Beaver Year

by Irene Brady

As the two new-born beaver kits Cassie and Paddle enter the world they are welcomed by their mother's soft crooning coo and gentle grooming. Limited at first to the interior of their stick-and-mud lodge, it isn't long before they are curiously exploring the underwater tunnels and deep waters of the beaver pond. As the kits' instincts take hold and they follow their parents example they begin to help collect and store food, repair the dam, and recognize the warning signs for danger. When heavy spring rains destroy both their lodge and the dam, Cassie and Paddle are thrust onto their own, for trapped by the raging waters, they are carried from their home and family -- forced to begin their own new beaver colony. The book links the young beavers to the pulsing throb of the surrounding pond and forest in a gentle story of beaver life in the wilderness.