(++++) DASHING THROUGH THE PAGES

Busy Betty & the Perfect Christmas Present. By Reese Witherspoon. Illustrated by Xindi Yan. Flamingo Books. $19.99.

     Ah, the joys and stresses of gift-giving. Busy Betty feels them more intensely than other kids ages 3-7 do, since she feels everything more intensely, which is what makes her so endearing even though she is so often over-the-top. OK, always over-the-top. Of course, Christmas gift-giving can be somewhat over-the-top itself, so a Busy Betty book with a Christmas focus makes perfect seasonal sense. And Reese Witherspoon’s tale-telling, matched with Xindi Yan’s exuberant illustrations, proves more than equal to the mixture of mischievous and heartwarming activities that defines all three (so far) Busy Betty books.

     This third one has Betty bustling about with her usual enthusiasm (ok, overenthusiasm) in her determination to come up with the absolutely perfect gift for everybody in her family, including the often-put-upon dog, Frank. Reacting to her father’s cliché about making lemonade when life gives you lemons (Betty has just realized she has no money and so can’t buy gifts), Betty remembers her summertime lemonade stand and thinks she can use it again, until spoilsport older brother Bo points out that it’s too cold and snowy for anyone to wander around looking for lemonade. So Betty, never slow to pivot to something new, decides to keep the “stand” idea but turn it into something Christmasy – by selling cookies. Then it turns out that everyone in the family suggests a different type of cookie, but that’s fine as long as Betty and best friend Mae can make them all with tons and tons of sprinkles.

     Which they promptly toss all around the house, as shown on a page where there are so many sprinkles that at one point Mae has to sit under an umbrella to ward off the sprinkle flood being dumped by Betty (ok, how is this ok, even in an over-the-top way?).

     Well, Betty and Mae, clearly unpunished and apparently without doing any cleanup, quickly redecorate their lemonade stand and turn it into a Christmas-cookie stand, which promptly attracts absolutely nobody since the weather is too cold and windy and snowy for people to be out-and-about. So Betty concludes that the way to get customers is to make it seem they already have them, and she and Mae promptly create a whole batch of snowpeople, most of them larger than the girls themselves (ok, those are adult snowpeople). They even make a snowdog (on which Frank promptly relieves himself, in one of the book’s funniest illustrations).

     Frank soon looms large (especially for such a small dog) in the story: first, Betty and Mae sing a Christmas carol whose lyrics they do not quite remember – the first line comes out “Frankie the wet-nosed doggy.” And then Frank, whose has been uncomfortable wearing the antlers that Betty has put on him, manages to get those projections entangled in the cookie-stand decorations, which leads to a predictably disastrous (ok, and predictably hilarious) mess after the stand topples, all the cookies fly everywhere, and only Frank, happily gobbling them up from the snow, is satisfied.

     But it turns out there is one cookie left on display, and just then Bo happens by and grabs it, and that gives Betty the solution to her Christmas-gift dilemma: she makes cookies for the family rather than for sale, modifying them so each person gets the type of cookie for which he or she expressed a preference earlier in the story. Problem solved! Presents “straight from my heart” suitably delivered! Even Frank gets a bone-shaped treat (ok, presumably a made-for-pups dog biscuit rather than one of Betty’s cookies). And the only thing parents need be concerned about after all the warmth and amusement of Busy Betty & the Perfect Christmas Present is what to do when real-world kids, determined to enjoy the holiday just as much as Betty does, decide that they are going to scatter bottles and jars and other containers of sprinkles all around the house without any consequences whatsoever except being considered adorable (ok, adults: resolution of that issue is up to you).

(+++) CULTURES IN FOCUS

A Ukrainian Wedding. Cappella Romana conducted by Nadia Tarnawsky. Cappella Records. $17.99.

Carl Teike: Marches, Volume 1. The Royal Swedish Navy Band conducted  by Alexander Hanson. Naxos. $19.99.

