"In Cool Mom on the Hot Seat, " Virginia Boyle Traver offers an entertaining account of raising a family today. Along with poignant and humorous descriptions, spontaneous dialogue provides a continuous momentum to this series of slice-of-life sketches. As the children grow beyond their home and neighborhood, the author moves from being on top of it all to wondering what will happen next.

"Cool Mom on the Hot Seat" shows what one family found that worked: time alone together at home where one-on-one chats in the kitchen are daily events, and time in the outdoors around a campfire, far away...