ALA Booklist (Wed Sep 01 00:00:00 CDT 1993)

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. (Reviewed Sept. 1, 1993)

Horn Book

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.

Kirkus Reviews

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 warnsDon'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+)"

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

PW described this story of a family that takes in an abandoned baby as lean and lyrical,'' adding that the Newbery Medalistgracefully entwines past and present.'' All ages. (Sept.)

School Library Journal

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