POOKIE

Available for the first time on this side of the Atlantic, Wallace's series (first published in England in the 1940s) stars a charming winged rabbit. Everyone teases Pookie about his "flimsy, filmy wings"—they don't even allow him to fly. So he decides to leave home to seek his fortune and travels through a fairy world peopled with kindly elves, intimidating goblins and helpful frogs. None of them can tell Pookie what his fortune is, though. At last he lands in despair on a snowy doorstep, where the love of a woodcutter's daughter transforms him. Wallace's prose has a pleasingly nostalgic quality (e.g., "This is the story of Pookie, a little white rabbit with soft floppity ears, big blue eyes and the most lovable smile in the world") and the radiant watercolor illustrations never go out of style. The detailed domestic scene of Pookie's warren and the parallel world full of pixies, toadstools, hedgehogs and foxgloves, will gratify most children. Ages 5-9. (July)