(++++) WRITING RIGHT, WRITING FRIGHT

A Beginning, a Muddle, and an End: The Right Way to Write Writing. By Avi. Harcourt. $14.95.

The Seer of Shadows. By Avi. HarperCollins. $16.99.

      Perhaps the most charmingly convoluted introduction to the art and craft of writing ever created, Avi’s A Beginning, a Muddle, and an End features the return of Avon the snail and Edward the ant in a surprisingly philosophical and verbally intricate adventure in which nothing much happens except a lengthy discussion of what it means to write, how one writes, what one writes about, and how one gets those thoughts – whatever they may be – down on paper. These characters previously appeared in The End of the Beginning, which was clearly aimed at young readers with an offbeat sense of humor. A Beginning, a Muddle, and an End, though, is appropriate for anyone interested in writing, although it will actually be too complex and filled with wordplay for literalists (whether young or old). Here, for example, is Edward’s explanation to Avon of the importance of punctuation: “‘Listen to this. …Avon! Don’t forget all I said. You must not! Speak the truth about what happened! Things will be better, I think. To lie about the truth, it never helps.’ …[Or] you might want to put it this way: ‘Avon, don’t! Forget all I said. You must not speak the truth about what happened. Things will be! Better, I think, to lie. About the truth – It never helps!’” Or here is a typical exchange between the two characters: “Edward became raddled with embarrassment. ‘Avon,’ he said, ‘a word to the wise is sufficient.’ Avon thought for a while, and then he said, ‘Edward, what wise word would that actually be?’ Edward shrugged all of his shoulders. ‘Creatures have spent years trying to discover that word. I’m not so sure there is one.’ ‘Edward,’ said Avon, ‘those are the wisest words you’ve ever said.’” Perennially self-referential, always witty and written with all the mock solemnity of a journey through Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland, A Beginning, a Muddle, and an End touches on a wide variety of elements of writing, from subject matter to style, but does so in such a lighthearted way that it can be enjoyed entirely as wordplay and amusement without consideration of any profundities. Still, Avi does insist on making some points, and he does so in a very Carroll-ish way, as when Avon and Edward encounter a bullying tree frog: “‘Don’t try to confuse me with logic,’ said the tree frog. ‘The only things I hate more than logic are facts that tell me I’m wrong.’ ‘What about facts that tell you you’re right?’ ‘This being a free country,’ said the tree frog, ‘I don’t care what you say as long as I get to decide which facts are right and which are wrong.’” This is a thoroughly remarkable little book by an author who plays with writing even if he is not writing plays.

      What Avi is writing is a series of highly effective novels, most of them far more straightforward than A Beginning, a Muddle, and an End. His A Seer of Shadows is a very effective ghost story and historical romance, intended for ages 8-12 but packed with enough drama and interesting history to be attractive even to young teenagers. The word “seer” usually means “prophet,” but here it literally means “see-er,” one who sees, because that is what Horace Carpetine turns out to be. This is a tale of the early days of photography, and Avi’s descriptions of the making of early photos using glass plates are knowledgeable, fascinating and absolutely crucial to the tale. Horace is apprenticed to a not-very-honest photographer named Enoch Middleditch, who decides he can make some extra money by arranging for ghostly images of dead children to appear within photos of wealthy grieving women. The way this is done – by double exposure – is interesting enough; but unknown both to Middleditch and (initially) to Horace, the apprentice can really make ghosts show up in pictures. And, it turns out, he can bring one particular ghost back into the real world – in search of revenge. The book is a thriller, a ghost story and a tale of changing social fabric all in one. The last of these elements comes from the developing friendship and respect between Horace, who is white, and Pegg, the black servant of the rich couple that Middleditch hopes to defraud. The intertwining of the world of the quick and the dead parallels that of whites and blacks in this post-Civil War era, leading eventually to a merger of the two stories and an ambiguous ending that will leave readers with a touch of uncertainty and even fear. Avi is a see-er himself – of the past, of present readers, and of future would-be writers.

(++++) YUM!

Slurp: Drinks and Light Fare, All Day, All Night. By Nina Dreyer Hensley, Jim Hensley, and Paul Løwe. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.

      This book looks good enough to eat, but that would be a mistake, because then you would lose all the recipes that lead to these delicious-looking concoctions. Not that your own creations will necessarily look this good if you follow the recipes: Slurp is very professionally assembled. Nina Dreyer Hensley and Jim Hensley are photographers, and Paul Løwe is a food stylist and interior designer. A food stylist is someone who makes sure all those gorgeous displays on menus, in ads and in books like this look wonderful – helping photographers work their magic getting just the right angles, colors and placements. So these authors know how to make stuff look absolutely scrumptious.

      But these recipes are delicious, even if you don’t manage to make everything look as picture-perfect as the authors do. Slurp focuses largely on drinks, alcoholic and non-alcoholic, but it also includes plenty of recipes for light snacks to go with the liquid refreshment. The book is arranged, somewhat arbitrarily (but, again, very attractively) by time of day: morning, daytime and evening. The idea is that certain drinks and snacks will be most enjoyable at specific times. That is a matter of opinion: the authors place hot chocolate with cinnamon in “morning,” for example, but it would be wonderful at night as well. However, every book needs an organizing principle, and the “time of day” one is just fine, as long as you don’t take the suggestions as gospel.

      The best way to use this book is to go through it cover to cover, oohing and aahing at the lovely pictures of gorgeous drinks and foods, and then pick and choose among the recipes to decide which ones you want to try. The authors start with “recipes” for a party (their tips include good music, enough ice and “tell the neighbors so the cops don’t show up”). They showcase some very creative uses of everyday items, such as using hollowed-out three-inch chunks of cucumber to serve vodka – with cucumber strips as stirrers. And then they get into the recipes. Unlike many authors of food books, the Hensleys and Løwe do not insist that readers buy lots of fancy equipment in order to achieve the best effects. For example, they say you can make foamed milk with a milk steamer or wand mixer, but if you don’t have either one, “pour a little hot milk into a bottle and shake well!”

      The recipes themselves are delightful. Think of mint tea (made with fresh mint), perhaps accompanied by baked plums with yogurt and almonds. Consider a frozen daiquiri with mango and papaya, perhaps served with salmon and potato salad with lemon mayonnaise. How about a blue margarita or a “blue heaven” (both made with blue curaçao)? There’s a plush plum and a raspberry rush, an opal ice and a citron crush. There’s a tropical punch that you can make with or without champagne. And there are dishes from mini pies with goat cheese and rosemary to Moroccan pancakes. Oh – and if you overindulge in the alcoholic offerings, you can consult the authors’ “ten great tips for surviving the day after,” which range from the conventional (“eat dry toast”) to “Sweat it out. Sex or sauna!” Slurp is a book you will want to drain to the dregs.

(++++) SECRETS GREAT AND SMALL

The Calder Game. By Blue Balliett. Illustrated by Brett Helquist. Scholastic. $17.99.

Sweet Valley High: No. 1, Double Love; No. 2, Secrets. By Kate William. Created by Francine Pascal. Laurel-Leaf. $5.99 each.

