(+++) NOTEWORTHY NONFICTION

Penguins. By Seymour Simon. Smithsonian/Collins. $16.99.

Spiders. By Seymour Simon. Smithsonian/Collins. $16.99.

Scholastic Book of World Records 2008. By Jenifer Corr Morse. Scholastic. $9.99.

Young Pelé: Soccer’s First Star. By Lesa Cline-Ransome. Illustrated by James E. Ransome. Schwartz & Wade. $16.99.

      Although fiction dominates most publishers’ lists of books for young readers, well-done nonfiction can be just as intriguing, imparting knowledge while providing enjoyment. Seymour Simon’s many science-focused books are good cases in point. His two newest, which belong to a series done in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, combine Simon’s no-nonsense approach to information with some stunning photography. Penguins discusses the similarities and differences among the 17 penguin species, explaining why these birds are such good swimmers, how they get rid of the salt water they inevitably swallow when feeding in the ocean, how they bond in mating season, and what enemies hunt them. Some of the photos here – of penguins in huge groups, of one sitting atop an egg, of them lined up to dive into the water – will doubtless be familiar to many young readers from nature documentaries and TV shows. But others, such as a photo of a huge crowd of fluffy penguin chicks with a single adult in their midst, are less familiar and equally wonderful.

      It is much less likely that kids will have seen the astonishing photos in Spiders before. Simon explains that the 40,000 different kinds of spiders do more good than harm, that most spiders have poor eyesight despite having eight eyes, that spiders produce several different kinds of silk, and that some spiders catch prey by stalking rather than by waiting for it to come to them. One of the most amazing photos here shows a jumping spider in mid-leap, about to pounce on a fly. Another shows a spider in extreme magnification, looking for all the world like a monstrous alien from a science-fiction movie. Also here is information on spiders whose venom is powerful enough to kill a person (such as the black widow), and others whose reputation is worse than their bite (such as the tarantula). This is a fascinating look at a creature that everyone sees all the time but about which most people, adults and children alike, know little.

      If what you want to know is who has the most country music awards, who is the world’s best-paid actress, or who is the world’s youngest billionaire, the place to turn is Scholastic Book of World Records 2008. As it does every year, this book of records highlights major accomplishments, successes, or simply the existence of record breakers in sports, nature, science, money and popular culture. The table of contents lets you turn quickly to a section that interests you, but the sections vary widely in length: 60-plus pages on sports, 30 on popular culture, fewer than 20 on money and business. This may make sense for young readers, but it does tend to present a skewed view of the world: this book goes for glitz, not depth. The highest-salaried NBA player is Kevin Garnett ($21 million a year); the world’s richest woman is Lilianne Bettencourt (worth $20.7 billion); the top-earning male singer is Bruce Springsteen ($55 million in 2006). Such numbers records can change, of course, but many items here remain reliably the same every year: largest ocean, fastest-flying insect, deadliest snake, longest insect migration, and so on. This book is scarcely comprehensive, but it is fun to dip into periodically, and the photos and illustrations are well done.

      One person not mentioned in the world-records book is soccer great Pelé, still considered the greatest soccer player of all time (although not the highest-paid: that is David Beckham). Using illustrations rather than photos, the wife-and-husband team of Lesa Cline-Ransome and James E. Ransome writes about young Pelé’s growing-up years in a small, poor Brazilian town; the ball made from rags that he used when honing his skills; the rocks he kicked every day on the way to school; and his early triumphs on the soccer field. The book is straightforward early-life biography, likely to be of interest to young soccer fans who have heard of this great player but never had a chance to see him (he was born in 1940 and most famous during the 1950s and 1960s; he retired in 1977). The “first star” part of the book’s title is not entirely accurate: the nickname Pelé is thought by many to be a tribute to an earlier major star, Bilé. And Young Pelé is not 100% factual: the Ransomes imagine some of Pelé’s feelings and expressions. But their narrative hews closely to the facts of Pelé’s early life, and is an uplifting story of one boy’s success in finding his way out of isolation and poverty.

(+++) FAIRY TALE AND FANTASY

The Garden of Eve. By K.L. Going. Harcourt. $17.

The Kiesha’ra, Volume Five: Wyvernhail. By Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. Delacorte Press. $14.99.

The Runestone Saga, Book Two: Vendetta. By Chris Humphries. Knopf. $15.99.

Raleigh’s Page. By Alan Armstrong. Illustrated by Tim Jessell. Random House. $16.99.

      Fairy tales, at least those newly written for preteens and teenagers, sometimes shade over into the region of heroic fantasy, so it can be hard to tell where one genre ends and the other begins. It may also be irrelevant if the books are engaging and well written – as, for the most part, all of these are.

