(+++) HEE-HEE MAN

The Adventures of He-Man and Porter! Skeletor Ate My Homework. By Stephan Pastis. Art by Will Henry. Mattel Press. $14.99. 

     You know something is strictly a promotional piece when the page before the title page has a copyright notice listing no fewer than 16 characters with the ^TM superscript to indicate trademark registration. As a 192-page commercial, this awkwardly titled book is actually not bad, but it is a 192-page commercial, and any adult who happens upon it without knowing what it is and what it is for is likely to end up victimized by multiple demands for action figures and/or movie streaming and/or movie-related comics and/or all sorts of multimedia connections and figures and cartoons and other stuff dating back more than 40 years to the original Masters of the Universe^TM action figures from 1982. 

     Those unfamiliar with MOTU will find nothing of interest here, except that ©Mattel clearly hopes the book – with far more humor than MOTU has heretofore possessed, thanks to silly, immature, thoroughly juvenile joke-related writing by Pearls Before Swine and Timmy Failure creator Stephan Pastis – will bring new young victims…err, interested children…into the U of MOTU. 

     The irrelevant storyline, such as it is, draws on the usual tropes of fish-out-of-water travel-between-worlds fantasy, such as they are. Porter Avery of Earth, being raised by a single father (no explanation given), falls into a box in his home’s attic (rather than, say, walking into a wardrobe cabinet) and finds himself in Eternia^TM, which is where all the action is because that is where all the action figures are, in particular super good guy He-Man^TM and super bad-but-completely-ineffectual bad guy Skeletor^TM. Various characters, good and bad, try to figure out who or what Porter is and what, if anything, he has to do with the looming battle (battles always loom, don’t they?) between the forces of good and the forces of not-good. This involves a couple of trips back and forth between Earth and Eternia^TM, for reasons best described as “why not?” The one transporting Porter^{NOT YET TM} and Teela^TM onto a swing set so Teela^TM can have an adventure tripping over just about everything in Porter’s sleeping father’s bedroom while he does not so much as stir from dreamland is but one example of easy, meaningless, mildly amusing interworld transport. 

     “Mildly amusing” is the point here, to the extent that anything has a point, or is pointed, or pointy. Humor is one characteristic that is in short supply in MOTU, and Pastis knows how to supply some at and below the Timmy Failure level by, for example, having Skeletor^TM cast as an inept corporate executive who says “My anxiety is off the charts” and “I should really start checking references,” while his henchthings warn each other that “all of this is going in your end-of-the-year performance reviews.” There is also occasional (very occasional) self-directed humor, as when Prince Adam^TM transforms himself into He-Man^TM and one of the bad guys remarks, “Well, aren’t you a beefcake?” There isn’t too much of this sort of self-amused writing, though, since Pastis is not going to risk denigrating the corporate environment by potentially undermining the underlying sales pitch for everything MOTU-related. This fantasy is, after all, something to be taken seriously in boardrooms that bear at most a passing resemblance to the castle chambers where Skeletor^TM plots his plots. 

     Pastis and illustrator Will Henry (whose work is described as “art” on the cover and title page, which is pushing the definition a bit) keep their tongues firmly in their cheeks throughout this mild romp, with words and pictures complementing each other well – as with the illustration of Man-At-Arms^TM holding pillows to his ears, telling inept mage Orko^TM that he is doing it “so I don’t have to listen to your babbling” (after which Man-At-Arms^TM compellingly argues, “LA LA LA LA LA! … I CAN’T HEARRRRRR YOU”). 

     In the end – written as “The End(?)” at the end so as to leave open the possibility of a sequel if actuarial evidence indicates a profit boost sufficient to justify whatever ©Mattel paid Pastis and Henry for this – the bad guys on Eternia^TM lose to the good guys, Porter is back on Earth and getting along better with his beleaguered and probably perpetually exhausted father, and the MOTU franchise boldly goes where every other fantasy franchise has gone before: into continuing expansion. Or so ©Mattel most ardently hopes.

(++++) A WORK VERY MUCH IN PROGRESS

Mahler: Symphony No. 2. Louise Alder, soprano; Beth Taylor, mezzo-soprano; Chor und Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. BR Klassik. $19.99. 

