My Vampire Bat did not feel evil as I drew it. It felt precise. Ancient. Efficient. A survivor doing what it has always done, long before humans arrived with their stories and fears and misunderstandings. We have turned Vampire bats into villains, but the reality is far less dramatic. They do not kill. They take only what they need. They exist within balance. In many ways they are more honest than the systems humans have built, which drain endlessly and call it progress.
Children understand animals differently. They see curiosity before they see threat. They have not yet been trained to fear everything with teeth. The purpose of Uncommon Animals of the Alphabet has always been to shine a light on the overlooked and misunderstood. The strange ones. The ones living quietly at the edges.
This vampire bat feels like more than just the letter V. It feels like a reminder. What is feared is often simply unfamiliar. What is unfamiliar is often where the truth lives.
If there were a biography about you, what would the title be?
Probably – The Fork in the Road Between Starving and Thriving Artist. Not because I have fully crossed it yet, but because I am somewhere on the path, moving through uncertainty toward something more stable, more honest, more alive. Thriving is not a destination. It is a pattern. A way of existing in balance with your environment rather than fighting against it.
The vampire bat understands this. It does not try to become something else. It does not try to be loved by everyone. It simply occupies its place in the great unfolding system of life.
This drawing feels like a marker on my own path. A reminder that what is misunderstood is not necessarily wrong. Sometimes it is simply early. Sometimes it is simply different. Sometimes it is simply honest in a world that prefers performance.
The vampire bat will likely take its place as the letter V. Not as a villain, but as a survivor. Not as a monster, but as a teacher.
And maybe, quietly, as a mirror.
Kids Book Illustrator Andy C Marshall 