     Music is sometimes described as a universal language, but the reality is that it comes with so many dialects and accents that it can often be the entry point to understanding of a particular culture – based on instruments used, forms employed, purposes for which the music is designed, the overall sound of the material, and much more. Cappella Romana’s A Ukrainian Wedding release is a good case in point: this is a brief (45-minute) presentation of no fewer than 26 wedding-focused songs presented in five sections called “The engagement,” “Invitation to the wedding,” “Preparing the korovai [wedding bread],” “Preparing the bride,” and “The morning of the wedding.” Nadia Tarnawsky not only leads the singers (specifically, the female members of Cappella Romana) but also carries listeners through the proceedings, providing fascinating booklet notes on Ukrainian wedding customs. The enclosures also include all the songs’ original texts, in Ukrainian and transliteration, plus English translations – plenty of material to imbue this project with a feeling of connection to the culture in which the music originated and where it still flourishes. The songs are small encapsulations (mostly only lasting a minute or so, some even less than a minute) of Ukrainian wedding traditions. Despite the brevity of individual pieces, the ceremony itself, as Tarnawsky points out, traditionally lasts at least a week; the music is thus a series of punctuation points rather than the accompaniment to a single focused ceremony that is typical in Western weddings. Some of the songs are antiphonal, some unison choral, some in call-and-response mode. All are harmonically straightforward, but there are audible differences between the ones associated with wedding preparations and those used during the actual wedding ceremony. The 12 included in the section called “The morning of the wedding” have religious themes that are broadly familiar even if the specifics of the music are not: “God, come to us,” “Hail, Mary,” “O Most Holy Virgin Mother,” and even “Psalm 127” (“Blessed are all who fear the Lord,/ Who walk in His ways”). The purity and clarity of the women’s voices are outstanding throughout, and the emotional distinctions between the more-secular wedding-preparation material and the sacred music are communicated very effectively. Certainly this is not a recording that will be universally appealing, nor is it intended to be: it is an offering of insight into the beauty and cultural depth of one aspect of Ukrainian life, a doorway to understanding as well as a chance to experience one of life’s major milestones as it is celebrated in a realm that may be largely unfamiliar to listeners but that is filled with its own plenteous portion of beauty, charm and solemnity.

     The cultural elements of the marches of Carl Teike (1864-1922) are less obvious and may be more of a surprise to listeners who consider themselves already quite well acquainted with the march form. Teike’s marches do not bear comparison with those of, say, Sousa or Tchaikovsky, because they emerged from a different tradition – and one that is now less than familiar to many audiences. In Teike’s time, German marches were strictly separated into concert, street and overtly military types (the last category essentially being “parade marches” and not necessarily aggressive). Teike served for a time in a military band (and later in the police force in Potsdam), and all his marches on a Naxos CD featuring The Royal Swedish Navy Band under Alexander Hanson have a distinct parade-ground feel to them. The first two pieces on this 17-item disc essentially encapsulate Teike’s overall march production: Prinz-Albrecht-Marsch was the first one he composed, and Alte Kameraden was and remains his best-known work – indeed, it is one of the most popular marches of all in some regions, comparable in its fame to some by Sousa. Yet no one hearing this very well-played CD would deem Teike a “march king” in the Sousa sense: Teike’s works are self-limited to the street and parade ground, being very well-made but generally foursquare structurally, and scored with care and skill but without showing any particular affinity for unusual use of instruments (much less for expansion of the traditional complement of the military band). Interestingly enough, the single offering on this disc that is not a march – a waltz-rondo intriguingly called Nur ein Versuch (“Just an Attempt” or “Just a Test”) – shows that Teike did have interests and capabilities beyond those of the traditional march, and could write works at somewhat greater length when he was disposed to do so (Nur ein Versuch lasts seven minutes, more than twice as long as most other pieces here). There are plans for further releases of Teike’s music, and it will be interesting to find out the extent to which he brought creativity to non-march material while also gaining insight into the specific cultural milieu within which he produced works in the form with which he is most closely identified.

(++++) SMELLOVISION

Stinky’s Stories: No. 1—The Boy Who Cried Underpants!; No. 2—Jack and the Beanstink. By J.J. & Chris Grabenstein. Art by Alex Patrick. Harper. $6.99.

     There is nothing new about reconsiderations and rethinkings of fairy tales, many of which themselves exist in multiple versions and have been retold and rethought over centuries. And there is nothing new about extending once-serious stories, often intended to teach life lessons in palatable ways, into the realm of humor: Jay Ward’s “Fractured Fairy Tales” are classics of their own kind, and recent Disney forays into reconsidering classic tales from a more-inclusive, politically correct angle are another example (if highly unlikely ever to become “classics” on their own). So the Stinky’s Stories series by J.J. and Chris Grabenstein has a certain amount of underlying heft to it, which it quickly discards so as to make these short paperback books appealing to odor-obsessed six-to-10-year-old readers.

     Yes, the “Stinky” of the series title is a skunk – a stuffed one who lives on the top shelf of the library at Hickleberry Elementary School, where Mr. Stuffington the stuffed bear, Wags the stuffed dog, and Geri the stuffed giraffe live on a lower shelf (at least in the first book: Geri seems to have disappeared in the second). When there are no adults around, the “stuffies” can talk and interact with the kids, and Stinky comes into his own as a tale-teller who expands on famous stories by inserting himself into them and making his odoriferous contributions crucial to the eventual happy endings.