Mahler: Symphony No. 6. Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. BR Klassik. $19.99. 

Mahler: Symphony No. 7. Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. BR Klassik. $19.99. 

Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde. Magdalena Kožená, mezzo-soprano; Stuart Skelton, tenor; Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. BR Klassik. $19.99. 

Mahler: Symphony No. 9. Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. BR Klassik. $19.99. 

     Simon Rattle’s Mahler cycle with the Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks is a long, long time coming and is not even halfway through the 11 works it will eventually include. Rattle has been leading these performances with this orchestra for more than eight years and has, in a sense, been preparing for them ever since he began conducting the ensemble in 2010. The result is a cycle almost as expansive as Mahler himself, and one whose totality will not be known until sometime in the coming decade. BR Klassik, whose reason for being is the preservation of the orchestra’s live performances, has been duly recording everything Rattle has done to date and will presumably continue doing so until the hopefully-not-bitter end. 

     This is not Rattle’s first Mahler sequence: he did one, earlier in his career, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. But that cycle, although it had elements of strength and creativity, tended to be rushed and often superficial. The Bavarian cycle so far has been broader, giving the music many more opportunities to breathe. And this is simply a better orchestra – abetted by recorded sound that is pristine throughout. So there is much to enjoy here already and much to discover in the more-mature view of Mahler by a conductor who recently entered his seventh decade (Rattle was born in 1955). 

     It is worth considering the works in the order in which Mahler composed them, although Rattle’s performances and recordings are differently and rather arbitrarily arranged. Symphony No. 2 is the most recent release, in a rather curiously conceived performance from March 2026. Rattle interestingly subsumes much of the symphony’s drama within gentleness and hope. The first movement opens with strength but soon practically drips with lyricism. Overall, it is more dynamic than funereal. The quieter passages are most impressive: this orchestra plays exceptionally well when nearly silent. The delicacy and sense of inward focus are pervasive. The movement is somewhat sprawling and disconnected. Fast sections are very fast, slow ones very slow, and the overstated tempo changes create a sense of fragmentation. However, the crescendo/decrescendo toward the end is highly effective. The second movement is gentle and delicate; there is almost a sense of stasis underpinning the motion. The bucolic meandering is later transformed briefly into something of a headlong rush, but there is soon a return to a contemplative mood. The movement seems more an interlude than a locus of emotional progress. The third movement also flows well, but touches of humor are here evident, along with nice attentiveness to instrumental detail as the themes are tossed hither and thither. Again Rattle’s emphasis is on differentiating the sections, so some disconnection and fragmentation is evident. But it is no surprise that the climactic full-orchestra material is impressively played. The very quiet vocal entry in the fourth movement is well-handled by Louise Alder, building up to a plea of great feeling and beauty – an effective personalization of the text. Then the intense exclamation that starts the finale comes as a real shock, as if Rattle has been holding the full sound of the orchestra in check for this exact moment. But again this quickly subsides into a quieter landscape and then into silence before the brass heralds what is to come. There follows an extended anticipatory sense, again and again building and then subsiding: not until some eight minutes from the start does the movement find its footing and forward motion. When Rattle does unleash the orchestra's full strength, the result is highly impressive. But warmth and even sweetness keep breaking through, as if to provide ongoing reassurance. Rattle handles these sections especially attentively – as if he finds them, not the larger dramatic gestures, to be the central communicative point of the symphony. The very quiet choral entry, paralleling that of the start of the fourth movement, thus becomes the focal musical/mystical experience. And as with the orchestra, so with the chorus: great power is there when called for, but it is quiet feeling that predominates until the splendor of the last bars. 

