Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Lyons Public Library | JR MAC | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Dallas Public Library | + FICTION - MACLACHLAN | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Newberg Public Library | J FICTION MACLACHLAN | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Newberg Public Library | J FICTION MACLACHLAN | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Salem Main Library | J MacLachlan, P. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Silver Falls Library | JF MACLACHLAN | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Willamina Public Library | JF MAC | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Taking care of a baby left with them at the end of the tourist season helps a family come to terms with the death of their own infant son. Larkin's family welcomes Sophie into their home, caring for her and teaching her games and new words. They come to love this baby as their own, all the while knowing that eventually Sophie's mother will return one day to take her from them.
Author Notes
Patricia MacLachlan was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming on March 3, 1938. She received a B.A. from the University of Connecticut in 1962 and taught English at a junior high school until 1979. She began writing picture books and novels at the age of thirty-five. Her works include The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt, Skylark, Caleb's Story, Grandfather's Dance, Three Names, All the Places to Love, Before You Came, Cat Talk, and Snowflakes Fall. She won the Golden Kite Award for Arthur, for the Very First Time and the 1986 Newbery Medal for Sarah, Plain and Tall.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-Baby refers to two characters in this beautifully written and moving novel-12-year-old Larkin's infant brother (who has died before the story begins) and Sophie, who is literally left in a basket in the driveway at Larkin's house. The girl's parents and Byrd, her grandmother, have been hiding their grief over their baby's death behind a wall of silence. Letting themselves love Sophie, even though they know her mother will eventually come back for her, helps them break through the barrier. When Sophie's mother does return, they are ready to mourn for the dead infant -and to give him a name. The final chapter, which takes place 10 years later, shows Sophie returning to the island for Byrd's funeral. A sense of peace and completion mark this occasion. With simple elegance, MacLachlan relates her tale about memory, love, loss, risk, and (most of all) about the power of language. Especially impressive is her ability to invest the simplest human actions and physical events with emotion and love. While the plot could never be called surefire in its appeal, and some of the happenings strain believability, the story is one that is deeply felt.-Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
After bidding good-bye to the last of the ``summer people,'' Larkin, her parents and grandmother return home to find a baby in a basket. ``I cannot take care of her now, but I know she will be safe with you. . . . I will come back for her one day. I love her,'' reads a note from the child's mother. The little one's name is Sophie, and she brings a great deal of joy and comfort to the household. Yet casting a shadow on this spirited baby's luminous presence is the family's knowledge that she does not truly belong to them, and that she cannot take the place of Larkin's brother, who died in infancy. The Newberry Medalist's lean yet lyrical narrative gracefully entwines past and present, as brief passages present an older Sophie's fragmented memories of her interlude with the family. Inspired by poems, songs and Sophie's growing vocabulary, Larkin (whose mother communicates through her paintings and whose father expresses himself through his tabletop tap dancing) ponders the meaning and power of words (``There were words in the spaces between us; those words we had never spoken, words about what I thought was right''). If the story is not as compelling as Sarah, Plain and Tall or Journey , MacLachlan's style remains masterly. It is difficult to read her sentences only once, and even more difficult to part from her novel. All ages. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
The note left on the doorstep of twelve-year-old Larkin's home along with the infant Sophie indicates that Sophie's mother will return for her. Despite warnings not to love her because her stay is temporary, Larkin's family cannot avoid giving Sophie their hearts; in so doing, they gain the ability to speak of the recent loss of their baby boy. Short, spare, and powerful, the story lingers in the heart. From HORN BOOK 1993, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
In a spare novel with the resonance of myth, two troubled families are healed when their paths conjoin. Some years ago on a remote island resembling Nantucket, Larkin's parents are silently mourning the death of a baby they never named and never described to his sister. The day the summer people leave, they find year- old Sophie on their doorstep with a note: ``I will lose her forever if you don't do this, so pleese keep her. I will come back for her one day...'' Papa wants to tell the police, but- -after impassioned discussion--Mama dissuades him. Sophie stays until spring; and though Papa warns ``Don't love her,'' once they've cared for her, and shared her first words, the parting is hard indeed. Yet while Larkin fears this new bereavement-- especially for Mama--love (``That word with a life of its own...flying above all of us like the birds'') opens the door to sharing their grief about their own baby. Once Sophie is gone, their feelings find words--and also lead to the dead baby's being given a name. At the story's beginning, Larkin's parents have abandoned her emotionally (an intriguing contrast to Journey); but Sophie's subsequent memories of her sojourn--in lyrical vignettes plus a poignant last scene of her return visit ten years later--are not of separation but of love: faces, gestures, images. Some circumstances (not least Sophie's being left with strangers so that her mother can care for a desperately ill husband) border on fantasy, yet the almost surreal events convey emotional truths with a power that surpasses literal realism. A searching, beautifully written story. (Fiction. 9+)
Booklist Review
Gr. 5-10. Twelve-year-old Larkin and her family find a baby sitting in a basket, abandoned at their door. A note (as beautiful as the letter in MacLachlan's Sarah, Plain and Tall, 1985) says simply: "This is Sophie. She is almost a year old and she is good. . . . I will come back for her one day. I love her." Larkin and her mother, father, and grandmother care for the baby. They always know that Sophie will leave one day, but they can't stop themselves from loving her. As the seasons change over a year in their island community, the baby releases the unspoken sadness that has been keeping Larkin's family apart: a baby boy born six months before had lived only one day, and no one can talk about it. At first the plot seems contrived, Larkin's narrative voice self-conscious, the characters idealized, and the healing almost co-dependency therapy. No one has a mean thought, ever. But the spare lyricism of MacLachlan's writing and the physical immediacy of daily life with this very real baby will move the most hardened cynic, especially when Sophie begins to talk sentences. Her words are as absurd and loving as those of the island people, as elemental as the wind and rock. Sophie's mother finally comes back for the baby, and she's told: "Everyone here has rocked her and read to her and wiped her tears and sung to her. Lalo taught her how to blow a kiss, and sometimes she slept with Larkin. She painted with Lily, and she danced with John." The story is also about the silence between words, and in the parting scene, when Papa "stared at Sophie as if he were trying to memorize her," MacLachlan makes love and grief one circle. ~--Hazel Rochman