From Publishers Weekly
While waiting for a "stranger," a girl snuggles with her great-great-aunt, looking at a photo of a small child "touched so often with hope, the edges curl." This intriguing beginning launches a touching story-within-a-story. Auntie Maita describes her loneliness as the only child of a Maine lighthouse keeper. One morning, after a fierce storm, Maita and her father find a sea chest wrapped in mattresses. Inside, they find a baby and this sorrowful note: "We commit this child into the hands of God. May He save her." Basing her plot on a local legend, Buzzeo, a Maine school librarian making her picture book debut, writes with such vivid, sensory-rich language that readers are almost certain to feel Maita's yearning for companionship and, later, her joy at having a sister. GrandPr 's (illustrator of the Harry Potter books) oil paintings, too, communicate the characters' shifting moods. During the storm, Mama and Maita peer through the window at Papa as he lurches against the wind toward the lighthouse. In a shadowy, sea-like, blue-green room, their candlelit faces exude a deep but stoically controlled fear. Back in the present, the girl looks expectantly at the quilt-lined sea chest, which "waits open on the table, for the tiny stranger my mama and papa have gone to fetch from so far across the wide Atlantic. To be my sister." Poignant, poetic and movingly illustrated, this story resonates with sisterly love. Ages 5-up. (Aug.)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 1-4-Aunt Maita tells her great-grandniece about her wonderful but lonely young years as the only child of a lighthouse keeper and his wife on a rocky Maine island. The text is poetic, describing the change in seasons in this remote setting. Then comes a terrible storm that frightens the family and bodes disaster for any ship at sea. The following day, Maita and her father find a bundled mattress, obviously washed ashore from a sunken ship. Unfolding it, they discover a leather sea chest with a baby inside, accompanied by a note from her despairing parents. The family adopts the child and they raise her as their own. Together Maita and Seaborne spend their days together-first on the island and later on the mainland where they live close by. At the end, readers learn that Aunt Maita, now an old woman, is telling the story to her niece as the child is waiting for her own adopted sister to arrive from overseas. GrandPr‚'s oil paintings create the dramatic effects of the story. From the muted sunrise on the endpapers to the sunset on the back cover, this lovely book has an intimacy that is enhanced by reading it aloud. The combination of exquisite language and enchanting illustrations makes this a unique and outstanding book.
Barbara Buckley, Rockville Centre Public Library, NYCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