     Rattle’s Mahler Sixth dates to the first month of his assumption of the title of chief conductor of the Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, September 2023. There is something slightly tentative about it from time to time, although overall it is a solid performance. The first movement starts with a strong march rhythm, the lower strings being especially good. The contrast with lyrical elements is handled well, and most touches of rubato are appropriate and not overdone. The orchestra's usual excellence in brass is evident, from great warmth to a snarl when called for. The central quiet, solo-instrument-focused section does not so much change the mood as expand it, and the orchestra is appropriately unleashed in the more-monumental sections. The movement’s energy flags a bit here and there, but by and large the approach works well. The second movement opens very sweetly and is a bit on the slow side. There is a gentle sense of rocking warmth as it proceeds, an overall impression of the peaceful and bucolic and a sense of dreamlike drift until the last four minutes, after which disquiet disrupts the earlier mood. This leads to a third movement with especially potent timpani at the start and strong rhythmic emphasis throughout. Percussion touches add to the sense of grotesquerie, and while slower material has delicacy, Rattle ensures that a level of strangeness is always lurking. The finale opens with a definite sense of foreboding and a somewhat tentative feeling, as if unsure how to get started. The atmosphere is unsettled, the structure somewhat sprawling. As matters progress, the delicate chamber-like material contrasts well with the full-orchestra passages. Notably, the first hammer blow is very intense and seems to send the ensemble into emotional disarray, but the second blow is less forceful. All in all, the movement has considerable drama but stops short of any feeling of overwhelming despair and is therefore a touch less emotionally overwrought than it can sometimes be. 

     Symphony No. 7 in this Rattle sequence dates to November 2024 and shows conductor and orchestra better settled with each other. The result is a particularly strong and cohesive presentation. The first movement features a very good opening, ominous but with underlying rhythmic clarity. The brass is excellent, sounding just right for the atmospheric beginning. The stop-and-start quality of the movement does not impede its forward progress; this is a good overall concept. The last five minutes are especially effective, emphatic and rhythmically intense, and the contrast between monumental and delicate elements is particularly well-handled. In the second movement, the opening horn/muted horn call and response, somewhat reminiscent of Symphony No. 3, sets up a tranquil scene – which, however, is not quite what the movement delivers as it progresses; it is an Allegro, after all, even though moderato. The wonderfully lyrical string theme starting some three minutes in flows beautifully here. Notable is the evenness of the orchestral playing, with all sections knitted and knotted so well together. The sense is of something approximating a sylvan scene, but with enough dissonances and timpani emphases to produce a feeling of disquiet. The third movement starts deceptively gently and quietly but soon develops bite. There is a good sense here of the dancelike rhythms and their distortion, and of pervasive ironic contrasts both thematically and rhythmically. Rattle neatly manages the passages in which the first tempo sort of sneaks back in from time to time but keeps getting interrupted and upstaged. The way the movement peters out at the end is also well-handled. The fourth movement really does sound like Nachtmusik but is not super-slow – the pacing is quite good here, the atmosphere perhaps more like dusk, with delicacy throughout. The touches of the two harps are especially good, with guitar and mandolin adding to the atmospheric impression – Mahler as master orchestrator is in the forefront of this sylvan interlude. Then the finale bursts on the scene emphatically and with strength, the brass-and-timpani opening a forthright assertion after all the mixed messages that have come before. The bright mood does not continue throughout, but the comparatively uncomplicated, upbeat nature of the movement is consistent. Rattle keeps it moving forward smartly and with enthusiasm, but without driving it too hard. Like the finale of Symphony No. 5, this movement is for the most part assertively bright and emotionally straightforward. When it dips into quieter and more lyrical passages, it does so only briefly; Rattle focuses correctly on the ebullience. Toward the end the emphatic dissonance seems to hint at an element of discomfiture, but Mahler soon sweeps it away, and Rattle guides the orchestra to a sun-drenched cowbell-and-timpani-pervaded conclusion of this "Song of the Night." 

