Pat the Bat

Pat the Bat book coverWhen Kent Chapman's children Claire ('14) and Meredith ('17) were 3 and 5, they wrote a story together called Pat the Bat (MacLaren-Cochrane Publishing). The girls drew pictures of the bat's adventures and he stapled the pages together. Chapman, Regents Professor of biology, found the book 20 years later in his closet. He turned it over to a friend who is an illustrator and it was published.

Claire is now a junior high school science teacher for Richardson ISD. Meredith majored in education at UNT and was a student teacher at Grapevine-Colleyville ISD, where she read the book to her second-grade class.

"They thought it was so cool," Meredith says. "Now, they all want to write a book!"