Edward's Eyes
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Jake is a part of an extraordinary family.
He has a life filled with art, music, and long summer nights on the Cape. He has hours and days and months of baseball. But, more than anything in this world, Jake knows he has Edward. From the moment he was born, Jake knew Edward was destined for something. Edward could make anyone laugh and everyone think. During one special year, he became the only one in the neighborhood who could throw a perfect knuckleball. It was a pitch you could not hit. That same year, Jake learned there are also some things you cannot hold.
Patricia MacLachlan, one of the most beloved children's book authors writing today, has painted a deeply stirring, delicately lyrical portrait of a child, a son, a family, and a brother. Through Edward's eyes, we see what gifts all of these things truly are to those around them, and how those gifts live on and grow.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From the start, it is clear that Edward is very special. The day his delightfully eccentric parents bring him home from the hospital, his mother places him in the arms of older brother and narrator Jake, who is immediately smitten: "His eyes are the dark mud-blue of the night sky, but there are surprising little flecks of gold in them. They stare right into my eyes.... I want to say that I love him more than anything or anyone I know. But I am only three, and when I try to talk I can't say all those words." Yet Jake, as this resonant story unwinds, proves to be remarkably articulate. His recollections of Edward shape a memorable portrait of a boy who, as a toddler asks to have Goodnight Moon read to him in French, insists on walking two steps ahead of his older siblings on his first day of kindergarten, never once strikes out while playing baseball and teaches himself how to throw an impossible-to-hit knuckleball. Edward's vision extends far beyond the power of his striking eyes: he somehow knows, when his mother becomes pregnant, that this sixth baby will be a girl. "She'll be Sabine. And we'll have fireworks!" he announces confidently. Newbery Medalist MacLachlan brings her story to a conclusion that is both unbearably sad and uplifting, delivered, like the whole, in perfect pitch. Ages 8-12.