     Das Lied von der Erde is the earliest performance in this cycle, dating to January 2018. Yet its firmness and emotional connectivity boded well for the later material. Stuart Skelton’s voice is more consistent throughout – a bit of a weakness in the overall presentation, since Magdalena Kožená handles far more vocal material. Fortunately, she becomes firmer as the music progresses, and by Der Abschied is very impressive. The first song proffers an immediate sense of plunging into a conflicted world; Rattle sees to it that the orchestral accompaniment is very sharply defined. Skelton’s voice is solidly planted, with no unneeded vibrato. His emotional conviction is clear, and he shows no sense of strain even in his higher register. Both soloist and orchestra deliver their material with Wagnerian intensity. The second song features a very delicate oboe solo at the start, with a melancholy mood quickly established. The lower strings are notable for their warmth. Kožená’s voice is here a trifle weak, fading a bit beneath the instruments. The third song features delicacy of another kind, and there is a definite bounce to the accompaniment, with nice wind and brass touches. Skelton makes it an atmospheric pleasantry. In the fourth song, Kožená’s voice is a bit stronger and she is more comfortable in her middle range. In a fine orchestral touch, the martial section bursts onto the scene and changes the mood very effectively. The timpani are particularly strong. Then the later, sudden switch to yet another atmosphere is handled to fine effect, and the sense of yearning is well communicated all the way through to the very delicate ending. For the fifth song, Skelton provides another strong, immediate contrast. His bold voice delivers long lines that contrast with a pointed, peppy instrumental accompaniment featuring chamber-music delicacy. And then comes the dour opening of the final song – all is almost funereal at the start here. Now Kožená emotes effectively, the quiet beginning soon deepening emotionally. Although her voice is not always quite equal to the level of expressiveness she projects, the plaintive nature of letzten Lebewohl is put across very well. Rattle makes sure that the quiet instrumental passages reinforce the overall mood. The extended central almost-march material enforces the feeling of despair and farewell, becoming increasingly portentous as it proceeds, even though just what it portends is never made entirely clear. Genuine emotion comes through in the questions about where the rider is going and why he must leave – after which the music comes apart into phrases and fragments. There is almost mysticism here as the work’s end approaches, with slight differences in the accompaniments of the repeated word ewig being clearly conveyed as all fades to nothingness. 

     The performance of Symphony No. 9 dates to November 2021 and, along with the reading of No. 7, is the strongest offering to date in this cycle. Rattle makes the opening of the first movement very quiet indeed, as if the music is emerging from a great depth. There is, however, considerable sweetness, with less sense of foreboding or trouble than is often heard here. The string playing is simply beautiful. Portions of the movement are on the fast side, but the flow is natural and the contrast with slower sections is all the more pronounced as a result. It is an unusual approach, successful on its own terms – Rattle embraces the monumental but somewhat disconnected character of the movement. Again and again matters seem to deteriorate into or at least toward nothingness, only to re-emerge in different guise until at last everything subsides, not so much ending as evaporating. It is worth noting Mahler’s similar descriptive words in both the first and second movements' tempo indications (comodo in the first, gemächlichen in the second). Rattle seems particularly sensitive to this. The second movement is perky and bright at first but soon takes on an awkward sort of peasant rhythm along the lines of the third movement of Beethoven’s Sixth. Here, though, the dance rhythms become increasingly intense, with dissonant brass exclamations and the underlying impression of a not-quite-frantic edge to the enjoyment and celebration. After a while, timpani and brass make everything sound awkward and rather unbalanced; Rattle has a particularly good sense here of evolving or devolving rhythms. The movement becomes a kind of danse macabre and eventually, after some distinctively rhythmically unsettling solos, evaporates much as the first movement did. In the third movement, the aberrant rhythms are even stronger, giving everything a frantic quality. Discomfort comes through both in tutti sections and in individual-instrument touches. Matters are unsettled throughout, although the movement is somewhat more urbane and less intense than it can be – until the final two minutes, when Rattle really lets the orchestra cut loose. And then the finale starts with a great leap across an emotional gulf to a land of bleak beauty. Here the strings dominate, not the brass and percussion of the third movement. There is a sense of yearning from the start, but for what? Not dissolution: Rattle has the music seeking uplift but constantly falling back; the spreading-out here of the third-movement theme does not lessen its unsettled character. The very, very quiet sections are quite impressively played, as gentleness dominates but does not obscure a sense of uncertainty. The material seems always striving for comfort, for consonance in a largely dissonant tonal landscape. Again and again Rattle lets the music bring peace, or almost peace, before something new or returning from earlier in the symphony arises, emerging to say "not yet, not quite yet." By the middle of the movement, all that has been achieved is a sort of stasis. But then the climb to transcendence resumes and the strings, now supported by all the other sections, journey ever higher, guided by life experience as much as by a vision. Eventually even the third-movement theme is subsumed within an edifice of growing certainty. The striving never quite ceases, although the movement's character gradually becomes one of acceptance, attaining a kind of peace that passeth all understanding in the final four minutes. The sublime quietude of the orchestra in these last minutes pulls the music beyond and above any earthly realm into a region perhaps reachable only through music as rarefied as this. 