      The Garden of Eve, for ages 8-12, is closer to a fairy tale. The first action here is a journey. The first words, though, hint at what is to come: “Once there was a beautiful garden.” Those words are part of a bedtime story that Evie’s mother is telling her; but when the action proper starts, there is no garden and no mother: she has been dead for seven months, and Evie and her father are moving far away, to a new home in a town called Beaumont. Her father, distant and preoccupied at the best of times, is getting a great price on a large parcel of land whose fruit trees have stopped producing because, the locals believe, there is a curse there. The elements of magic start to emerge and coalesce, as Evie gradually begins to heal from her grief over her mother, helped by meeting a boy who calls himself Alex and by the arrival of a mysterious seed from someone Evie has never met. Thanks to the seed, Evie and her friend are able to enter a world filled with both magic and peril. “If you’re not going to believe, then you ought to go home” – but what it means to go home is K.L. Going’s real question. Her book is partly about coping with grief through stories, and partly about what a story really is: “‘But this isn’t a story, is it?’ Maggie said. ‘It’s true.’ Evie shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t be true to Father.’” At the end, as at the beginning, it is a story from Evie’s mother that provides a special touch of charm and warmth.

      Wyvernhail lies somewhere between fairy tale and fantasy. The fifth and final volume of Amelia Atwater-Rhodes’ shapeshifter saga, The Kiesha’ra, it concludes the Capulets-and-Montagues story about the part-human, part-animal races known as the avian and serpiente. Following Hawksong, Snakecharm, Falcondance and Wolfcry, Wyvernhail focuses on Oliza Shardae Cobriana, who is trying to rule a united land of the feuding races even though their mutual hatred – as events in the book show – has scarcely been extinguished. Attempting to heal the problems of her own court, Oliza is kidnapped and taken into wolves’ territory to face a new set of challenges. “Oliza is more than my daughter,” her mother says at one point. “She is more than a princess; she is a symbol of a dream that took thousands of years to bring about…” But the fate of the shapeshifters rests not only with her but also with the outcast Hai, child of a falcon mother and cobra father. Followers of this series for ages 12 and up will find that the conclusion neatly knits its many strands together.

      There are strands aplenty in The Runestone Saga as well, and it too is for ages 12 and above. In Chris Humphries’ first book of this series, Fetch, Sky learned how to use runes to travel back in time – then discovered that grandfather Sigurd, who taught him, has secret plans to use the runes for personal power. This is not exactly an original plot; nor is what happens in the saga’s second book, Vendetta, in which Sky knows he must learn from ancestors other than Sigurd so he can strengthen his psychic powers enough to be able to challenge his onetime teacher. This book’s title comes from Sky’s discovery of the power of the vendetta in his family, a discovery that ties into his decision to travel back in time to the 16^th century and occupy the mind of Tza, a strong-willed and fierce girl. The interplay of history and mythology here can get a little confusing, but the blend of power hunger, ruthlessness and Norse lore is certainly a heady one. Fans of this book will be eager for the next, Possession.

      A more straightforward historical novel for slightly younger readers, ages 10-12, Raleigh’s Page is set in the same time that Sky visits but in very different places. Eleven-year-old Andrew Saintleger, the central character, becomes the page of Sir Walter Raleigh after Andrew’s father sends him to London from their rural home. The interplay of real and fictional is well handled as Alan Armstrong shows Raleigh arguing to Queen Elizabeth about the importance of challenging Spain in the New World, with court intrigue on all sides. Andrew is tested in many ways, finally earning a spot aboard the Tyger for a journey to Virginia. The specifics of what Andrew faces in England, on the journey and in the New World are interesting, but the lessons he must learn – about courage, strength and kindness – are nothing particularly new or special. Still, they are worth reiterating for readers in this age group, even in the fantasy setting of historical adventure.

(++++) ROMANTICS ALL

Ries: Flute Quartets Nos. 1-3, Op. 145. John Herrick Littlefield, flute; Aaron Boyd, violin; Ah Ling Neu, viola; Yari Bond, cello. Naxos. $8.99.

Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsodies for Orchestra, Nos. 1-6. Staatskapelle Weimar conducted by Arthur Fagen. Naxos. $8.99.

Stanford: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5. Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Lloyd-Jones. Naxos. $8.99.

      The boundaries of the Romantic era run roughly from Beethoven’s time (1820s), past the end of the 19^th century, and some distance into the 20^th (Rachmaninoff, one of the last of the great Romantic composers, lived until 1943). Romantic music is scarcely monolithic, but it has certain characteristics, emotional and structural, that are recognizable in the early, middle and late years of its age.

      Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838), friend and biographer of Beethoven, represents the early years. His three quartets for flute and strings are among his late works and postdate anything by Beethoven, who died in 1827. But they are only tentative forays into Romanticism, retaining a great deal of the poise and balance that were the hallmarks of the earlier Classical era. The first, in C major, actually includes a quotation from Mozart’s “Dissonant” quartet in its slow movement, and in general one hears the strains of a more bewigged time throughout the work, which ends with a distinctly Spanish-flavored finale. The second quartet, in E minor, is more serious and closer to what most people think of as Romantic temperament. Its darkness never comes close to despair, though, and often has the piquancy of earlier minor-key Mozart (say, Symphony No. 25 rather than No. 40). Both these quartets end quietly, in contrast to the third, in A major, which bounces along merrily to an uplifting conclusion. The players in the new Naxos CD of these quartets toss melodies and melodic fragments back and forth with aplomb, and the performances combine enthusiasm and lightness with a kind of wistfulness that is as close as Ries ever came in these works to full-blown Romanticism.