      Blue Balliett’s third art-focused detective caper for preteens and young teenagers is the most harrowing yet – and the most focused on trying to give her three young protagonists some individual personality. Balliett’s first two novels, Chasing Vermeer and The Wright 3, were deservedly popular for their offbeat approach of using art and architecture as driving forces, thus creating mysteries whose solutions actually got young readers thinking about (and involved in) the artistic world. But the three 12-year-old protagonists were never fully formed and differentiated characters – and in The Calder Game, Balliett seems aware of this fact and determined to change it. At one point in the book, a character sums up all readers have needed to know about the three central characters: “Calder the Math Whiz, Tommy the Finder, Petra the Scribbler.” Now, though, Calder Pillay, Tommy Segovia and Petra Andalee become more than three Chicago friends who play separate roles based on what single thing each is good at. For in The Calder Game, Calder the protagonist goes missing, and so does a massive statue by Alexander Calder – for whom Calder Pillay is named. The intertwined mysteries require Tommy and Petra to take a trip to England, where the statue and Calder both went missing. Furthermore, Tommy and Petra, who have not gotten along particularly well before, have to cooperate now, for Calder’s sake – and each has to try to think like Calder. And Tommy and Petra soon find themselves thinking like each other, too – growing and developing in ways that bode well for future Balliett books. The title The Calder Game refers to a game unveiled at a Calder exhibition in Chicago that the three friends attend before Calder Pillay and his dad go overseas; it also refers to the game being played – if it is a game – by someone in the book, who may or may not have nefarious motives. The book contrasts small-town insularity with big-city openness and British mores with American, and is neatly set by Balliett in real-world places (slightly modified for the story’s purposes). The unraveling of the interlocked mysteries is very well handled – enough so to overcome one significant flaw, in which something built centuries ago and long believed lost is surprisingly rediscovered…and then immediately destroyed, without regard for tradition or environmental issues. The seventh-grade detectives have grown by the end of the book, individually and as a three-person unit; and readers will grow in their appreciation of Calder’s art as well. Oh – and Brett Helquist, in addition to contributing his usual atmospheric illustrations, makes use of “Calder Code,” explained in the book, to bury a secret message for those interested in doing a little detective work of their own.

      The secrets are far more mundane in the re-release of the first two Sweet Valley High books, in which the characters are more one-dimensional than Calder, Tommy and Petra ever were. In fact, the two central characters are more or less half-dimensional, being identical twins with completely opposite personalities: “bad girl” Jessica Wakefield and “good girl” Elizabeth. Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley High books are 25 years old and have been updated by Kate William to include cell phones, the Internet and other everyday conveniences that did not exist when the books were first written. But the basic plots have been retained, which is a good thing only for readers looking for fast-paced but thoroughly superficial slice-of-high-school-life stories. For those readers, the books get a (+++) rating; the novels will be of no interest at all to teens looking for something more meaningful than gossipfests and revelations of who did what with whom (no one did much with anyone, actually; sex is limited to kissing). Double Love introduces the twins and their brother, Steven, who gets this sort of helpful parental advice after he says “I really suck” because he broke up with his girlfriend: “‘I wouldn’t say that, kiddo,’ his father said, patting him on the back as he sat down at the table. ‘You’re just learning as you go along. That’s what we’re all doing.’” The main plot involves the sisters’ attraction to the same boy, Jessica’s nefarious attempts to prevent Elizabeth and the guy from getting together, and Elizabeth’s eventual triumph and amusingly damp revenge on her sister. Secrets is about Homecoming competition and Elizabeth being so worried about a friend that she actually agrees to let Jessica help: “‘It’s all so screwed up already, nothing could really make it worse.’” The friend, Enid, is Jessica’s competition for Homecoming Queen, so of course things get complicated even though a teacher offers Enid the helpful assessment that Jessica is “‘all cookie-cutter flash. ….You, my dear, are a timeless beauty.’” Readers who can put up with the insipid dialogue, the thinness of the plots and the utter superficiality of all the characters will find the Sweet Valley High books to be the same largely mindless pastimes that their parents found them to be in the 1980s.

(+++) FANTASY CONCLUSIONS

The Darkwar Saga, Book Three: Wrath of a Mad God. By Raymond E. Feist. Eos. $25.95.

      Raymond E. Feist is one of the best authors writing heroic fantasy today, and Wrath of a Mad God is the best of the three books of his latest series, The Darkwar Saga. As a result, the book shows unusually clearly just how good – and how limited – its genre has become.

      The plot of Wrath of a Mad God could, in broad outline, be the plot of many other Feist novels, or ones by other heroic fantasists, with the change of just a few names and alteration of just a few plot twists. There is a war of two worlds, fraught with despair and destruction, and a small band of heroic figures struggling to ameliorate the outcome – in this book’s case, the sorcerer Pug and members of the Conclave of Shadows. There are good warriors, and there are bad guys (the Dasati), and Pug has a specific bad guy with longstanding enmity toward him (evil sorcerer Leso Varen), and Pug’s wife is captured and must be rescued. And the key to eventual success may lie with a friend of Pug, long thought dead, who may be able to tip the balance of the final battle between the forces of good and evil.

      This description of the entirely formulaic plot does little justice to Feist’s writing and pacing skill, but it is a fair summary of the events of the book – which are a great deal like the events in many other heroic-fantasy novels of recent vintage. What elevates Feist’s books above the average is not the stories he tells but the way he tells them. He keeps his dialogue mostly plain – no phony “heroic-sounding” verbiage here – and his characters’ comments often contain flickers of humor, a welcome characteristic that other fantasists frequently omit. At one point in Wrath of a Mad God, after a wholly typical comment about “wolf-riders [who] suck life from bodies,” one character comments, “I guess that means the sneaky quiet part is over.” And a few lines later, a different character, held back from attempting to follow Pug’s wife, Miranda, remarks, “I don’t worry about her. But when a man who can command dragons tells me to wait, I’m inclined to wait.”

      The plainspokenness and humor are welcome, but Feist tends to take them too far, to the point of undercutting some of the otherworldly effect of his writing. In a late chapter with the notable title of “Truth,” for example, Pug finds himself talking with a god; but the god uses an old earthly story to make a point – a story that really has no place in an entirely different world: “Do you remember…the parable of the scorpion and the frog?” “The scorpion kills the frog who is helping it cross the river and when asked why answers, ‘because it is my nature.’ Yes, I remember it.” So do readers (there are variants, but all involve one animal doing a favor for another, dangerous one and being killed because the dangerous one’s nature is to kill). This does help readers connect their world with Feist’s, and in fact the author has the god make the point very clearly: “Understand, I am the scorpion, and I can no more change my nature than you can become a frog.” But the sense of wonder, of journey to a different world in a different universe, is undercut by use of this entirely mundane tale from Earth.

      Feist does this sort of thing repeatedly. In the same chapter, Pug addresses the god as Ban-ath, and the god replies, “Or if you prefer Kalkin, Antrhen, Isodur, or any number of other names humanity inflicts on me – Coyote is one of my favorites – but no matter the name, I am myself.” For any reader who does not already understand that this is a trickster god whose nature is to scheme and insinuate, the use of the name Coyote makes that clear; but, again, it is an intrusion of everyday Earth into what is supposed to be a far-distant and far different world. Ultimately, the frustration of reading many modern heroic fantasies, even ones as well written as those of Feist, lies in some combination of the formulaic nature of their plots and the intrusive nature of their attempts to help readers relate to the outré by bringing in earthbound references that really do not belong to the story.

