Welcome-baby books make for joy when not squashed by gooey sentimentality, and this one works. While Aston’s prose poem is occasionally lush, it’s also beautiful as she ties the newborn to the circle of family: “When you were born / your grandmother . . . sang to you / the lullaby she had sung to me.” “[Y]our uncle—my baby brother all grown up—took you in his hands . . . and he whispered, ‘A baby is so small!’ ” Daddy, grandfather, neighborhood mothers, and children, even the dog, greet the new child, filling the house with food and planting a magnolia tree that will grow with the baby. Lewis’s illustrations pay homage to his favorite artists: Chagall, Matisse, Redon, and Giotto. Watercolor and marker with touches of gold make these wonderful paintings, each framed opposite a page of text. The line is nervous and vivid, the shapes fully formed geometry that seem to float in space, the colors strong but with dreamlike patterns and edges. Even the endpapers of blue with gold stars echo a cloak with which Giotto clothed the Madonna. Sure to have a huge audience. (Picture book. 4-7)