THE STARLIGHT BABY

Shields offers a gentle little tale that can be read as an adoption story or one about the most basic kind of mother love. A baby in a garment of leaves cries, lying among the grasses and flowers, and calls to the stars, “can you love me? Will you be my mother?” But the stars don’t answer. The babe inquires of the silver moon, of the west wind and the trees, and even of the stream and the wolf, beseeching each to hold or warm or protect, but each either refuses or ignores. A woman, who does not smile, “because she had no child,” hears the baby’s cry and is led from her vine-covered cottage by the moon, stream, wind and trees to find the babe and bring it home at the end of night. “ ‘I will be your mother, little one,’ she said.” The dulcet watercolors are painted in meltingly soft pastels and swooping lines without being overly sweet, though the whole will not appeal to every taste. (Picture book. 3-7)