(++++) ENGINEERED FOR YOUR CONFUSION

Norton 360, version 2.0. Windows Vista or XP. Symantec. $79.99.

Norton Ghost 14.0. Windows Vista or XP. Symantec. $69.99.

      What would it take to get Symantec to produce an all-in-one suite of a protective product, rolling its engineering excellence into a single offering to provide a full measure of safety against online threats, clogged computer processes, system crashes and much more? Unfortunately, it may take a mass exodus from the company’s increasingly complex product line to get Symantec to take a step back toward all-in-one protection. Someone should tell the company that that would actually be a step forward.

      For several years now, it has been the seamless integration of multiple functions within Symantec’s products that has given them the edge over lower-cost, shareware and freeware offerings that perform many of the same functions just about as well. But because Symantec increasingly splits up the functions of its Norton product line into individual packages, the seams are starting to show, and it is getting harder for everyday computer users to figure out just what they ought to buy to get the most protection for their money.

      Case in point: one small business had both a Norton Protection Center icon and a Norton SystemWorks icon on one of its monitors. Suddenly, One Button Checkup started to run at an inconvenient time. It was only after 15 frustrating minutes of trying to reschedule this swift and clever little computer-analysis program through Norton Protection Center that someone realized it could only be found through Norton SystemWorks. That sort of illogic and confusion eats away at the respect that Symantec has spent many years building, and does not bode well for its future marketing efforts.

      And that brings us to Norton 360, version 2.0. This sounds like a do-it-all product, providing a full circle (360 degrees) of safety. But…well, not exactly. The basis of Norton 360 is Norton AntiVirus, which is as fine a virus catcher as you’ll find anywhere. Build on the Norton AntiVirus foundation by adding anti-hacker features, identity-theft protection and a measure of download safety and you get Norton Internet Security – a suite that you would expect, from its name, to be all you need for safe Web surfing. That’s more or less true, but Symantec can do even more. Add some tuneup tools for your computer and some backup utilities, including the ability to restore damaged and deleted files and folders, and you have (trumpet fanfare, please) Norton 360. And it’s a really fine product, featuring a single central screen where you can find out at a glance that you are in good shape (or not) in each of its four areas: security, identity protection, backup and tuneup. It’s reasonably easy to use, although its “Settings” screen resembles something out of Windows Vista (which is not a compliment) and its separate “My Account” screen adds an unneeded additional layer of complexity (although it works very well once you get used to it). The warning messages are clear, the icons are sensibly designed, and the ability to back up some data on the Web is a nice touch (although if you want more than two gigabytes of online storage, you’ll have to pay extra). So this really is Symantec’s go-to product, right?

      Well, no. Norton 360 is fine for most individual users and families, and at least some small businesses, but it won’t do for a complete backup of crucial data and applications, and also provide protective features necessary to maintain a network that is crucial to a company’s ongoing operations. That is where Norton Ghost 14.0 comes in. The venerable Norton Ghost line gets new refinements with each iteration – this version backs up to more places than earlier ones and features strong integration with the indexing capabilities of Google Desktop. This is a niche product, but it is an important niche: Norton Ghost allows backup of data, applications and settings, a full-system disk image that brings everything back after a catastrophic loss, and a way to recover from a total failure in which the entire operating system crashes. These features are unnecessary for many computer users but will be critical for others; hence the product differentiation here. And Norton Ghost is less friendly to average users than Norton 360: if FTP sites, remote network management and partitioning are not part of your everyday vocabulary, Norton Ghost is over-engineered for you.

      So there is some logic to the proliferation of Symantec’s products – even though all of them, in their similar-looking bright yellow boxes, appear to target the same users. In fact, Symantec might consider a color change for some products – ones for home and small-business use in one color, ones for larger businesses and IT departments in a different one. But this is only part of the solution, because a company that makes Norton 360, Norton Internet Security, Norton AntiVirus, Norton SystemWorks and several other partially overlapping offerings – every one of which deserves a (++++) rating for engineering excellence – is nevertheless inviting market confusion through insufficient clarity.

(+++) SCHMIDT’S REVELATION

Franz Schmidt: Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln. Johannes Chum, tenor (St. John); Robert Holl, bass-baritone (Voice of the Lord); Sandra Trattnigg, soprano; Michelle Breedt, mezzo-soprano; Nikolai Schukoff, tenor; Manfred Hemm, bass; Robert Kovács, organ; Wiener Singverein and Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich conducted by Kristjan Järvi. Chandos. $29.99 (2 SACDs).

      An oratorio on a grand scale that uses large choral and orchestral forces but makes some of its most telling effects when it is quietest, Franz Schmidt’s Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (The Book of Seven Seals) is a work permeated by contradictions. An irony is that it was first performed in 1938, just three months after Germany’s Anschluss with Austria – and is offered here in a live recording of a performance given in 2005 by the State Orchestra of Lower Austria. But in fact Schmidt’s work transcends its era in its devout approach to the Book of Revelation – indeed, the work seems to belong as much to the 19^th century as to the middle of the 20^th. Its sound world is primarily that of Wagner, although it harks back much further – to the Baroque – in its prominent organ part (including several lengthy solos) and in Schmidt’s choice of the triumphal key of D major for his extended “Hallelujah” near (but not at) the end.

      But for all the echoes of Wagner (and of Bruckner, with whom Schmidt studied), the conception of Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln has many unique elements. One is the leading role of St. John, which is assigned to a heldentenor who is clearly intended to be a young and vibrant man, not the elderly sage he is more commonly portrayed as being. Johannes Chum handles this key role – by far the largest in the work – with intensity and ringing vocal tones. It is his narrative skill, as much as what occurs in the orchestra and chorus, that pulls the oratorio along. The seven-times-sealed Book is revealed – after more than a quarter of an hour of preliminaries – in a section led by bassoons and double basses, in one of many felicitous scoring touches. The Book gets its own leitmotif, and its Seals are opened one by one by the Lamb of God – revealing first, interestingly enough, not War but Christ (a variant interpretation of the rider of the first, white horse). The openings proceed remorselessly, Seal by Seal, with some of Schmidt’s vocal and orchestral touches being especially effective. The breaking of the Second Seal, for instance, brings forth the evil Red Rider, who lays waste to everything – to an incessant snare-drum background that much resembles the motto that Shostakovich would use only a few years later, in his Seventh Symphony, to represent the Nazi advance on Leningrad (the irony here is that Schmidt was, at least for a time, a supporter of Nazi expansionism, albeit apparently a lukewarm one).

