LAVENDER

Codie has a special relationship with her aunt Alix, who lives up the block; though Alix's first child is due in two weeks, she welcomes the little girl for her usual Saturday night sleepover and assures her that, despite the big belly where Codie can see the baby move, ``There will always be room'' for her. Secretly, Codie is making the baby a patchwork quilt—a perfect gift for a seamstress like her aunt. When Alix is rushed to the hospital the night of the sleepover, she's concerned: she knows that ``Aunt Alix has tried having a baby lots of times. This is the closest she's come to a baby fully done.'' The quilt is two weeks short of completion, and so, perhaps, is the baby. Working through the night, Codie finishes her gift with a border of lavender, Aunt Alix's favorite color; morning brings news that the baby's fine, and that ``Lavender'' is her name. This simple, easily read little story is a gem. Each telling detail—Alix's dogs comfortably settled on a lumpy sofa, licking cookie crumbs from each other's whiskers; Codie's joyous powdered sugar fight with her aunt and uncle the night before the baby is born, echoed in Alix's tone (``sweet and light, like powdered sugar'') when she finds the patchwork neatly tucked among the baby's clothes— is a gentle brush-stroke in this tender, but never sentimental, portrait of a particularly nice family welcoming its newest member. Illustrations not seen. (Fiction/Young reader. 5-9)