Dear Bruno -OS

This gently reassuring book, illustrated with whimsical drawings by New Yorker cartoonist Koren, is for children with cancer, their parents and other caretakers. The text is a letter that writer/TV producer Trillin wrote in 1979 to Bruno Navasky, a friend's 12-year-old son, who had just been diagnosed with cancer. Trillin, who in 1976 discovered that she had lung cancer, shares her healing experience with Bruno and attempts to cheer him up with impromptu humor and to instill courage, a matter-of-fact attitude toward one's illness, even a touch of irreverence. Today Navasky translates Japanese poetry and works for the Academy of American Poets. The author and her husband, Calvin Trillin, are volunteer counselors at actor Paul Newman's Hole-in-the-Wall Gang Camp in Connecticut for children with cancer or serious blood diseases. Author tour. (May)