     None of this is on the level of Chris Grabenstein’s remarkable Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, with which these lightweight tidbits share nothing except a library setting. To the extent that there is any “teachable” element here, it involves librarian Mrs. Emerson telling the kids to use their imagination if they want to continue classic stories beyond their usual endpoints. The kids, however, do not do this: they turn to Stinky, who uses his imagination to take stories on different tracks and totally derail them.

     Each book starts with a sanitized and non-stinky retelling of a classic tale. The first one uses “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” Aesop’s fable against lying, in which a boy who repeatedly warns of a nonexistent wolf, stirring up the villagers, is not believed when a real wolf shows up – and is devoured. That’s considered unsuitable for kids nowadays, so Mrs. Emerson simply has the allegedly original version of the story end with the villagers explaining to the boy that lying is not nice. Ho hum. Anyway, Stinky gives the boy a name (Bob) and has him decide to leave his small town of Doonferbleck (named for an unappetizing concoction that makes people say “bleck” when they eat it) for the big city, where it turns out that everyone cries “Wolfe” all the time – with a final “e” because Wolfe is the name of the local capitalist, and calling it brings in more business. Bob meets Stinky in the city and explains that he is easily bored (this is why he called “wolf” back home, to enliven things, not that the word “enliven” appears anywhere in a book at this level). Crying “wolf” in the city (or “wolfe,” for that matter) would not do anything interesting, so Bob uses his (limited) imagination and decides to cry “underpants.” This leads to a series of mishaps in which it is very funny to see or imagine seeing underpants that may or may not be stinky – and eventually the queen herself appears, pronouncing herself suitably unamused by all the underpantsness, and eventually the entire city makes a fashion decision to wear one pair of underpants beneath clothing and another pair on top of outerwear because that shows regal respect and not coincidentally doubles sales for Mr. Wolfe. This summation may miss a point or two of the narrative, but kids and adults who are interested can simply follow their noses to the book and sniff around.

     The second book opens with “Jack and the Beanstalk,” which the Hickleberry kids dislike because Jack is a thief and the poor giant falls all the way from the clouds – not dying, as in the original tale, but landing on his rear end in soft mud that was conveniently available thanks to several days of rain. Stinky’s continuation of this story names the giant Hubert and turns him into a really nice guy and a doggone good basketball player (he’s a giant, after all); Jack is the bad, nasty, selfish, rich thief and cheater who eventually gets his comeuppance after the giant is able to go home to his mommy in the clouds thanks to Stinky discovering a way to grow a new beanstalk. There is also a T. rex in the story for no apparent reason (no apparent reason is needed), and famous wizard The Mighty Dazzlemuss makes a late appearance to set things right. And there is plenty of smell-and-toilet humor for those enamored of such things, which presumably includes the target audience of the Stinky’s Stories books. Crudely silly without being actually crude, these are fairy tales that are not so much fractured as they are blown up – meaning expanded and also exploded. Alex Patrick’s illustrations are suitable to the tone and attitude of the books, which means there is one showing Hubert in his basketball uniform sitting unhappily in the forest, unable to figure out how to get home and saying “Boo-hoo-dee-hoodee-hoo-hoo-hoo. Snort.” And that is the most intellectual comment made by any character, author or illustrator in the Stinky’s Stories universe.

(++++) PIANISTIC PERSONALITIES

Rimsky-Korsakov: Piano Concerto; Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 2; Alexandre Tsfasman: Jazz Suite. Zlata Chochieva, piano; BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Karl-Heinz Steffens. Naïve. $16.99.

Chopin: Nocturnes, Op. 9, No. 1; Op. 15, No. 2; Op. 27, Nos. 1-2; Op. 62, Nos. 1-2; Debussy: Suite Bergamasque; Preludes—Book I, No. 8; 12 Études—No. 11. Carlos Gardels, piano. MSR Classics. $14.95.

