An Everyrabbit's adventures are rendered hilarious and weirdly profound by the simple device of transposing words' initial letters. Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook, by Shel Silverstein (HarperCollins, $17.99 all ages).

And those 'Zen shorts' he wears to go swimming? They're also the Buddhist tales he lives by.

One morning, a Japanese paper umbrella brings a giant panda floating down into three kids' backyard. It smelled of wool.' The opening of 'The Carpet of Dreams,' from Afghanistan, sums up the allure of these wonderful stories from the 'stans.' 'At the end of a twisting passageway, in the city of old Herat, was a tiny carpet shop. Tales Told in Tents: Stories from Central Asia, by Sally Pomme Clayton, illustrated by Sophie Herxheimer (Frances Lincoln, $16.95 ages 5-up). As for Lobel's art, think Van Gogh in New Mexico. Then the rain comes and sets all three plots in joyous motion. So Happy! by Kevin Henkes, illustrated by Anita Lobel (Greenwillow, $15.99 ages 2-5). In the wee hours of a Ghanaian family's first night in America, a girl comforts her forlorn little brother with colorful folktales from home. In the Small, Small Night, by Jane Kurtz, illustrated by Rachel Isadora (Greenwillow/ Amistad, $16.99 ages 4-8). Then the ladies take a self-esteem course. Four large, meek hens share a chicken yard with a small, despotic rooster. Fourteen-year-old Amrith's role in a school production of 'Othello' helps him plumb the 'black mood swept over him like a wave.'įour Hens and a Rooster, by Lena and Olof Landstrom, translated from the Swedish by Joan Sandin (R&S, $16 age 4-8). A coming-of-age and a coming-out story set in Colombo, Sri Lanka, circa 1980. Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, by Shyam Selvadurai (Tundra, $18.95 ages 13-up). The saga of a family wrenched apart by the Vietnam War, as told by a highly unsentimental 13-year-old girl. Summer's End, by Audrey Couloumbis (Putnam, $16.99 ages 12-up). A strange, sad, funny book, alive with subversive ideas. In pre-Depression-era California, young Bobby meets an injured man who is also a horse. Mister Boots, by Carol Emshwiller (Viking, $15.99 ages 9-12). Outlandish, you say? No more so than slavery, says Mosley. Forty-seven, the narrator, is both a slave boy on an antebellum Southern plantation and a time-traveling savior called High John the Conqueror. In an inspired riff, 'Prince Freak' sets out to learn how he must live.Ĥ7, by Walter Mosley (Little, Brown, $16.99 ages 12-up). At the end of the Grimms' 'The Six Swans,' the bewitched brothers regain human form, but the youngest is left with a wing. Birdwing, by Rafe Martin (Scholastic/Levine, $16.99 ages 12-up).

Birdwing by rafe martin