BROTHERS OF THE WIND

This is one of Yolen's frail, fluttery tales that asks readers to marvel at an escapist miracle. When a foal is born with wings, the sheik who owns it calls it "Allah's jest" and orders the young slave Lateef, "the tender one," to dump it in the desert. Instead, Lateef, who thinks the foal might be "Allah's test," takes it across the desert to the city of Akbor. . . where the Caliph, he discovers, lies dying from an unfulfilled dream of riding a winged horse. So Lateef and his "little brother" the foal move into the stable, and when the foal has grown enough to be mounted, slave, caliph, and mount go flying off to dwell as brothers somewhere that Yolen's last words refer to as "the palace of the winds." Trite and anemic.