  | Full Text Reviews: Bulletin for the Center... - 11/01/2007 Our narrator, Jake, is initially miffed when his parents bring home another baby, but he looks in Edward’s eyes and falls under his infant brother’s spell. As Edward grows, he’s the marvel of the family and its good friends, approaching life with a blend of fearlessness, faith, and quaint formality. It’s therefore a terrible grief to the family when Edward is killed in a bicycle accident, but Jake eventually finds his healing in tracing Edward’s final legacy: the gift of new sight to a minor-league player of Edward’s beloved game, baseball. MacLachlan’s style is polished and effective, and the death of a child is always a moving concept. Ultimately, though, this seems more like an elegant contrivance than a story of real messy people undergoing real messy life and bereavement. The family’s idyllic particulars, including the unexplained constant inclusion of that hackneyed figure, a kindly black elder, are implausible; Edward himself is presented as a tender, prodigious angel (“Don’t ask me how he knows. He just knows,” breathes an adult reverently), and some of his ostensibly charming characteristics are actually annoying Fauntleroyesque affectations. Ultimately, this will likely follow Sarah, Plain and Tall into Hallmark TV territory and be at its best there, while readers looking for fresh literary explorations of the topic of sibling loss will fare much better with Yeomans’ Rubber Houses (BCCB 2/07). DS - Copyright 2007 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. School Library Journal - 10/01/2007 Gr 4-6-When three-year-old Jake, the fourth child in an extraordinary family, is presented with his new brother, he is mesmerized by the baby's gaze and overwhelmed with awe and love. Their special bond grows, and it becomes clear that Edward is an unusual, insightful child who sometimes senses things before they happen. When Edward is eight, their parents announce there will be another baby, and he knows that it will be a girl. They will call her Sabine, and he will sing "O Canada" to her and read her Goodnight Moon in French. Edward loves to play baseball and organizes games on the family's seaside lawn where he practices knuckleball pitches with the guidance of a 68-year-old neighbor and his 90-year-old father, a veteran of the Negro League. Jake's spare narration describes an idyll of family life in which parents dance around the house, children are free to explore their surroundings, and books are central. Tragedy is gently foreshadowed, and Edward's death in a biking accident shatters them all, but perhaps no one more than Jake, who lashes out at his parents' decision to donate Edward's organs and corneas. When he meets the cornea recipient, a young ballplayer, Jake can finally begin to accept that Edward does indeed live on. MacLachlan's simple, moving prose includes light touches of humor and weaves a spell that draws readers into an intimate family circle in which hope prevails and deep love promises to mitigate loss. A gem.-Marie Orlando, Suffolk Cooperative Library System Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information. - Copyright 2007 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Booklist - 09/01/2007 As always, MacLachlan’s simple words speak of big things. This time they talk about the death of a beloved sibling. Was is a word “so small and so big” as Jake, 11, remembers his younger brother from the day eight years ago when their mother brought baby Edward home from the hospital and put him in Jake’s lap. Jake reads to Edward, teaches him how to use the bathroom, and in their daily summer baseball games in the yard, Edward learns to throw a perfect knuckleball that no one can hit. Edward can see the speeding ball with his wonderful eyes, and at eight, when he dies, he has never once struck out. The memories are very idyllic; there’s not a trace of jealousy or anger or argument among the parents, sisters and brothers, friends, or neighbors in the small town. But the surprise at the end of the story will take readers back to the beginning, and the beautiful words will make rereading a joy. - Copyright 2007 Booklist. Loading...
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