      Franz Liszt (1811-1886), on the other hand, is one of the most Romantic of all composers, and his 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano are a high point of mid-19^th-century nationalism as well. The six that were orchestrated by Franz Doppler in the 1850s, with Liszt’s help, have all the characteristics of full-blown Romantic music: sweep, style, grand (even overblown) emotion, orchestral color, and tremendous dynamism. Staatskapelle Weimar has a deep historical connection to this music: Liszt himself directed the orchestra for a time. The playing is extraordinarily good, whether because of the orchestra itself or because of Arthur Fagen (not a particularly well known-conductor) it is impossible to say. The result is often revelatory in well-known music that one might think has little more to reveal. Fagen and the orchestra are especially good during the transitions between the slow (lassu) sections of the works and the fast (friss) ones. The attention to instrumental detail is exceptional, and while a certain level of raucousness is inevitable in these pieces (especially the sixth, “Carnival in Pest”), this recording gives the works a great deal of grandeur as well – not just in the fifth (Héroïde élégiaque) but in the third and fourth as well. This is an outstanding version of a Romantic staple.

      Late Romanticism was the province of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924), two of whose seven symphonies were written after the turn of the 20^th century. No. 2, however, was first performed in 1882, and No. 5 in 1895. Both partake thoroughly of the Romantic temperament, even to the inclusion of titles: No. 2 in D minor is the “Elegiac,” prefaced in the score with words from Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” and No. 5 in D major is “L’Allegro ed Il Penseroso,” after Milton’s paired poems. But both works are purely instrumental – and neither looks past Romanticism in any significant way. Indeed, both seem more to use rear-view mirrors, with Brahmsian brass in opening and closing movements and distinctly Mendelssohnian touches elsewhere (notably in the scherzo of No. 2). Stanford’s symphonies are very well constructed and, if one does not ask them to be more than they are, very enjoyable to listen to, especially when given performances as energetic and strongly committed as they receive from the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under David Lloyd-Jones. No. 5, for example, offers effectively paired movements (the first two in “L’Allegro” mode, the second two bespeaking “Il Penseroso”). It is not as cleverly tied to its subject matter as is, for example, Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 2 (“The Four Temperaments”), written a handful of years later in 1901-2. But on its own terms, Stanford’s work is musically effective, with subtle rhythmic touches and a clever modification of traditional sonata form in the first movement. And No. 2, although not as deep as one might expect from its subtitle, is well-scaled and nicely orchestrated, with a forcefulness and energy characteristic of Romantic music in general.

(++++) WORRIES UNWORRIED

Mrs. Biddlebox. By Linda Smith. Pictures by Marla Frazee. Harcourt. $15.

Help! A Story of Friendship. By Holly Keller. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $16.99.

The Boy with Two Belly Buttons. By Stephen J. Dubner. Illustrated by Christoph Niemann. HarperCollins. $16.99.

      There are so many frustrations at being in the 3-8 age range! Days go wrong, friendships are tough to figure out, and there’s this creeping (and creepy) feeling of not being like everyone else. Happily, fictional characters can handle all these everyday-but-tough problems in ways that make it easier to laugh at real-world troubles while also pointing the way to real-world solutions.

      Bad days? Mrs. Biddlebox has one – and it’s a whopper! Everything goes wrong from the start: “The birds gave her a headache./ There were creakies in her chair./ A breeze blew dank and dreary/ and mussied up her hair.” And Mrs. Biddlebox gets mad, telling her pet goose, “I will cook this rotten morning!/ I will turn it into cake!/ I will fire up my oven!/ I will set the day to bake!” And so she does, yanking the dark lawn and grabbing the unpleasant fog, unraveling the sun as if it were a huge ball of yarn, even rolling up the dull-looking sky, then stuffing everything in her pot, making dough from it and – in a set of marvelous temper-tantrum illustrations – jumping up and down on the dough in anger. Then, in an equally delightful other-side-of-the-coin set of pictures, she dances merrily around the stove while baking the dough. And so she turns the awful day into something delicious – and what a skill that would be for any real child! So there’s the lesson for parents to teach – while appreciating, along with kids, Linda Smith’s delightfully offbeat story and Marla Frazee’s wonderfully amusing illustrations.