      The most interesting music in the opening of the Seals occurs when the fourth of them is broken to reveal Death on a pale horse. This is quiet and very eerie music for xylophone and col legno strings: the horse seems to limp and lurch about as two male voices discuss their survival on a battlefield strewn with corpses. Eventually the oratorio builds to the War in Heaven in which Satan is cast down forever – but this grandiose section is less effective than what follows when the trumpets (actually both trombones and trumpets in Schmidt’s scoring) herald the end of time. Scenes of destruction and glory are told in fugal sections (the score is filled with fugues, another Baroque throwback), the dead are raised, and after the Voice of the Lord proclaims “Ich mache alles neu” (“I make all things new”), Schmidt presents his choral Hallelujah – which is not as effective as it could be. It is certainly loud enough, and the words are triumphal, but the first seven verses are rhythmically identical (although not on the same notes), and the whole thing becomes more repetitious than grand. Yet it is not the end: in a wonderful stroke, the music subsides into silence, followed by a quiet men’s chorus of thanks that is a high point of the work – after which the voice of St. John closes off the revelatory tale.

      Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln is uneven, sometimes frustratingly so, and its mixed musical styles never really gel into a single harmonic vision. But the work has sections of great power and others of surprising lyricism, and Kristjan Järvi leads the soloists, chorus and orchestra with commitment and a sure hand. The SACD sound is outstanding – on regular CD players as well as in surround-sound mode – and the included booklet offers extensive explanatory notes and the complete text of the oratorio. The result is a production that is revelatory, even if the work does not rise to the level of an ultimate Revelation.

(++++) TALES WITH TWISTS

A Princess, A Pirate, and One Wild Brother. By Cornelia Funke. Illustrated by Kerstin Meyer. Chicken House/Scholastic. $18.99.

Help Me, Mr. Mutt! Expert Answers for Dogs with People Problems. By Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel. Illustrated by Janet Stevens. Harcourt. $17.

      Here’s a great buy: three Cornelia Funke books in one, for not much more than the original price of a single one. A Princess, A Pirate, and One Wild Brother contains The Princess Knight (originally published in 2001, with English translation in 2003); Pirate Girl (2003; English, 2005); and The Wildest Brother (2004; English, 2006). The books have nothing to do with each other, except that all celebrate the pluck and bravery of young girls – and all are wonderfully told stories that are significantly enriched by Kerstin Meyer’s apt and amusing illustrations. The Princess Knight is all about a princess, youngest of four children in a kingdom, who refuses to accept the mockery of her brothers just because they fight more intensely and more loudly than she can. She decides to develop her own fighting style, relying on stealth – which serves her in good stead when her father decides to make her, the princess, the prize in a knightly tournament. Pirate Girl tells of some rough-and-tumble bad guys who push their luck too far when they attack a small ship carrying a little girl named Molly, who is on her way to see her grandmother. Captain Firebeard, Morgan O’Meany, Bill the Bald and the rest of the pirates get their comeuppance in a wholly deserved and quite unexpected way. As for The Wildest Brother, it takes place in an apparently ordinary home, where young Ben spends his time fighting off Man-Eating Monsters, Moldy Green Ghosts, Burglars, Bears and more – all to protect his exceedingly tolerant older sister, who turns out, when Ben needs some real-world protection, to be the one who is really big and strong. Funke is a marvelous storyteller, equally comfortable with piratical absurdity, royal self-assertion and the heartwarming everyday life of siblings. Each of these tales is a treat; taken together, they are a triple helping of delight.

      Help Me, Mr. Mutt! has its own take on absurdity: it is about an advice column for dogs, by a dog. Canines giving their names as “Famished in Florida,” “Overdressed in Oklahoma” and the like send Mr. Mutt complaint letters – accompanied by photos – asking how they can get humans to behave better…or at least more cooperatively. And Mr. Mutt has just the right answers, from a dog’s point of view. People refusing to play constantly because they want to watch TV? Chew through the cord, then jump up and down in front of the now-dark set. People won’t let you sleep in their bed? Sleep in their child’s bed – after making sure the child is already asleep. And what about those pesty cats who seem to have everything so easy in these doggy households? Well, that’s where things get a little complicated for Mr. Mutt, because every time he tells a correspondent how to get the better of a cat, he receives a letter from The Queen – whose stationery says, “The Queen Speaks” beneath a picture of her wearing a tiara. And The Queen has little patience for being critiqued by…ugh…dogs. “Cats are not snooty,” she writes. “We just have a superior attitude. A cattitude.” Clearly Mr. Mutt and The Queen are heading for a confrontation – and that is just what they get, as the advice and counter-advice columnists get into a hissing, spitting, tying-up, chasing mêlée, after which all ends sort of happily, sort of ambiguously, and very amusingly. Here’s some unsolicited advice: Read. Laugh. Have fun.

(++++) THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING SWINISH – OR NOT

The Crass Menagerie: A “Pearls Before Swine” Treasury. By Stephan Pastis. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.

“Mutts” Shelter Stories: Love. Guaranteed. By Patrick McDonnell. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.

      For anyone out there who wonders why it might make sense to buy a “Treasury” volume of comic strips that have previously been published in book form, Stephan Pastis provides the answer underneath one of the strips in The Crass Menagerie: “That’s my rendering of our very own fax machine in that last panel. Again, it’s inside knowledge like this that makes these treasuries worth the extra money.” And speaking of being crass, Pastis makes a similar point almost 100 pages later, under a different strip: “I eat a lot of uncooked broccoli. I like broccoli. That’s the sort of commentary that makes the purchase of this book worthwhile.” But wait! There’s more here than merely shilling for the publisher! There’s also Pastis shilling for himself – thereby proving that he did learn something from his pre-cartooning work as a lawyer. Again and again, Pastis draws attention to contradictions or unexplained elements in his Pearls Before Swine universe, then explains them away by saying that a better cartoonist would know how to handle them. And he repeatedly says how much easier cartooning would be if it didn’t involve drawing, which he finds difficult – although he also likes to remind readers to pay attention to certain fine artistic elements in his strips: “That hubcap in the last panel took me half an hour to draw. Please take a moment to appreciate it.” If the combination of slightly strained (if not altogether false) modesty with a somewhat inflated sense of self-importance isn’t enough to endear The Crass Menagerie to you, simply spend some time gazing at the wonderful front cover, on which most of Pastis’ characters are busily trashing his office while the intellectual among them, Goat, sits reading Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – whose subtitle (not shown by Pastis) is…you guessed it…“Pearls Before Swine.” Then look at the back cover, which shows the office after it has been trashed and everyone has left – the most prominent thing here is “Pastis Is a Loser” spray-painted on the wall. Or turn to the inside front and back covers, which between them show 40 photos of Pastis with various pained expressions (complementing the 41^st, which is on the front of the book). Or simply thumb through the book itself, whose strips were originally published in Da Brudderhood of Zeeba Zeeba Eata and The Sopratos, and read the commentary that Pastis has added to most of his drawings – sometimes sillier than the comics, sometimes more informative, but never more biting. Pastis is quite a guy. But don’t invite him to spend too much time in your mind – he’ll trash it.

