Ramar

""What could a rabbit with rainbow wings know of love or wisdom or the meaning of life?'' asks debut author Hare. Very little, it turns out--although Hare shows that he knows how to spin a yarn that's as cottony as his namesake's tail. Ramar is a winged rabbit born into the ""World-In-Between,'' where souls mind their lessons between earthly, human incarnations. Over the course of Ramar's chronicle, the rabbit grasps the meaning of his wings and of his destiny as a spiritual teacher from several animal and human guides. They promote a giddy, make-nice pantheism that touts key New Age tenets like free will, karmic justice and anticlericalism even as it mashes up the core beliefs of the world's great religions. Near book's end, Jesus appears as a radiant white lamb to bleat the praise of Ramar and Hare's theology--and of Ramar, proclaimed as every bit the equal of Moses, Buddha, Muhammad and the Man from Nazareth. And that's a bit of rabbity hubris that even Bugs, a bolder and perhaps wiser bunny, wouldn't have dared. Illustrations, not seen by PW. (Mar.)