      Friendship problems? Find some help in Help! – a cautionary tale about the dangers of gossip that also has a pleasant friends-stick-together message. Holly Keller postulates an unlikely friendship among Mouse, Hedgehog, Rabbit, Squirrel and Snake – unlikely because, in real life, many snakes eat mice (and some eat rabbits and squirrels). Still, all seems well until Mouse hears from Skunk – who heard it from Fox – that snakes are dangerous to mice. Since this isn’t the real world, this becomes a friendship crisis rather than a serious issue of self-preservation. Mouse, so worried that he stops paying attention to where he is going, falls into a hole and hurts his foot, so he cannot climb out. His other friends can’t help him, so they turn to Snake – who says he will rescue Mouse even though Mouse is now afraid of him. Snake cleverly has the other friends tie his tail around a stick, and then lowers the stick into the hole for Mouse to climb; and a grateful Mouse realizes that friends remain friends despite unpleasant gossip.

      Being different? The Boy with Two Belly Buttons certainly is – he can’t find anyone else with two navels, even though he looks around at the pool and asks everyone from a hospital nurse to a friendly neighborhood turtle to a know-it-all professor (who proves that no one could possibly have two belly buttons). Stephen J. Dubner tells the story amusingly – kids will certainly recognize how it feels to be the only one who is or has something – and Christoph Niemann creates neatly designed illustrations from the boy’s point of view: you never see the faces of any adults until one of them helps the boy solve his problem at the end. The ending, unfortunately, drops this book to a (+++) rating, because it is only through external praise – the boy stumbles into a famous movie director who offers to make a film about him – that the boy becomes happy about himself and, after looking in a mirror, “For the first time in a long time, he liked what he saw.” This is a cute conclusion of the “Prince Charming comes to the rescue” type, but it is not much of a teachable moment: in real life, kids who feel left out or different can’t expect instant validation from grown-ups (or other kids), and need to learn to find it within themselves to accept themselves as they are. This offbeat story is amusingly told and well illustrated, but parents will have to contrast its solution with ones available in the real world.

(++++) GHOSTIES AND GHOULIES

20^th Century Ghosts. By Joe Hill. William Morrow. $24.95.

The Missing. By Sarah Langan. HarperSuspense. $6.99.

      There are better and worse ways to do horror, and the amount of blood and gore is not a sure guide to which is which. The 15 stories in Joe Hill’s 20^th Century Ghosts include some that are scary in the best way: Hill makes you care about the characters before awful or simply strange things happen to them. Some of the tales have a psychological edge to them, too, such as the title story (actually called 20^th Century Ghost, singular), in which the ghost of a young woman haunts an old and soon-to-be-refurbished movie theater, eventually finding a kindred spirit and, one might almost say, a lifelong friend, in the only way that a ghost can. Hill is better in these short stories than in his first novel, Heart-Shaped Box, which was a little too far over the top and which never quite made readers care about its protagonist’s fate. Of course, Hill can be over-the-top in short form, too: You Will Hear the Locust Sing is a delightful made-for-B-movie story about an unhappy man who is transformed into an eight-foot-tall locust that terrorizes his town – and just to be sure you don’t miss the connection with Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Hill names his protagonist Francis Kay. There is little doubt of Hill’s enjoyment of B movies: another story here, Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead, pays homage (of sorts) to the zombie films of George Romero. Most of the tales, though, are effective because of their psychological underpinnings, including The Cape, about a young man whose homemade cape once let him fly and who now has a darker reason to try it again, and The Black Phone, in which a kidnapped teenager keeps hearing a long-disconnected phone ring. Not everything here is creepy: Better Than Home is a mainstream father-son story about how memories are made and which ones are worth preserving, and The Widow’s Breakfast is an atmospheric Depression-era tale. But Hill does do fright particularly well, even in a short-short such as Dead-Wood, which is ostensibly about trees but within a few hundred words proves to be more far-reaching: “Something that doesn’t know it’s alive obviously can’t be expected to know when it’s dead.” Hill shapes these stories with care and skill, guiding the reader through a welter of emotions.

      The only emotion that Sarah Langan seeks to evoke in The Missing is fear, and while she does so effectively, her living-dead plot is so hackneyed and her over-reliance on gore so pronounced that a (+++) rating for the book almost seems generous. Intense-horror fans are clearly the audience here; the plot is straight out of Zombie Central Casting. What happens is that a mysterious accident destroys a small town in Stephen King territory – Maine, that is; but the nearby town of Corpus Christi (no, not the one in Texas) is more or less oblivious to what happened – simply grateful to have been unaffected, and preoccupied with the problems of small-town life as envisioned by an author who lives in Brooklyn. Those include kids with school difficulties, relationships gone bust, psychological worries from the past that continue to be troubling, and suchlike. Of course, it turns out that what happened nearby does have dire implications for Corpus Christi, as people start coming down with a mysterious illness and developing a craving for – what else? – blood. This gives Langan the chance to write all sorts of gory scenes in which she starts to give what seems to be a little background on this one-dimensional character or that one, but then breaks off so the character can be horribly dispatched. Langan’s underlying idea of a “zombie virus” is nothing new, nor is her notion of living in a world gone mad and far outside our control. Langan does write well and pace her stories effectively, as she showed in her first novel, The Keeper. But this second one hews a little too closely to genre stereotypes to be a compelling read – unless, of course, you have a craving for blood of a certain type: the type described in…type.