      Patrick McDonnell’s Mutts strip is as gentle and self-effacing as Pearls Before Swine is dark and cynical. McDonnell is an advocacy cartoonist, and Shelter Stories is his strongest book of advocacy yet. Shelter Stories is a sort of featurette within Mutts, in which adorable animals are seen at shelters being thoroughly endearing and asking gently but pleadingly for someone to adopt them. The animals McDonnell draws are not real, of course, but if you think them impossibly cute, take a look at some of the living animals whose photos make up a big part of this new book. McDonnell’s strips and the real-animal photos get equal play here, and each real-animal picture comes with a brief commentary from the person who adopted that particular dog or cat (or, for that matter, rabbit or ferret). The whole point of the book is to show people just how much not-yet-requited love is available, at modest cost, from their local animal shelter. All of this is quite wonderful and could help reduce the number of unadopted animals that are put to death every year because no one chooses them and there are always new animals coming in. Yet it has to be said that McDonnell comes on a trifle too strongly here – even for people who already favor and practice animal adoption. In one strip, Mooch the cat decides to “inspire” people to adopt pets by walking up to a man, kicking him in the rear, and shouting, “DO IT!” That’s funny in a comic but not in real life; and there is some of that heavy-handedness (or heavy-footedness) about Shelter Stories, which is why it gets a (+++) rating. The extended introduction by Humane Society of the United States President Wayne Pacelle does not help: Pacelle uses it to attack pet stores that sell animals, and generally comes across as holier-than-thou. The facts back Pacelle up (many pet-store puppies come from “puppy mills” that treat animals poorly); and they back McDonnell up as well (adoption is a wonderful and insufficiently used method of bringing animals and humans together). But there is a whiff of “hard sell” throughout Shelter Stories that renders it less effective than it could be.

(++++) BILINGUAL PLEASANTRIES

Everybody Bonjours! By Leslie Kimmelman. Illustrated by Sarah McMenemy. Knopf. $16.99.

Let’s Eat! ¡A Comer! By Pat Mora. Illustrated by Maribel Suárez. Rayo/HarperCollins. $12.99.

      Americans are fairly insular when it comes to languages other than English, despite the prevalence of Spanish in many communities and the importance of native languages to many immigrant groups. Both these books for young readers take a gentle approach to bilingualism that should appeal to parents hoping to broaden their children’s linguistic horizons. Everybody Bonjours! is also a travel book – in fact, it is attractive largely because it is a travel book, not a teaching tool. Intended for ages 5-8, Leslie Kimmelman’s book focuses on a family trip to Paris, where “everybody bonjours.” The little girl enjoys visits to the Louvre, the Tour Eiffel, the Arc de Triomphe and many other famed Parisian landmarks – shown on the inside front and back covers in a sort of visitors’ map. The text is very simple, with the attractive illustrations by Sarah McMenemy carrying the book along: “Bonjour solo.” (Scene: Paris Opéra Garnier.) “Bonjour crowd. Everybody bonjours!” (Street scene with many dogs.) Eventually the trip ends and the family returns home, where “everybody hellos.” But there is more enjoyment at the very end of the book: a section called “Out and About in Paris,” describing the sights and scenes where the story occurs. The use of French is actually minimal here, although of course it fits right in; and families should enjoy learning the French names of such famed places as Le Quartier Latin and Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

      The teaching may be more or less incidental in Kimmelman’s book, but it is the whole point of a new bilingual series for ages 3-6 called My Family/Mi Familia – in which the first entry is Let’s Eat! ¡A Comer! This is a simple domestic story told, sentence by sentence, first in English and then in Spanish: “On the table, we see a big pot of beans. Sobre la mesa vemos una olla llena de frijoles.” “Dad looks at all the good food. Papá mira toda esa rica comida.” The mundane nature of the events – just a family sitting down to dinner, including three children, two parents and a grandmother, plus a dog – makes it easy for kids to understand what is going on, and the simplicity of the language will help young children make the transition between English and Spanish without a struggle. There is even a moral, of sorts, to the story: one little girl, seeing all the food on the table, asks, “We’re rich, aren’t we, Dad?” “Somos ricos, ¿verdad, Papá?” And the father, also looking at all the food and then at all the happy faces of the family, says yes, we are rich; indeed, “Somos muy ricos.” That’s a fine concluding sentiment for an introduction to bilingual thinking and speaking.

(++++) NEW CHANCES FOR ENJOYMENT

Johnny and the Bomb. By Terry Pratchett. HarperTrophy. $5.99.

Marley: A Dog Like No Other. By John Grogan. Collins. $6.99.

      These new paperbacks provide a less-expensive way to become acquainted with a couple of interesting and enjoyable recent books – although, in truth, Terry Pratchett’s isn’t as recent as all that. Johnny and the Bomb was first published in 1996, but reemerged as a hardcover only last year, and is now available in a paperback version of that hardcover edition. It is the last part of The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy, in which an ordinary-enough boy has some quite extraordinary adventures that take him inside a computer game, inside the minds of the dead (oh yes, they have minds), and finally inside whatever makes time travel possible. Never mind that time travel isn’t possible – Pratchett blithely assumes that it is, and then (in his own unique style) turns this very old science-fiction concept inside out. Johnny is 13 in this adventure (he was 12 in the two earlier books), and a friend from earlier reappears: Kirsty, except that she now calls herself Kasandra. But it is not necessary to know about Johnny’s prior adventures to enjoy this one, which takes him back to the day during World War II in which Nazi bombers missed their target and instead destroyed an entire street in Johnny’s town, killing 19 people. Pratchett takes some elements of time travel lightly, but not its philosophical paradoxes: Can Johnny stop the killings? Should he stop them? While trying to figure out what to do, Johnny and Kirsty/Kasandra meet themselves in the past (well, almost), and find that they have traveled back with several other youths, except that they lose one and – well, that is merely one twist of the plot. Another, and one of the most delightfully peculiar, involves Mrs. Tachyon, whose name would be some sort of clue if only the other characters ever thought of it that way: she is a bag lady who pushes a very strange shopping cart that contains, at least some of the time, some jars of gherkins and a cat with a bent spine and nasty disposition. Pratchett’s trademark humor-within-seriousness (or the other way around) is everywhere in Johnny and the Bomb, and the whole thing makes for an exhilarating ride.

      Marley: A Dog Like No Other is altogether calmer and more straightforwardly emotional. It is an adaptation for middle-schoolers of John Grogan’s Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog, a bestseller about Grogan’s life with his yellow Labrador retriever. Oddly enough, children play only a minor role in Marley: A Dog Like No Other, but many dog-loving families will enjoy the amusing anecdotes, the inevitable heart-tugging at the end of Marley’s life, and the optimistic conclusion in which a new puppy seems to contain Marley’s reborn spirit. Still, the book lays on the emotion rather thickly, and some readers will likely find it overdone; therefore, it gets a (+++) rating. It will be best for kids and parents who enjoy tales of canine misbehavior in what appears to be an endlessly supportive, heartwarming environment.

(++++) SERIOUS CLASSICS

D’Indy: Orchestral Works, Volume 1—Jour d’été à la montagne; La Forêt enchantée; Souvenirs. Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rumon Gamba. Chandos. $18.99.

Grainger: Transcriptions for Wind Orchestra. Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra conducted by Clark Randell. Chandos. $18.99.

Schubert: Mass No. 6 in E-flat Major, D. 950. Soloists and Collegium Musicum 90 conducted by Richard Hickox. Chandos. $18.99.