     And that conclusion of the Ninth points toward the undeniable strengths of the ongoing Rattle Mahler cycle with the Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. Not everything is at this ineffable level, and missteps are sure to occur in future performances as they have in the ones already recorded. But Rattle’s capability for getting to the heart of Mahler and, through it, to the heart of everyone who hears Mahler’s music, bodes very well indeed for the continuation of a sequence that is unfolding over a particularly lengthy period while giving the impression that Rattle believes there is all the time in the world for it to emerge.

(++++) THE OLD AND THE NEW

Haydn: Symphony No. 104; Cello Concerto No. 1; Beethoven: Symphony No. 1. Steuart Pincombe, cello; Philharmonie Austin conducted by Mark Dupere. Navona. $16.99. 

Poul Ruders: Transfigurations—A Double Portrait for Recorder and String Orchestra; A Movable Concerto—Five Short Pieces for Positive Organ and Strings; Concerto for Harpsichord and Symphony Orchestra. Michala Petri, recorder; Peter Navarro-Alonso, positive organ; Mahan Esfahani, harpsichord; Kremerata Baltica conducted by Andris Veismanis; Aarhus Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leif Segerstam. OUR Recordings. $21.99. 

     The notion of combining older with newer approaches to music is a longstanding one in the United States: the country’s oldest continuously performing arts organization, Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, was formed in 1815 specifically to meld what was then “old” (Handel) with what was then “new” (Haydn). Nowadays the mixture may be quite different, along with the very definition of “old” and “new,” but the impulse to bring material from different eras and/or styles together is as strong as ever, and its value comes through particularly clearly in period-instrument performances such as those by Philharmonie Austin on a new Navona CD. The repertoire here is scarcely unfamiliar, and indeed there is an overlap in time between Haydn’s final symphony and Beethoven’s first: the former was initially performed in 1795, and the latter was in its formative stages in that year. What is intriguing, however, is how well the works both blend and contrast to our modern ears when heard on period instruments with an appropriately sized instrumental ensemble such as this. Haydn’s “London” symphony comes across as a large, even grand work, from its opening timpanic underlining (strongly emphasized by conductor Mark Dupere) to its expansive Andante and the insistent propulsiveness of its elegant finale. Beethoven’s First, on the other hand, emerges as a rather modest piece: Beethoven said that he never learned anything from Haydn, but this symphony is Haydnesque in many ways, from its bounce and jollity (never as strong as Haydn’s wit, but cut from much the same cloth) to its overall proportions and generally bright demeanor. And yet its overall sound is different – subtly, to be sure, and to some extent only retrospectively, but different it is. Dupere does nothing untoward to try to create unjustified parallels between the symphonies, but with the very fine ensemble playing and careful orchestral balance he brings to both works, he demonstrates that even though they are both from the same time period and have much in common, they use the instrumental and ensemble capabilities of the late 18^th century in different ways and to different ends. Indeed, there is something “newer” in both the symphonies when they are contrasted with Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1, written 30-plus years before Symphony No. 104. This concerto’s considerable popularity with performers and audiences alike is fully justified by its poise, elegance and thorough demonstration of Haydn’s skill at writing for the cello – and, in this performance, Steuart Pincombe’s historically apt and thoroughly engaging handling of the solo part. But there is certainly something old-fashioned about the concerto, in its overall design and the intermingling of its solo and tutti sections. This is, however, entirely immaterial to enjoyment of the work, which is very enjoyable indeed in this performance – and if Haydn now definitely represents the “old” after being deemed “new” in 1815, that reality signifies nothing in terms of the pleasures that are still very much present in his music. 