(++++) WHAT FAIRY TALES TEACH

The Castle Corona. By Sharon Creech. Illuminated by David Diaz. HarperCollins. $18.99.

Igraine the Brave. By Cornelia Funke. Translated by Anthe Bell. Chicken House/Scholastic. $16.99.

The Percheron Saga, Book Two: Emissary. By Fiona McIntosh. Eos. $15.95.

      The archetypes of fairy tales continue to get twisted every which way by modern authors, but the old lessons about the dark woods and the even darker impulses of evil people are nowadays frequently leavened with humor – in part because today’s fairy tales are written with young readers in mind, while the old ones were cautionary tales as much for adults as for children.

      The best users of fairy-tale motifs, such as Sharon Creech and Cornelia Funke, create from them stories with characters who are more than types (or archetypes), whose adventures may seem far away and long ago but whose failures and successes are very up-to-date indeed. Thus, The Castle Corona not only sounds but also looks like an old book – it is not merely illustrated by David Diaz but “illuminated” by him, as pre-Gutenberg books were illuminated with highly decorated initial letters that included miniature pictures indicating a chapter’s subject. Beautiful to look at, The Castle Corona is also a delight to read. It’s all about peasant children Enzio and Pia, who find a royal pouch dropped in the woods that eventually reveals their true identities; and it is about King Guido, so frightened of thieves and poisoners that he must have tasters for his family – and Enzio and Pia become those tasters. What’s in the pouch? Two small bits of red coral, two gold medallions, a lock of black hair tied with a purple ribbon, and a small rolled parchment whose words Enzio and Pia cannot read. Unraveling the mystery of what those objects mean takes quite a while – the story is told at a leisurely pace that gives Creech plenty of time to develop the characters: “Prince Gianni dreamed of walking through a meadow. Words fell upon him like soft raindrops, which he gathered and spun into poetry. The meadow ended abruptly at the river’s edge, where he was lifted across by the breeze. On the far bank stood a peasant girl, who said, Your words are jewels. She did not know he was a prince, heir to the throne. She thought he was a poet.” Who the characters really turn out to be – for many things change as the events unfold – is only part of the charm of this entrancing book.

      The charms of Igraine the Brave are more straightforward and more overtly and constantly amusing. Igraine wishes more than anything to become a knight, but she is stuck in boring Castle Pimpernel with magician parents whose singing magic books are coveted by Osmund, the evil nephew of the baroness next door. How dull. Oh, it’s not dull? But that’s Cornelia Funke’s point: things are interesting enough at the start, and become increasingly so as Igraine’s parents accidentally transform themselves into pigs and so leave their castle at the not-so-tender mercy of Osmund. But Igraine becomes squire to the Sorrowful Knight of the Mount of Tears, and they have a series of adventures that lead in the end back to Castle Pimpernel, a dramatic confrontation with Osmund, and the return in human (or magician) form of Igraine’s father and mother. Before that, Igraine and the Sorrowful Knight meet such characters as a three-headed dragon being hunted by the One-Eyed Duke. One of the dragon’s heads is much smaller than the others: “Look at my third head, will you? The One-Eyed Duke cut it off, and it still hasn’t grown back any larger than one of your silly human heads. I really am sick and tired of all this. …Don’t you and your sort in those tinpot helmets have anything better to do?” The bright prose – stylishly translated from the original German by Anthe Bell – is neatly complemented by Funke’s own illustrations, which make the singing books, the three-headed dragon, the giant (also met on Igraine’s adventures), and all the other characters seem boisterously alive.

      Boisterousness tends to fade from fantasy as it targets an adult audience, though. The Percheron Saga is a typical example of well-written adult fantasy, featuring palace intrigue, feuding gods in the background (and sometimes the foreground), sexual competitiveness, and all sorts of political battles to complement the physical fights. Fiona McIntosh writes well, and the second book of her saga, Emissary, deserves a (+++) rating, but it never really rises above a formulaic approach to fantasy adventure – although the characters are nicely formed within the strictures of the genre. The problem is those strictures: the characters include a young and inexperienced Zar (ruler) of Percheron, Boaz; a secretive Vizier with nefarious plans of his own; a harem ruled by Herezah, the Valide, who is jockeying for position with young Ana (central character of the saga’s first book, Odalisque), who Herezah fears may challenge her status; the former Zar, Lazar, presumed dead but actually recovering from illness far from Percheron and worrying about hearing voices in his head; and the various gods, jockeying for position in their own realm. They are all types, however well McIntosh fleshes them out, and their fears and plots and narrow escapes all parallel the fears, plots and narrow escapes in other adult fantasies. Fans of the genre will surely enjoy this latest entry in it – but unlike Creech’s and Funke’s fairy tales for young readers, McIntosh’s fantasy for adults offers escapism but nothing more.

