It Takes An Island: When the Babies Came to Stay by Christine McDonnell

THE FIRST ARRIVED ON THE MAIL PLANE. THE HARBORMASTOR OPENED A CANVAS BAG. INSIDE WAS A SQUALLING, RED-FACED BABY.

THE NEXT TWO CAME ON THE FERRY.

THE FISHERMAN FOUND THE FOURTH, ASLEEP ON A PILE OF NETS, SMELLING FAINTLY OF MACKEREL.

The babies each had a note asking someone to take good care of them, but the harbormaster, the ferryman, and the fisherman said they had their own work to do. The mayor said he was much too important. But the librarian thought the babies should stay on their safe little island. Who could take them? The Librarian usually knew the answers to questions.

"I'LL DO IT MYSELF," SAID THE LIBRARIAN.

She made a nursery for the babies in a freshly-painted storeroom. The Fisherman made rocking cribs from lobster traps and the Mayor rocked them whle he read his important newspaper. The others provided coverlets and curtains made from canvas and fishnets. The Librarian named them alphabetically--Agatha, Bram, Charles, and Dorothy. She called them A, B, C, and D, and said their last name was "Book." The babies grew and thrived. As time passed they learned to walk, led by Bram. Their rescuers taught them sea chanties and how to blow the ferry horn and how to tie many kinds of knots, and the mayor let them spin in his important desk chair.

The Librarian, of course, taught them to read.

When they started to school, a few kids asked them why they lived at the Library.

"WHERE ARE YOUR REAL FAMILIES?"

And the Librarian, who usually knew the answers to questions, told them they were the Book Family and the island was their home, in Christine McDonnell's sweetly moving When the Babies Came to Stay (Viking Books, 2020).

With a dreamlike, almost fairy-tale story of foundlings taken in and raised on a kind and close-knit island, what would seem to be a perilous fate turns into a nurturing community in which the adorable foundlings, pictured in Jeanette Bradley's intimate and outstanding art, find reassuring love and stability, a place where they truly belong, something all children crave. Kirkus Reviews says, "While the fantasy plotline of the babies' arrivals is whimsical, the story is grounded in an emotional reality that will appeal to and delight children. Charming and lighthearted with broadly applicable messages of love and acceptance."