Christopher de Vinck is the author of 12 books and the winner of two Christopher Awards. He has been a high school teacher and administrator for the last 33 years. This exquisite collection of essays is organized around the four seasons.

In the middle of a cold September day, de Vinck reminds himself that "we need to nurture our gift of awe. We need to remember how to react to the world the way we did when we were children." By Halloween, the author is reveling in the way kids try to recreate feelings of fright on this strange evening. While some parents get upset over the dangers out on the streets, kids are playing violent video games where people are decapitated and worse. By December, de Vick is writing about his friendship with Fred Rogers and the death of his older brother.

Springtime has him thinking about baseball. After writing about Babe Ruth's love of the game, he says: "I believe a true artist, and a true hero, is someone who opens his arms in a wide embrace, welcoming everyone to come in and join him." In summer, he embraces ice cream, watermelon, and lemonade.

For the past 30 years, de Vinck has been writing books, essays, and poetry. He opens his mind, heart, and soul to the material and then embraces it without attachment. There are times when he laments the direction of our culture:

"We have been poisoned in our culture to believe that crassness, vulgarity, and harshness are elegant, on the cutting edge of wisdom, and that what is charming, delightful, and possibly even good is sentimental slop."

We've noticed the same attitudes in and toward feature films. In contrast to the cultural bias, de Vinck's positivity is very refreshing .