     The old/new dichotomy plays out differently on a new OUR Recordings release and in the mind and compositional skill of Poul Ruders (born 1949). Here Ruders is quite deliberately employing instruments that are regarded as old, even old-fashioned to the point of obsolescence, in the service of music that is very much of the 21^st century. The results are always intriguing and at times rather disconcerting, since Ruders uses the instruments in ways that “old” composers would never have dreamt of employing. Transfigurations (2022) features two movements that are both labeled Alla breve moderato and both set Michala Petri’s solo recorder against string clouds that are born in dissonance and that sometimes set off the recorder’s notes while at other times subsuming them within a vast expanse of auditory miasma. The recorder comes to the fore and even supplies some solo material too at times, especially in the first movement, which is twice the length of the second and, although it partakes of a similar sonic environment, moves toward eventual quiescence. The recorder is not as unfamiliar today as the positive organ, though, so Transfigurations does not leave quite as distinctive an impression as A Movable Concerto (2023), whose title draws on the fact that its solo part is written for a small, portable, single-keyboard organ that was in widespread use for sacred purposes through the Baroque era and then fell rapidly out of style. The positive organ may lack the grandeur of the massive fixed organs built into churches and other edifices, but its delicate sound and very pleasant volume range help it fit quite neatly into the strings of Kremerata Baltica, ably conducted by Andris Veismanis for both this work and Transfigurations. Peter Navarro-Alonso amply demonstrates the capabilities of the positive organ in five thoroughly secular pieces that are less insistent on harmonic and rhythmic modernity than the two elements of Transfigurations. Indeed, A Movable Concerto is more of a suite than anything else, its five movements’ varying moods coming through with considerable pleasurable effect – with the Largo legatissimo being as emotionally expressive in its way as the faster-paced Animato and Vivace elements are in theirs. Ruders here elicits many notable details from both the solo instrument and the ensemble, from the broadly planned opening Alla breve to a concluding Andante packed with considerable warmth despite its clearly modern harmonic palette. There is also considerable expressiveness in Ruders’ Concerto for Harpsichord and Symphony Orchestra (2019), which here features Mahan Esfahani performing with the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra under Leif Segerstam. The harpsichord has not been entirely neglected by modern composers and has even found its way into some distinctly modern media: the wry British TV spy series The Avengers, best known for the episodes with Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg, notably featured harpsichord-pervaded Laurie Johnson music. But Ruders takes the instrument into the sort of solo spotlight that it first occupied in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, albeit in an entirely different tonal universe. The concerto’s three movements follow the traditional fast-slow-fast pattern and showcase the harpsichord’s expressive potential as well as giving the soloist multiple opportunities to display virtuosic control of the instrument. Modernity is scarcely neglected – some of the chords, notably in the central movement, are distinctly dissonant, and the hammering sounds that start the finale are quite emphatically contemporary – but the overall feeling of the concerto is a somewhat old-fashioned one. The work effectively treads the line between being a display piece for the instrument and its performer, on the one hand, and being a genuinely expressive work within the concerto genre, on the other. Of the three pieces heard here – all of them world première recordings – it is this concerto that offers listeners the most engaging experience and the best demonstration of ways in which a thoroughly modern musical language can employ older instruments effectively, in ways that reconsider those instruments’ capabilities in a new context and that serve both to unite the old and the new and to highlight the surprising extent of their complementarity.

(++++) TODDLER TECH TALK

How to Explain Aerospace Engineering to a Grown-Up. By Ruth Spiro. Illustrated by Teresa Martínez. Charlesbridge. $17.99. 

Baby Loves Robotics! By Ruth Spiro. Illustrated by Kat Uno. Charlesbridge. $8.99. 

     Ruth Spiro is on to something: the wonders of everyday life in the 21^st century are heavily technological. And in a technology-driven age, surrounded as they are by devices of complexity that was unimaginable just a few years ago and is now taken for granted, doesn’t it make sense for children to find out the way things work so they can better understand the world around them and, not coincidentally, satisfy their curiosity? 

