11 Facts About Stellaluna

Stellaluna is a 1993 children's book by Janell Cannon about a young fruit bat, Stellaluna, who becomes separated from her mother and finds her way to a nest of birds.

Stellaluna created the illustrations first, inspired by photographs of Gambian epauletted fruit bats.

Themes in Stellaluna include friendship, overlooking differences to find common ground, and the universality of feeling like a bat in a bird's world.

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 mother bird will let Stellaluna be part of the family only if she eats bugs, does not hang by her feet and sleeps at night.

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Stellaluna keeps flying, but when her wings hurt, she stops to rest.

Cannon created the illustrations in Stellaluna herself, painting the illustrations before she wrote the story.

In writing Stellaluna, Cannon stated that she wanted to demonstrate that feeling like "a bat in a bird's world" was universal.

Stellaluna was a commercial success, selling over two million copies in North America alone.

In October 1994, Stellaluna was featured on the PBS children's show Reading Rainbow, where it was narrated by actress Anne Jackson.

Several other puppetry adaptations of Stellaluna have been made, including by playwright Saskia Janse.