      The independent label Chandos, which is now being distributed by Naxos, has an enviable longstanding reputation for exploring less-familiar classical repertoire with very high-quality performances, presented in outstanding sound. These three new releases show why Chandos fully deserves the esteem in which it is held. The music is less-known, if not necessarily unknown; all performances are top-notch; there are some premiere recordings among the works; the sound is uniformly excellent, with greater warmth and presence than is to be found on many CDs; and even the enclosed booklets are far more detailed than is common in CD releases, containing extensive background information, guides to the music and full texts of vocal works – much as the best enclosures did when vinyl records were the dominant form of recorded music.

      The CD of Vincent d’Indy’s music shows the composer both in his maturity and in his youthful phase, when he was much influenced by Wagner. La Forêt enchantée, the earliest work, was first performed in 1878, two years after d’Indy attended the premiere of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in Bayreuth. It is an atmospheric piece about knights lost in a forest and waylaid by elves, containing such Wagnerian attributes as a solo horn, effectively eerie harp harmonics, unexpected key changes and a final section that seems to stretch into eternity. Jour d’été à la montagne is a much later work (1905) whose tone painting of a summer day in the Ardèches Mountains anticipates Richard Strauss’ Alpensinfonie (1911-1915). D’Indy’s work opens and closes at night and includes sunrise, folk dancing, birdsong, rustic themes and clouding weather (although no storm). It is atmospheric and effectively orchestrated. Souvenirs is of the same vintage but much more personal: d’Indy wrote it when he returned from a conducting tour of the United States to find his beloved wife, Isabelle – who was also his cousin – dying of a cerebral hemorrhage. With a leitmotif representing Isabelle usually heard on English horn, the mainly somber work also includes lively sections representing happy memories, and eventually achieves calm and serenity, perhaps because of d’Indy’s unshakable Catholic faith. The Iceland Symphony shows itself a well-rounded, well-balanced orchestra on this CD, and Rumon Gamba’s nuanced direction is highly attentive to detail.

      The Percy Grainger CD, which includes a number of premiere recordings, consists mainly of transcriptions from a collection that Grainger called Chosen Gems for Winds. Works from as far back as the 13^th century are presented, with some pieces from well-known composers (J.S. Bach) and others from less-known ones (John Jenkins). Among the short works, a march from Clavierbüchlein II for Anna Magdalena Bach – probably composed by C.P.E. Bach – is a highlight. There are also two brief 20^th-century works here: the first of Eugene Goossens’ Two Ballades and Katherine Parker’s Down Longford Way. The short transcriptions are uniformly interesting, but the real highlights of the CD are its two longest works. One is Liszt’s Hungarian Fantasy, featuring pianist Ivan Hovorun – a tour de force with an unusual sound and emphasis on the piano’s higher ranges. The other is Franck’s Chorale No. 2, an expansive work whose origin as a piece for organ is accentuated by Grainger’s clever transcription. The Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra under Clark Randell plays all these works with understanding and a sure sense of style.

      Schubert’s Mass No. 6 does not qualify as an unknown work – Naxos itself recently released a fine recording of it – but the version by Richard Hickox and Collegium Musicum 90 is something special. This is an original-instruments orchestra, with every musician playing an old instrument or a carefully crafted replica based on a specific model. This is also a small orchestra – eight first violins, seven seconds, four violas, three cellos and so on – and its performance of Schubert’s final mass therefore has unusual clarity in the vocal lines, which do not need to overcome large forces to be heard. The soloists are all excellent and all knowledgeable in period style: soprano Susan Gritton, mezzo-soprano Pamela Helen Stephen, tenors Mark Padmore and James Gilchrist, and bass Matthew Rose. And the instrumental balance – among the instruments themselves, not just between instruments and vocalists – is careful and convincing, as is especially clear in sections featuring trombones, whose inclusion lends gravitas to the work. Hickox also has a fine sense of the lyrical beauty of the Et incarnatus est and the drama of the Sanctus Dominus. The result is a first-class performance that confirms, as do all three of these new CDs, that Chandos is a high-quality company committed to the elegant presentation of the music it records.

(++++) OFFBEAT AMERICANA

Frederic Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated!; Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues. Ralph van Raat, piano. Naxos. $8.99.

Scott Wheeler: The Construction of Boston. Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of The Boston Cecilia conducted by Donald Teeters. Naxos. $8.99.

      Jaunty, intense, committed, flighty, concrete, abstruse – the works on these CDs are packed with sometimes-contradictory emotions that lend them substance even if the music itself will not be to all tastes. Frederic Rzewski (b. 1938), himself a pianist, created something of a piano monstrosity in The People United Will Never Be Defeated! The work runs more than an hour, including its optional improvisatory section, and is enormously difficult to play; yet at its heart lies a simple Chilean song, ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido! – one of many written when Salvador Allende ruled Chile in the mid-1970s, a time dear to the hearts of avowed leftists such as Rzewski. The work is structurally as well as technically complex, and it is to Ralph van Raat’s credit that he manages to make its structure clear while surmounting its considerable challenges. The original tune has 36 bars, and Rzewski builds 36 variations on it – six groups of six. The propagandistic orientation of the piece, clear enough from its title (and likely to be off-putting to some), is further emphasized by occasional quotations from socialist songs, including (among others) Brecht’s “Solidarity Song.” Rzewski’s work is ultimately more impressive than involving: in addition to traditional pianism, it requires the performer to engage in such 20^th-century touches (once de rigueur, now rather old hat) as slamming the piano lid and whistling along with the music. The variations themselves show impressive range and are both well contrasted (“Marcato” followed by “Dreamlike, frozen”) and effectively used to build on each other (“Crisp, precise” followed by “Relentless, uncompromising”). Yet this huge works lacks the immediacy and emotional appeal of the 10-minute Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, which fills out this CD. The shorter piece is the fourth and last of Rzewski’s Four North American Ballads, and is imitative/impressionistic music through and through. Rzewski makes the piano imitate the sound of the old cotton milling machinery in the mills of South Carolina, building a work of great power until the blues quietly emerge from within the factory sounds. Van Raat follows Rzewski’s instruction to play the mill-machine music as “expressionless and machinelike,” and this makes the emotional impact of the blues all the greater. There really is a song called Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, which is played near the end of Rzewski’s work and becomes its capstone.

     Scott Wheeler’s The Construction of Boston, which can be performed as opera or oratorio, lasts not quite as long as Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated! and is as lucid and witty as Rzewski’s work is focused and intense. Wheeler (b. 1952) here offers a mostly tonal work with a very high reach indeed: it suggests that artists are engaged not just in creation but in Creation with a capital C. Three artists are given important roles: Dadaist sculptor Jean Tinguely (sung by tenor William Hite), painter and sculptor Robert Rauschenberg (baritone Christòpheren Nomura), and painter, sculptor and collage artist Niki de St. Phalle (soprano Sharla Nafziger). Rauschenberg creates the geographical setting of Boston and attracts people to it, but the climate is harsh and the people have nowhere to live, so the Spirit of Boston (mezzo-soprano Krista River) brings Tinguely to the city to create buildings that harmonize human living space with nature. Still missing is beauty, so the Spirit arranges for St. Phalle to appear, bringing loveliness and hope. It is impossible to take this fairy tale at face value, of course, and neither Wheeler’s music nor the text (by Kenneth Koch) suggests that we should. But Wheeler and Koch are trying to convey a serious message: the importance of a celebration of art in communities and for every individual – art that permeates life, makes living more meaningful, and helps people strive for still greater joy in the future. Despite the wit of words and music, the message is laid on a little thickly, and The Construction of Boston has a somewhat provincial and overly esoteric feeling about it. Still, it is very well performed by members of The Boston Cecilia and is very easy to listen to – Wheeler’s text settings sound natural and unforced throughout. What Wheeler has created (or Created) here is a work of considerable interest and not inconsiderable charm.