(+++) HIGH SCHOOL HIJINKS

Gert Garibaldi’s Rants and Raves: One Butt Cheek at a Time. By Amber Kizer. Delacorte Press. $15.99.

Spanking Shakespeare. By Jake Wizner. Random House. $15.99.

The Sweet, Terrible, Glorious Year I Truly, Completely Lost It. By Lisa Shanahan. Delacorte Press. $15.99.

      High school is a hoot and a half, according to all three of these first-time authors. Oh yes, there’s some drama and some family difficulty and those pesky things called classes and grades, but most of what’s happening is fun and frantic and just too fast-paced for words (well, almost – each of these books contains plenty of verbiage). As different as these books are, as differently as their authors write them, there is a sameness to the underlying attitudes toward teen life and teen angst that turns this trio into a sort of Harlequin Triple Romance of high-school life (and yes, there’s romance in all the books, too).

      Gert Garibaldi spends her time ranting into her notebook about the awfulness of high school in Amber Kizer’s Gert Garibaldi’s Rants and Raves: One Butt Cheek at a Time: “It’s high school – brutal, people, brutal. …A girl can only take so much ménage à trap.” Gert’s best friend, Adam, is gay; her crush, Luke, barely notices her; and she has to deal with the usual assortment of parents and classes and all that. Her official “rant” and “rave” pages are set in different type from the rest of the narrative and are numbered and titled: “Rant #6: Homecoming (an ancient tradition of humiliation).” But pretty much everything Gert writes sounds like a rave or a rant, such as her comments on a driving lesson with the school’s instructor: “Mr. Fritz starts to wheeze. He does that when he’s agitated. Or is he dying? Is this the death rattle? He doesn’t look quite dead. He’s got good color. I don’t think I’ll have to resort to CPR.” Kizer writes with great bounce, and manages to make even highly embarrassing situations funny, as when Gert’s menstrual period starts during a class presentation and she wishes she could “make myself invisible. Clear. Saran girl.” By the time Gert turns 16 near the end of the book, readers will really like her – unless they find her awesomely annoying. You choose.

      There’s lots of humor in Spanking Shakespeare, too, and the title has nothing (or not much) to do with the playwright, even though the cover of Jake Wizner’s book shows the historical Shakespeare grimacing and holding his rear end. The Shakespeare of this book is named Shakespeare Shapiro (his parents named his brother Gandhi, which tells you everything you need to know about them, although Shakespeare makes it a point to explain that “my father is a drunk and my mother gets loopy after one glass of wine”). Shakespeare is entering his senior year of high school, making him older than Gert Garibaldi but not much wiser. He’s never had a girlfriend, his life is one embarrassment after another, and now he’s chronicling everything much as Gert does – except that Shakespeare Shapiro is turning his awful life into the subject of the writing project that every senior at his school must complete. And it’s going well, which is either another source of embarrassment or perhaps Shakespeare’s ticket to some sort of success (and maybe a girlfriend). The novel is written as if it’s Shakespeare’s project – the pages are printed to look as if they come from a notebook. Sections have such titles as “The Time My Mother Used Emotional Blackmail to Deprive Me of the Only Thing I Ever Really Wanted” and “The Time I Visited a Sex Doctor.” The book ends with graduation and a hopeful orientation for the future, on a more serious tone than much of what has gone before.

      There’s more seriousness throughout Lisa Shanahan’s The Sweet, Terrible, Glorious Year I Truly, Completely Lost It (a title so long it barely fits on the cover). Gemma Stone is younger than the protagonists of Kizer’s and Wizner’s books – she’s just 14 – but she has all the same sorts of worries about school and family and siblings and dating and all that. Shanahan introduces the clever concept of “chucking a birkett,” which basically means throwing the world’s worst temper tantrum and is a phrase derived from the name of Gemma’s older sister’s former boyfriend, a major-league loser. Gemma knows one does not chuck a birkett, and doubly especially not in front of a stranger, so you see pretty early on where this book is going. Then it goes there. Gemma develops a crush on a boy; finds another boy – a strange one – taking an interest in her; auditions for the school production of The Tempest and actually gets chosen to play Miranda; and has to endure meeting the weird family of the boy her older sister, Debbie, is going to marry. It’s all just too much. Shanahan is Australian – watch for such phrases as “tomorrow arvo” for “tomorrow afternoon,” and “Dad pulled his red silk pajama pants out of his bum” – but apparently 14-year-olds’ angst is the same everywhere. The performance of The Tempest is one climax, Debbie’s wedding is another, and there is a tragedy in between the two that, as happens inevitably in coming-of-age books, helps Gemma…well, come of age. There’s nothing really new in Shanahan’s book, or in Kizer’s or Wizner’s, but each takes the formula of teen troubles and triumphs in a slightly different direction, and their differing styles will appeal to a wide variety of readers.

(++++) OPERATIC WONDERS OF OLD

Monteverdi: L’Orfeo. Monica Piccinini (La Musica); Furio Zanasi (Orfeo); Anna Simboli (Euridice, Proserpina); Sara Mingardo (Messaggiera, Speranza); Sergio Foreste (Caronte); Antonio Abete (Plutone); Luca Dordolo (Apollo). Concerto Italiano conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini. Naïve. $33.99 (2 CDs).