     Pianistic virtuosity is pretty much a given in concerts and on recordings nowadays: there are so many technically adept pianists that it can be hard to choose among them when they play the same works. This opens the door for pianists to become distinctive through repertoire choice rather than technique, and the results can be intriguing, as they are on a new Naïve recording featuring Zlata Chochieva and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Karl-Heinz Steffens. One of the works on this CD is vastly neglected, one is almost completely unknown, and one is comparatively familiar – and even though the three pieces differ substantially in many ways, they turn out to fit together surprisingly well. Rimsky-Korsakov’s short (15-minute), Lisztian Piano Concerto is very much deserving of being heard more frequently. It is hard to understand why this ebullient, very well-scored, highly virtuosic display piece is such a rarity, unless perhaps because of its comparative superficiality and somewhat dated-sounding grand gestures, especially in its central section: it is a single-movement work but divided into sections that are, in effect, separate movements. Chochieva and Steffens attack the concerto for all it is worth, and while its musical merit may be debatable, its entertainment value really is not: it sweeps listeners along skillfully from start to finish, combining its elements derived from Liszt (to whom it is dedicated) with distinctly Russian material – it is built around a single theme that Rimsky-Korsakov took from Balakirev’s 1866 folk-song collection. What the concerto lacks in profundity it more than makes up for in the sheer delight of its structure and pianistic expectations, all of which Chochieva fulfills admirably. It is followed on this disc by the Prokofiev, which the composer famously rewrote in 1923 after the score of the original (written a decade earlier) was destroyed following the Russian Revolution. This makes the rewritten concerto 40 years newer than Rimsky-Korsakov’s; it is also more than twice as long and even more technically challenging. But there is an underlying “Russianness” here that, it turns out, complements the earlier work to a surprising degree. Prokofiev is considerably more intense and serious in this concerto than Rimsky-Korsakov is in his, and the technical challenges are of a different sort – the brief second movement, in particular, is an unusual kind of perpetuum mobile that is quite difficult to bring off successfully, making Chochieva’s handling of it particularly impressive. This is an unrelenting concerto, with its discordant first movement, its third-movement Intermezzo presenting an air of menace, and its nearly manic finale – there is no slow movement and barely any respite for pianist or audience. Chochieva and Steffens are at their best in the aptly labeled concluding Allegro tempestoso, wherein the piano and orchestra have at best an uneasy relationship in a movement of tremendous complexity and sonic range. The Prokofiev is followed here by a very different sort of Soviet-era work, the Jazz Suite by Alexandre Tsfasman (1906-1971). This suite for piano and orchestra dates to about 1945 but harks back in attitude and comparative brevity to Rimsky-Korsakov, although its rhythmic bounce is certainly that of jazz and its harmonies reflective of the 20^th century. A certain level of Impressionism underlies the work, whose four movements are titled Snowflakes, Lyrical Waltz, Polka and Career: Presto. The work is scarcely deep, but it is exceptionally pleasant, a highly suitable contrast to the Prokofiev concerto that precedes it here, and a worthy display piece in its own right. Here Chochieva and Steffens show themselves adept with what is essentially “light music,” turning from the intensity of the Prokofiev and the warm sound of the Rimsky-Korsakov to an altogether more-straightforward example of piano-and-orchestra display that is every bit as satisfying, in its way, as the other pieces on this first-rate CD are in theirs.

     The pianism is equally skillful but the choice of material less interesting on an MSR Classics CD featuring Carlos Gardels. There is nothing the slightest bit “wrong” about a pianist presenting a recital of miscellany composed by Chopin and Debussy – but the works heard here are so well-known, so often played by so many performers in so many contexts, that it is a challenge to have anything new to say about them, musically speaking. Gardels does not: he performs with sensitivity and technical adeptness, and engages more than satisfactorily with the music, but ultimately provides no particular new insight into it. The smattering of Chopin nocturnes is pleasant enough, as is the case for pretty much any set of selections of these warmly crepuscular works; and Gardels handles the music with considerable feeling, with Op. 62, No. 2 being especially heartfelt. There is, however, nothing unique or especially revelatory in his approach, nor any reason for the choice of these specific works to be heard in this specific sequence – except, of course, as a reflection of the pianist’s personal taste. That is justification enough for the material chosen, but it tends to limit the potential audience to listeners whose own preferences parallel those of Gardels. The Debussy material, for all its familiarity, comes across somewhat more successfully, with the more-upbeat portions of Suite Bergamasque being a welcome change from the similar pacing of the foundational beauties of the Chopin miniatures. Clair de lune, however, is a bit of a disappointment, with Gardels giving it a stop-and-start quality that somewhat undermines the mood. The two other Debussy works are, in effect, encores. The prelude (“The Girl with the Flaxen Hair”) is suitably sweet and gentle, while the étude (“Pour les arpèges composes”) is a gently cascading and sensitively played set of arpeggios. Everything is nicely handled on this recording, but it remains a (+++) disc for its somewhat monochromatic choice of material, and because everything Gardels offers is so commonly heard, so familiar, that the CD is mainly worth considering for someone who is just starting a classical-CD collection and does not yet have a recording (or several recordings) of this very-well-known music.

