when I came up with the idea of paper turning into flying bats.

  I knew the Librarian would be able to use water to defeat those bats. Because I once had m own terrifying experience with water and things flying through the air! I lived in South Carolina when it was hit by Hurricane Hugo. The powerful winds broke windows in my house. Rain poured in. Dozens and dozens of my books were completely soaked. I had to throw them all out. Water, I learned first-hand, was an enemy of the printed page. (It still bothers me that I had to throw away all those wonderful books.)

  Library of Doom is published by Stone Arch Books,

  A Capstone imprint

  1710 Roe Crest Drive

  North Mankato, Minnesota 56003

  www.mycapstone.com

  Copyright © 2018 Stone Arch Books

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on the Library of Congress website.

  ISBN: 978-1-4965-5531-1 (library binding)

  ISBN: 978-1-4965-5537-3 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-4965-5543-4 (eBook PDF)

  ISBN: 978-1-4965-9300-9 (eBook)

  Summary: Will the Librarian be able to save the day when a book transforms into a swarm of bats?

  Designer: Brent Slingsby

  Photo credits:

  Design Element: Shutterstock: Shebeko.

 

 

  Michael Dahl, Attack of the Paper Bats

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