Vivaldi: Atenaide. Sandrine Piau (Atenaide/Eudossa); Vivica Genaux (Teodosio); Guillemette Laurens (Pulcheria); Romina Basso (Varane); Nathalie Stutzman (Marziano); Paul Agnew (Leontino); Stefano Ferrari (Probo). Modo Antiquo conducted by Federico Maria Sardelli. Naïve. $33.99 (3 CDs).

      Listening to pre-Mozart operas is usually a bit of an aural strain, or at least an adjustment. Many of the operas seem more like oratorios to modern listeners, bogged down in endless and endlessly repetitive arias, formal structures that do nothing to advance the action and often seem to retard it, and a complete lack of characterization and genuine human interest. The problem is a sort of “museum-piece syndrome”: the performers interested in doing older operas tend to handle them as if they must be carefully presented so they won’t break.

      Yet not all performances of all older operas fall into this trap. Some operas burst from it through their own wit and the fascinating complexities of their plots: Handel’s Agrippina and Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea, for two examples. Other older operas escape fustiness when performed with brilliance and commitment, as L’Orfeo and Atenaide are in superb new recordings from Naïve.

      Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo of 1607 has, of course, been played quite often. It and Jacopo Peri’s Euridice (1600) are the first works generally considered to be part of the modern opera tradition – although, if we define opera simply as a story told in song, that tradition goes back thousands of years. Rinaldo Alessandrini’s performance of L’Orfeo is billed as a special limited edition, and it comes with all sorts of interesting and attractive extras: Alessandrini’s introduction to the music, the mythology underlying it, and the interpretation; a previously unpublished short story by Camille Laurens, in which the Orpheus myth is set in modern times; numerous representations of the Orpheus myth from various time periods; and a libretto that is not only complete but also annotated – by Alessandrini himself. These extras are fascinating and highly involving, but the recording of the opera itself is so good that it needs no extras at all. Alessandrini, a Monteverdi specialist (and biographer!), uses his own new performing version of the score, and manages to bring out all the beauties and passions (yes, passions) with which the opera is infused. This is no dry-as-dust performance: for Alessandrini and this cast (notably Furio Zanasi as Orfeo), this music lives. And as Alessandrini himself points out, this is an opera about music, not merely a retelling of the Orpheus myth (modified for the sensibilities of Monteverdi’s time, which had less trouble with a deus ex machina than with an unhappy ending). Four hundred years after its first performance, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo is again – or still – very much alive, with this wonderfully sung and elegantly paced recording showing just how good the opera can sound in the right hands.

      The new recording of Atenaide is a delight for some of the same reasons and many different ones. It is the best recording ever of this opera – because it is the only one. First performed in late 1728, Atenaide is something of a pastiche: Vivaldi, an inveterate self-plagiarizer, stirred together arias and scenes he had previously written to produce a remarkably effective (if rather confusing) historical drama. But Vivaldi also wrote original music, some it quite stirring, for Atenaide, so the work – which contains quite a number of arias – includes some that are entirely new and others (such as “Nel profondo” from Orlando Furioso of 1727) that are familiar. Federico Maria Sardelli clearly understands and loves this opera, and paces it very well throughout. The cast is simply outstanding – there isn’t a weak voice in it. The plot is at once complex and commonplace: Eudossa is about to wed the Eastern Roman Emperor Teodosio when Varane, son and heir to the kingdom of Athens, shows up. Eudossa has fled to Teodosio’s court to escape the attentions of Varane, who knows her as Atenaide. Teodosio, a magnanimous ruler (think of Titus in Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito), tells Atenaide/Eudossa that she may choose whom to wed by giving the one she loves a precious jewel that he provides. Atenaide/Eudossa decides on Teodosio, but does not give the jewel to him directly: she gives it to a scheming servant, Probo, who for reasons of his own presents it to Varane. Confusion and a kidnapping ensue, but Probo’s machinations are eventually exposed and Atenaide/Eudossa is united with Teodosio. The plots and counterplots probably play better on stage than in a recording, where it can be a bit difficult – even with a libretto – to keep track of who is doing what to whom at what time. But it doesn’t really matter: what makes this virtually unknown opera soar is the intricacies of the music. All the singers are experienced in Vivaldi’s style, all are in fine vocal form, and conductor Sardelli knows just how to keep voices and instruments in balance at all times. The recording, interestingly, was made in Florence, Italy, in the Teatro della Pergola – the same location where Atenaide was first performed. But that is history. This recording is very much of the here and now: beautifully sung, excellently played and every bit as alive as any of Vivaldi’s more familiar music.

(+++) MOVIE MUSIC, SERIOUS MUSIC

Rózsa: Violin Concerto; Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Cello and Orchestra. Anastasia Khitruk, violin; Andrey Tchekmazov, cello; Russian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Dmitry Yablonsky. Naxos. $8.99.