     The notion of explaining technology in simplified fashion, but without “talking down” to people, is scarcely new: David Macauley’s mammoth-infused The Way Things Work dates back almost 40 years and is still unsurpassed for its combination of clear technical explanations (courtesy of Neil Ardley) with the amusement of an extinct pachyderm as explanatory guide. Spiro, however, takes things further by specifically creating tech-infused books for very young children, including early readers and even pre-readers – the two latest examples being How to Explain Aerospace Engineering to a Grown-Up and Baby Loves Robotics! 

     The How to Explain series has a particularly clever foundational premise: it assumes that kids already know about scientific and technical topics and have to figure out how to explain the material in words simple enough for adults to understand them. This gets neatly around the “talking down” risk by, in effect, “talking up,” and lets young readers feel as if they are experts – even as they themselves are learning. Didactic the books may be, but by using role reversal as their basis, they help kids feel knowledgeable even as they become knowledgeable. It is a neat trick. 

     Thus, How to Explain Aerospace Engineering to a Grown-Up starts with the girl narrator showing her parent a bird and explaining how birds fly by using their wings to generate lift that helps overcome gravity. This allows a mention of air pressure differences between the above-wing and below-wing areas, leading into a discussion of how airplanes are able to have lift without flapping their wings (although, as the book notes, they do have wing flaps). Thrust and drag, lift and gravity appear in simplified form that expands and enhances the initial discussion about birds, with the carefully designed illustrations by Teresa Martínez, which are well-integrated with the text, making the parallels clear. Spiro then extends the notion of powered flight from aeronautics to aerospace (two of the words explicitly defined in a short back-of-the-book glossary). Pointing out that spaceflight differs from near-Earth flight because there is no oxygen in space, Spiro shows – that is, allows her narrator to show – the basics of how liquid-fuel and solid-fuel rockets work. Then, bringing matters back to Earth, Spiro and Martínez present a quotidian scene of the girl narrator and her mom visiting the girl’s grandmother, whose ordinary-appearing home is full of items originally designed for and first used in space, from memory-foam cushions to cordless tools and ear thermometers. The connection of the potentially abstruse elements of aerospace engineering with familiar scenes of daily life helps How to Explain Aerospace Engineering to a Grown-Up connect with young readers in ways that go beyond mere curiosity (not that curiosity is ever “mere”). The absence of a source list or suggestions for further reading is a bit disappointing, since the book may well encourage both kids and adults to want to find out more about its topic, and some guidance from Spiro would have been useful. Still, as a super-basic introduction to a super-complex topic, How to Explain Aerospace Engineering to a Grown-Up delivers on the promise underlying its title and lets kids learn while they teach, or at least feel as if they are teaching. 

     Spiro takes things in a somewhat different direction in the Baby Loves Science series. These are board books, which means they target the very youngest readers and, realistically, pre-readers. And they do a remarkably good job of presenting very basic information on scientific topics ranging from thermodynamics to paleontology to, believe it or not, quantum physics. The basic formula is the same as in the How to Explain series: Spiro connects complex topics with everyday items that seem simple because of their familiarity. But for Baby Loves Science, the underlying complexity has to be communicated in the simplest language possible and with illustrations that will interest very young children. Kat Uno, who has done a modest amount of illustrative work for this series in the past, is responsible for the entirety of Baby Loves Robotics! Her rounded, big-eyed figures and pleasantly colored settings produce just the right comfort level for Spiro’s explanations of robot basics. And those explanations are cleverly tied to the notion of a baby with a brand-new robotic toy: a suitably cute robot puppy. “A robot is a machine that can work on its own,” explains Spiro in the sort of vast-but-basically-accurate oversimplification that she brings both to Baby Loves Science and to How to Explain. Spiro writes a little bit about code, a little bit about parallels between some robots and humans (the puppy “hears” and “sees,” and Spiro puts both words in quotation marks), and a little bit about robots that are not solely for fun but “help people do work.” There are even examples of robots that look like animals other than dogs, including ones that can slither like snakes and fly like birds. Nothing here is overly complex or overly challenging to understand, and that is just as things should be in a board book: Spiro does a fine job of showing what is special about the technology underpinning daily life for the families at whom she aims the Baby Loves Science series. The sequence is self-described as “little books about big ideas,” and that is a well-turned phrase that applies equally to the How to Explain books for slightly-more-advanced readers – and their grown-ups.