(++++) A BOUNTY OF BOARD BOOKS

Bow-Wow Hears Things. By Mark Newgarden & Megan Montague Cash. Red Wagon/Harcourt. $4.95.

Bow-Wow Attracts Opposites. By Mark Newgarden & Megan Montague Cash. Red Wagon/Harcourt. $4.95.

What’s Up, Duck? A Book of Opposites. By Tad Hills. Schwartz & Wade. $6.99.

Goodnight Moon 123: A Counting Book. Based on the book by Margaret Wise Brown. Pictures by Clement Hurd. HarperFestival. $8.99.

      Books for the youngest children – newborn to pre-kindergarten age – are at their best when there is more to them than sturdiness. The whole “board book” concept requires printing on heavy stock, usually in a size that is easy for small hands to hold, and with easy-to-understand pictures and simple text. The best board books, though, go beyond the basics to amuse, entertain and, ideally, teach very young children some real-world lessons – one of which, of course, is that books are a great source of enjoyment.

      The two new board books featuring Bow-Wow, the facially expressive but almost-silent dog whose adventures generally incorporate a touch of surrealism, will be as much fun for parents as for children, because their cleverness reaches across generational lines. Bow-Wow Hears Things is especially delightful, featuring the dog (on the right side of each page) facing a little bird (on the left) that keeps making inappropriate-for-a-bird sounds, from “honk” to “tick-tock” to “oink.” After each sound, Bow-Wow looks sternly at the bird, and the single word “no” appears on the page. It is only when, at last, the bird goes “peep” – so loudly that the page’s colors seem to explode – that Bow-Wow finally replies, “Woof.” Mark Newgarden and Megan Montague Cash perfectly blend silly amusement with the simple lesson of what a bird and dog sound like. And for parents who know the famous RCA trademark showing a dog listening to an old-fashioned victrola (thinking he is hearing “his master’s voice”), the inside front and back covers present a Bow-Wow variation on that theme.

      Bow-Wow Attracts Opposites is almost equally good, although the word “attracts” is a trifle odd and may be hard to explain (in this context) to very young children. Here Bow-Wow chases the tail of a never-seen cat up and down, in and out, over and under, eventually losing his quarry when the cat goes indoors, leaving Bow-Wow sad. Then an amusing twist ending makes him happy – very happy indeed.

      Opposites are also the subject of What’s Up, Duck? (whose title will amuse parents who remember Bugs Bunny’s famous “what’s up, doc?” line, spoken in impeccable Brooklynese). Tad Hills here uses endearing characters from his delightful Duck & Goose and Duck, Duck, Goose to illustrate such concepts as front and back, loud and quiet, and near and far. The positions assumed by the avian characters are a big part of the fun here, as in the contrast between clean and dirty and the differing poses to illustrate heavy and light.

      Goodnight Moon 1-2-3: A Counting Book is the most advanced of this crop of board books, since counting is a skill not learned by some children until almost kindergarten age. In fact, this book is recommended for up to age five. It’s only for families that have made       Goodnight Moon a part of bedtime or storytime already, because there is no story here – just a series of illustrations of numbers one through 10, plus a page labeled “100” and showing stars, with all the pages using pictures taken from the original storybook. It can be fun to add this book to Goodnight Moon to create “counting playtime,” reading the book and finding the location within it of the objects used to illustrate counting – seven socks, for example, or nine red balloons. Kids who love Goodnight Moon will find it especially pleasant to use that book as a way to learn numbers – even at bedtime, since the board book ends with a quiet “Shhhhh” and a picture of a happily sleeping little bunny.

(++++) FAIRY-TALE PHENOMENA

Once Upon a Marigold. By Jean Ferris. Harcourt. $17.

The Penderwicks on Gardam Street. By Jeanne Birdsall. Knopf. $15.99.

      The danger and magic of fairy tales translate at best uneasily into the modern world. Today’s writers of fairy-tale-like stories for younger readers either feel the need to set them in times gone by or find themselves using fairy-tale elements in what only seems to be a story of our everyday world.

      Of course, a really good writer can take the fairy-tale mystique and turn it inside out and every which way around. That is what Jean Ferris does in Once Upon a Marigold, which is both a sendup of fairy tales and a book that is quite true to their spirit and many of their age-old patterns. It is also a book that actually matches its marketing, which in this case consists of the cover lines, “part comedy, part love story, part everything-but-the-kitchen-sink.” Yup; that’s it exactly. It’s got a good-hearted forest troll who wants to take business away from the inept tooth fairy. It’s got a runaway little boy who comes to live with the troll and who we just know will turn out to be a prince, although we are not sure how that will be revealed. It’s got an inept king and a wicked, scheming queen and four (not the usual three) princesses: three of them safely married off and out of the queen’s way, and one considered too plain to be of interest to most eligible princes – and too interested in books, and afflicted with a strange kind of empathy/telepathy curse besides. And then there’s p-mail, the pigeon-borne missives by which the boy who doesn’t know he is a prince communicates with the princess almost no one cares about. And a blacksmith whose failed inventions now lie in pieces in the castle dungeons. And two really big dogs, and three little ones. And a ferret. But what this book has most of all is heart, and that is why – even though it does not quite end “happily ever after” – it is such a delight to read. Ferris is a whiz at creating convoluted dialogue that almost makes sense, as when Princess Marigold and the boy, Christian, are speaking, and she says, “More doesn’t mean better. Enough is as good as a feast, you know.” And Christian, thinking of his life with Ed the troll, replies, “That’s what Ed always says. Or, what he says is, too much of a good thing is as good as a feast, but that’s what he means. I think. With Ed it’s sometimes hard to know.” But the moral of the story is straightforward and, in context, absolutely right: “She said, ‘As long as we’re with each other –’ ‘We know we’re in exactly the right place,’ he replied.”

