The Living Year is for all those who celebrate nature's miracles in their own backyards, gardens, local fields and forests, even basements. A housewife and well-known children's author, who is a gifted naturalist and bird watcher, has turned her incredible discerning eye to the life around her home in Signal Mountain, Tennessee. Mary Q. Steele's flora range from humble weeds to a captive ailanthus tree; her fauna from a voracious Chinese mantis to a golden eagle. Sensitive but never sentimental, her chronicle delights in nature's beauty without neglecting the cruelty of nature and the callousness of humans. It has been selected by the Natural History Book Club.