"The Quarry Fox is replete with fascinating and endearing creatures: dancing woodcocks, luna moths, baby black bears, hibernating woodchucks  and, of course, the quarry fox of the title. But the most captivating of the large cast of characters is the book's author herself, curious, adventurous and passionately in love with the natural world. She is not only enamored of a great variety of mammals, insects, frogs, fish and birds. This is one of the rare humans who have preferential feelings for the mineral and vegetable worlds as well as our animal one. "''''Old Blue,' my favorite snag of rock," she writes fondly of a sandstone boulder. And she rhapsodizes about a Black Walnut tree: "In fall, I love how its fernlike leaves turn bright yellow, contrasting with the rich dark brown of its rugged bark."Her powers of observation are extraordinary and unconventional. An abandoned quarry reminds her of  an archaeological dig,  once the scene of great human activity, now motionless and silent.

As for the color of her fox heroine, Sharpe compares her to a Creamsicle!Above all Sharpe is a hugely likable narrator. She won my heart again and again by her efforts to accommodate the creatures she encounters. As she takes her daily walk in the woods near her cabin she repeatedly calls out "Bear bear bear, " impelled not by fear but by empathy. "I was sharing this land with wild critters in a very real, not just fanciful, way. I was entering the bear's territory--certainly it was hers as much as mine, and I had to respect that,"  she writes. Well, you have to respect and indeed, love a person who thinks that way.".