KIDS

Little Lit: Folklore & Fairy Tale Funnies, edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly, HarperCollins, 64 pages, $29.95, all ages To name just a few of the fairy-tale funnies included in Little Lit, there's The Gingerbread Man, by Walt Kelly, The Princess and the Pea, by Barbara McClintock, Jack and the Beanstock, by David Macaulay, and Prince Rooster, by Art Spiegelman (author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "comics" Maus I and II) himself. As well there's a game of Road Rage, also by Spiegelman, with pop-out playing pieces. Sweetness and light are not the qualities that come to mind when reading these interpretations -- brash, raucous enjoyment is more like it. Beavers Eh to Bea: Tales from a Wildlife Rehabilitator, Turnstone, 181 pages, $14.95, ages 10 and up When dogs destroy a Northern Ontario beaver lodge, the sole survivor of the rampage, a kit, is brought to Lil Anderson, a fish and wildlife technician for Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources with a secondary calling as a wildlife rehabilitator. Beaver kit A is soon joined by beaver kit B, and despite Anderson's professional standards as a biologist, one of which is not to anthropomorphize her charges, the kits become Eh and Bea. This delightful book gives ample reason to believe that beavers are capable of feeling, as it charts the beavers' progress from dependent orphan to "at home in the wild." Before Wings, by Beth Goobie, Orca, 203 pages, $19.95, ages 12 and up It is late June in Saskatchewan, and mayflies are much in evidence at the camp where 15-year-old Adrien Wood has come to spend the summer working in the snack bar. The mayfly's two-day lifespan seems to mimic Adrien's perception of her own. Two years ago, she suffered a brain aneurysm which almost killed her, and her doctors told her that the next one -- which could occur at any time -- will. Over the summer, helped a boy who is also half in love with death, Adrien moves from courting death to embracing life.