(++++) AS ADEPT AS ALWAYS

The Best 390 Colleges, 2025. By Robert Franek with David Soto, Stephen Koch, Aaron Riccio, Laura Rose, and the staff of The Princeton Review. Princeton Review/Penguin Random House. $26.99.

     Ralph Waldo Emerson is consistently misquoted as having said that “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” when what he really wrote (in Self-Reliance, in prose that almost scans as poetry) was “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Consistency of the unfoolish sort can in fact be something quite admirable, and it is this type that is offered year after year by The Princeton Review’s encyclopedic college guides – including the 2025 version, whose college count continues a slightly odd tradition of its own by being one number higher than in the previous year (390 schools profiled for 2025, with 389 for 2024, 388 in the book’s 2023 version, 387 for 2022, 386 in 2021, and 385 for 2020). The price of the 2025 guide remains the same as a year ago, another welcome snippet of consistency and perhaps an indicator of moderating inflationary pressures (although using that as an economic indicator tips over into “foolish consistency” territory).

     The Best 390 Colleges, 2025 is in fact a once-over-not-too-lightly exploration of only 7% or so of the 5,000-plus schools of higher education in the United States, or (as the book itself says) “only the top 13 percent of the approximately 3,000 four-year colleges in the nation.” Of course, as Harvard’s Tom Lehrer pointed out six decades ago, stats are in the mind of the beholder (he actually said “filth…is in the mind of the beholder,” but hey, who’s paying attention?). The relevant point here, in any case, is that despite its heft (some 900 oversize pages), this book is a sampling rather than a comprehensive presentation. It is, however, a very well-organized and well-produced sampling, and the two-page “How We Produce This Book” introduction is as good a place as any to start mining the nuggets of knowledge buried in it.

     There is a lot to dig up here, not because the book is difficult to explore – a great deal of work has gone into making it as easy to use as possible – but because every family’s needs, desires and hopes where college is concerned are so different. By presenting each school in exactly the same way, on two pages with central “Students Say,” “The Princeton Review Says” and “The School Says” sections and marginalia giving data on everything from total and broken-down-by-categories enrollment to financial realities, The Best 390 Colleges, 2025 lets families do side-by-side comparisons to help them evaluate the pluses and minuses of specific schools. As a matter of fact, one of these days it wouldn’t hurt to have a page-perforated version of this book, since each family will be interested in only a handful of these many colleges and one of the best ways to cross-compare them is to tear out the schools’ respective pages so as to be able literally to view them side by side. That gets messy.

     The key to the most-effective use of The Best 390 Colleges, 2025 is to narrow down the list of schools worth considering so as not to be overwhelmed by the sheer heft of the book and the sheer amount of data it contains. The book itself makes this easy for students and families already focused on specific fields of study, thanks to a section called “Great Schools for 21 of the Most Popular Undergraduate Majors” – everything from A (accounting) to P (psychology). There are other lists as well, lots of them: “Best Classroom Experience,” “Most Accessible Professors,” “Friendliest Students,” “Best College Radio Station,” even “Lots of Beer” and “Pot’s Not Hot” (contrasted with “Reefer Madness”). And there are lists focusing on career placement, alumni networks, entrepreneurship, even game design. There is also some very useful back-of-the book information, including an index by location (crucial for families limited to specific geographic regions by choice or necessity), an index by tuition costs (crucial to just about everybody), and a listing, in addition to the titular 390 schools, of 241 regional colleges “that we consider academically outstanding and well worth consideration in your college search” – although anyone interested in these schools will have to reach out to them directly, since details on them are not provided.

     The point for the latest edition of this always-excellent guide is consistent with the point of previous editions: the start of the search for a good match of college to student lies outside the book, with student and family consideration of what factors matter the most for each individual’s specific situation. After a decision is made on the individual factors that are most important, a review of the various lists in The Best 390 Colleges, 2025 makes it possible to narrow down the choosing process to schools meeting the desired criteria – and then, and only then, does it make sense to turn to the pages offering detailed information and commentary on each school. The Best 390 Colleges, 2025 is neither a starting point nor an end point in the college search – it exists on the middle ground between figuring out a focus and actually applying to whatever number of schools students and families decide would be worthwhile. The book, year after year, delivers on its underlying premise with well-designed, easy-to-use layout and presentation and solid, data-driven analysis, and does it all with a consistency that is anything but foolish.