      The second novel about the Penderwick family strives hard for this sort of magic – within what is supposed to be the real world – but never quite attains it. The book’s title, perhaps intended to evoke memories of Mary Poppins on Cherry Tree Lane, is part of Jeanne Birdsall’s attempt to fuse old-fashioned values with the story of a modern family. Critics and readers longing for simplicity, optimism, non-ironic storytelling and heartwarming sweetness applauded Birdsall’s first Penderwicks novel when it appeared in 2005 and will surely give The Penderwicks on Gardam Street a (++++) rating as well. But the persistent innocence and rather cloying dialogue may become tiresome for some readers, and a (+++) rating is more reasonable. The Penderwicks’ world only seems modern: the oddly archaic language and old-fashioned attitudes make it more the stuff of fairy tales. This is a family in which the girls use “do or die” as an up-to-date expression; comment among themselves, “The mystifying Marianne who hated flannel will long linger in my memory”; and tell their father, “Not only have we sullied the family honor, we’ve hurt you terribly, Daddy.” In truth, nothing catastrophic occurs in the Penderwicks’ world, where spats come at this level: “When pushed – and Rosalind was definitely feeling pushed – she could glower as well as anyone, and the glowering bouncing around that afternoon was truly frightening.” In this story, the four Penderwick sisters, whose mother has been dead for four years, confront the possibility that their father will start dating again, and decide that would be disastrous; so they hatch a plan to keep him for themselves and away from any potential romantic entanglement. Things go charmingly awry, of course, and everyone learns a lesson or two, and the girls hatch a “New Save-Daddy Plan” to replace the old one that didn’t work, and everything turns out quite happily for everyone – a fairy-tale ending, to be sure.

(++++) WEEKLY MIRACLES AND MORE

Your Pregnancy Week by Week, 6^th Edition. By Glade B. Curtis, M.D., M.P.H., and Judith Schuler, M.S. Da Capo. $15.95.

      Every few years, the emergence of a new, updated edition of Your Pregnancy Week by Week confirms once again that there is simply no better guide to pregnancy than this thoroughly researched, plainspoken and well written book by Glade Curtis and Judith Schuler. Although the book runs more than 600 pages, its week-by-week format and the authors’ breakdown of chapters into short sections makes it quite readable; and since it is a week-by-week guide, each week takes up only about 15 pages of text – not an unreasonable amount for soon-to-be mothers and fathers to find time to read.

      Curtis and Schuler really do see pregnancy as involving both responsible parties. Although most of the book is written from the woman’s point of view, much of the text contains information that both man and woman will want to know about; and the authors include a “Dad Tip” every now and then, specifically targeting the man. One example: “If you have pets, take over their care during your partner’s pregnancy. Change the cat’s litter box (she shouldn’t do this while pregnant). Walk the dog (the pull on the leash might hurt her back). Buy food and other pet supplies (to save her back from the strain of lifting big food bags). Make and keep vet appointments.” Clear, forthright advice, offered in jargon-free language, with explanations of why the advice is being given – this is the Curtis/Schuler style, and it is a highly effective one.

      One feature of continuing amazement in Your Pregnancy Week by Week is the update on a baby’s size and appearance – including, in almost every week, a drawing showing what the fetus looks like and what size it is. Although much of the book’s advice will be of greatest value to first-time parents, even people with several children will find it fascinating to realize what an embryo goes through as it turns into a miniature human being after beginning as an odd, tailed, almost fishlike body of cells. Yet it is the words rather than the illustrations that are most useful here: suggested exercises to do at every stage of pregnancy; nutritional information and suggestions; and a section called “You Should Also Know” that includes everything from a list of lab tests your doctor may order to a warning to “avoid anxiety-producing TV programs” about labor and delivery, because “even when the content is not sensational, we have found pregnant women who watch these television programs can experience increased levels of anxiety.”

      Curtis, a board-certified OB/GYN and father of five, and longtime collaborator Schuler in no way sugarcoat the experience of pregnancy and child-rearing. They discuss Down syndrome and other birth defects, warn that “having a baby costs money!” and suggest ways to estimate some of those costs, talk about problems that warrant an immediate call to your doctor, explain how pregnancy affects sexuality, and much more. But everything they explain is presented with a helpful, supportive spirit that soon-to-be-parents will find refreshingly honest, even when the information itself is not upbeat. In fact, Curtis and Schuler try to make helpful suggestions about what to do if the pregnancy does cause complications – for example, with a page of “Bed-Rest Boredom Relievers.” Medically up-to-date, psychologically savvy and intelligently presented, Your Pregnancy Week by Week remains the best guide available to a tremendously exciting, nerve-wracking, literally life-changing experience.

(+++) HA HA, UP TO A POINT

It’s Happy Bunny: Life. Get One (special edition). By Jim Benton. Scholastic. $5.99.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Shell! By Lucille Colandro. Illustrated by Jared Lee. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $5.99.

      Don’t expect too much and you’re less likely to be disappointed. That could be the watchword for both these books, which are fine and amusing as far as they go – but don’t go very far. The latest It’s Happy Bunny entry from Jim Benton (actually a modified “special edition” of a book of the same title published three years ago) is yet another fairly snide, moderately amusing set of comebacks (or come-forwards, if you haven’t been insulted yet) by the sweet-looking but deeply cynical Happy Bunny. What makes the edition “special” is that it is only a partial book: six pages at the end are left blank so you can “collect signatures from your friends, so when you forget them later…you can remember who [sic] to make fun of.” That’s not only ungrammatical but also shamelessly exploitative: Benton apparently just didn’t want to create more Happy Bunny aphorisms to lengthen the book. The book also contains two pages of stickers (24 in all) that mostly repeat the sayings within the text itself – for example, “The voices in your head are not real. But they still have some great ideas.” Or: “The best things in life are free. Or at least they’re on sale.” (This appears on two stickers, which probably means something.) The main part of the book contains “Ancient Bunny Wisdom,” after a disclaimer that notes, “Any wisdom one gets from a bunny is probably not that hot. For your own safety, please do not take the advice of bunnies.” One sample of that advice: “Learn the difference between right and wrong.” (Picture shows pink, winged Happy Bunny sporting a halo.) “You’ll probably choose wrong, but you should at least know which is which.” (Picture shows all-red Happy Bunny with horns and devilishly pointed tail.) The funniest thing in the book requires the most reading, even though Happy Bunny says, “Don’t judge a book by its cover. Judge it by how many pictures it has in it.” Well, this item at least has the word “judge” in its title, so it’s probably all right. It’s a 36-box matrix called “Never judge people. Until you know how.” The six horizontal columns relate to intelligence and the six vertical ones to appearance, so you simply match “Bright” with “Totally Ugly” and find the box that says, “This person could be a huge movie star playing the bad guy.” Or match “Total Idiot” with “Totally Great Looking” and get, “This person would be a great model, and you can pay them [sic] in coloring books instead of cash.” You might create your own review of the book this way, for instance by matching “Kind of Stupid” with “Kind of Ugly.”

      There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Shell! is neither stupid nor ugly, but it’s just plain silly. It follows the same pattern as last year’s similar-format Lucille Colandro/Jared Lee collaboration, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat! And both books, of course, trace their origin to the song about the old lady who swallowed a fly, then a spider, then a bird, and so on. In the new book, she swallows a shell – why? “She didn’t tell.” Then she swallows a crab to live in the shell…a fish to catch the crab…a gull to scoop up the fish…and so on. The bewildered expressions given by Lee to the characters keep the book amusing, while Colandro maintains the increasing silliness level throughout – eventually making sure that everything inside the old lady emerges safe and unharmed. There’s not much to the book, but it’s cute enough so younger children will likely enjoy the rhyming patterns and increasing absurdity of the old lady’s appetite.

(++++) FINNISH LINES

Einojuhani Rautavaara: Apotheosis (revised version of fourth movement of Symphony No. 6, “Vincentiana”); Manhattan Trilogy; Symphony No. 8, “The Journey.” New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inki