RABBIT ODYSSEY

Do yourself a favor and drop your "adult" reading for a little while. Kate DiCamillo - the children's book authoress extraordinaire who wrote Because of Winn-Dixie and the Newberry Medal-winning The Tale of Despereaux - is back with a terrific new book called The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. It clocks in at 200 pages, but it won't keep you more than an hour or two due to the big font, humongous spacing and a generous sprinkling of pretty illustrations by artist Bagram Ibatoulline.

The story is simple, gripping and heartwarming in a way that only occassionally borders on sappiness. Edward Tulane is a toy rabbit who is totally full of himself, unable to reciprocate the love heaped on him by his girl owner. He doesn't realize how lucky he is until the day two hooligan boys toss him over the side of a ship and he sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Over the years he winds up in the hands of a fisherman and his wife, a hobo, a dying girl and a dollmaker, and each owner brings him a step closer to understanding the importance of love.

I like to think of myself as a pretty cynical guy, but I have to admit that a rather sizeable lump inhabited my throat when I closed the book, turned off my lamp and drifted off to Dreamland.