Patricia MacLachlan's novels are like poems: the end sends readers back to the beginning to see how the writer accomplished such a literary feat in so few words. Any fan of the author knows that she is attuned to the seasons: the smells, the tastes, the sounds. Her books about the heroine first introduced in the Newbery Medal-winning Sarah, Plain and Tall follow Sarah through the seasons on a farm and the cycle of life.Edward's Eyes is a summer book. It threads together themes of baseball, dance and music, fireworks, fearlessness and fragility--seamlessly. The youngest of four children, narrator Jake is three years old when his brother Edward is born. In the time-honored tradition of his loving family, it is Jake's job to look after infant Edward. The book begins with a prologue that sets up a sense of foreboding, greatly leavened by the moments that 11-year-old Jake recounts as a series of flashbacks. While Edward is on the toilet, for instance, Jake reads to him about the infield fly rule in baseball, only to learn that Edward had been stalling ("I went a long time ago") because he likes it when Jake reads to him. Later, Edward's perseverance shines through when he teaches himself to deliver a knuckleball, or zeroes in on a pitch as a batter. And when Sabine is born, it's Edward's turn to take care of her ("Have you noticed . . . that she brings our babies home and lets us raise them?" Jake says to Edward). The family suffers a seemingly insurmountable loss that could destroy them all if they were to keep silent. Instead, they cautiously begin to dance again and return to the baseball field. They discover that with their loss comes an unforeseeable gift. It is MacLachlan's gift to capture life as it is, in all its entanglements of joy and sorrow.--Jennifer M. Brown