NICOBOBINUS by Terry Jones (Peter Bedrick Books:...

NICOBOBINUS by Terry Jones (Peter Bedrick Books: $6.95; 175 pp.; ages 10-up). It’s hard to fathom that the nude organist for Monty Python is actually an Oxford scholar and has lectured at Wellesley College on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but ‘tis so. Jones blends his wacky humor with his zeal for medieval history into an adventure so rowdy and preposterous, children will surely love it.

“Nicobobinus” is set in the Middle Ages and features a boy who “could do anything.” When his foot, neck and hand are turned to gold by a King Midas type, Nicobobinus runs off with his friend Rosie to the Land of Dragons for a cure. Along the way they tangle with pirates, robbers, walking mountains and monks, with enough narrow escapes to fill a dungeon. Sometimes he’s so scared, he gets icky feelings “inside his tummy--it was a bit like drinking a cup of cool, clear mountain water, on a hot, dusty day, and then remembering you’d put your pet fish in it.”

When you get used to rolling Nicobobinus off your tongue, it’s fun to read aloud, although often things seem to go on and on in the rambling way of silly tales. Jone sneaks morals into his characters’ deeds. Our hero is sad to learn “that the ones who seek power over their fellows . . . are almost always all of them bad.” And greed is what destroyed “this world of love and caring between dragons and men.”

Michael Forman’s illustrations make the book. There are dozens of humorous sketches, and just when the palaver becomes boring, along comes a full-page splash of watercolors.

The best part, the ending, mirrors the proverb in Uri Shulevitz’s Caldecott Honor Book, “The Treasure” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1978): “Sometimes one must travel far to discover what is near.” In more ways than one, “Nicobobinus” is quite a trip.

A NEW COAT FOR ANNA by Harriet Ziefert, illustrated by Anita Lobel (Knopf: $10.95; 40 pp.; ages 4-8). Based on a true story set in Europe after World War II, this is one of the finest picture books of the year. Anna needs a warm coat and as her mother barters cherished possessions with a sheep farmer, a spinner, a weaver and a tailor, Anna learns about patience and love. She also sees how clothing is made and how hardship gives life to hope.