Hopgrassers and Flutterbies

Book excerpt: In the fourth volume of the fivebook series The Seasons of Youth, Louis Daniel Brodsky traces the growth of his daughter, from ages six to eleven, and that of his son, from three to eight. His girl develops socially, attending her first sleepover and making friends with her classmates. She also matures emotionally, as evidenced during the mornings she shares with her father, who practices spelling with her, at home, and drives her to school, the two of them often sharing breakfast in one of their small town's cafes. His boy goes through phases of fascination -- trains, airplanes, dinosaurs and whales -- but finds his mother's avocations of drawing and painting to be his steady preoccupations, allowing him to give order to his ever-expanding world. And both kids begin coming to terms with their father's increasingly frequent business trips. Hopgrassers and Flutterbies is a touching universal portrait of a devoted, loving father and mother and their two flourishing children.