Rózsa: Variations on a Hungarian Peasant Song; Duo for Violin and Piano; North Hungarian Peasant Songs and Dances; Sonata for Violin Solo. Philippe Quint, violin; William Wolfram, piano. Naxos. $8.99.

      The name of Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995) is inextricably linked to film music – for which he had such a talent that he was able to negotiate a contract giving him three months a year off, in which to write music for the concert hall. These new CDs show Rózsa in thorough command of the forms of this more-serious music, but generally without the sorts of big ideas that would make his classical music as attractive to concert-hall audiences as his scores for Double Indemnity, Spellbound, The Thief of Baghdad, Ben-Hur and many more films are for moviegoers.

      The works with orchestra are the more interesting ones here. Both have a strong Jascha Heifetz connection. The Violin Concerto was written for him, first performed by him and first recorded by him. The Sinfonia Concertante was intended for Heifetz and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, but Heifetz was never satisfied with it despite multiple reworkings on Rózsa’s part. It might take a Heifetz to make the Violin Concerto thoroughly engaging: Anastasia Khitruk has plenty of technique, but her performance does not seem entirely facile, as if she is not involved in the music. The work’s opening is searingly Romantic, and the violin plays nearly without stop throughout the first movement, almost as if this is a violin work with orchestra obbligato. The movement meanders pleasantly from theme to theme. The second movement is atmospheric and pleasingly lyrical, but never intense. The finale actually has an orchestral introduction – the only one in the concerto – after which the violin skitters and swoops here and there. This concerto never seems to find an emotional center, but it did find a use in film: excerpts became part of Rózsa’s score for Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.

      The Sinfonia Concertante, despite its checkered history, is a more effective work. The cello – played with firm, rich tone by Andrey Tchekmazov – is heard first in the initial movement, after a dramatic opening; then cello and violin interweave, and there are some interesting tutti sections. The orchestra is well handled, and the double cadenza is effective. The cello starts the second movement, a theme and variations, with a long singing phrase, after which the violin enters at a broad pace. The variations alternate lyricism with playfulness and have nice little touches, such as occasional triangle notes; Dmitry Yablonsky and the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra are especially effective here. One particularly well-conceived variation contrasts orchestral outbursts with scurrying themes for the soloists. The finale has rhythmic intensity and plenty of percussion, and sounds like film music even though it isn’t. There are soulful sections among the dramatic ones, and Rózsa’s handling of winds, harp and snare drum keeps matters interesting until the music becomes faster and faster as it rushes to its conclusion.

      Rózsa’s chamber music seems rather thin by comparison, although Philippe Quint and William Wolfram play it quite well. The Variations on a Hungarian Peasant Song are rather ordinary, although the second-to-last one and the finale have some intensity. The first movement of the four-movement Duo for Violin and Piano meanders in and out of tonality; the second movement has bounce, with strong chords at the end; the third is gentle, marked Largo doloroso but sounding more tranquillo; and the fourth is bright and lively. The four movements of North Hungarian Peasant Songs and Dances have greater overall vitality. The first is pretty and gently rocking; the second contrasts lighter and stronger sections; the third is heartfelt and songful; and the fourth is very quick and strongly rhythmic, with a contrasting middle section.

      All these chamber pieces are early Rózsa works. The Sonata for Violin Solo is late (1986), written at a time when a degenerative illness kept the composer from creating multi-instrument works and led him to explore solo pieces for flute, clarinet, guitar, oboe, and viola – plus this one for violin. The longest work on this CD, the Sonata for Solo Violin is large-scale, complex and atonal. It engages the listener through sonorities and techniques – such as the first movement’s rapid pitch and rhythm changes, plus unexpected and difficult leaps. The second movement, nearly as long as the first and third put together, is a theme with multifaceted variations, and the finale is intense and sonically varied. In all, though, the work is more impressive than likable, and Rózsa’s chamber pieces in general are likely to be less appealing to a concert audience than his orchestral works – although it is doubtful that any of his concert-hall music will ever reach as large as audience as his film scores did…and still do.

(++++) AMUSEMENTS, 2008 STYLE

2008 Calendars: Engagement – The New Yorker Desk Diary; Day-to-Day – Pearls Before Swine; The Word Origin Calendar; The Golden Compass; Tangram Magnetic Puzzle-a-Day; Wall – The Museum of Modern Art: Monster Movies. Andrews McMeel. $29.95 (New Yorker); $11.99 each (Pearls; Word); $13.99 (Golden); $14.99 (Tangram); $13.99 (Monster).

      Still haven’t decided what you want on your desk or wall next year? Never fear: there are plenty of wonderful and unusual choices out there. To channel your inner executive (or your outer one, if you’re an executive already), take a look at the handsomely bound and distinctive New Yorker Desk Diary, which is unusually well laid out for tracking appointments (with lines for hour-by-hour setups of calls and meetings on weekdays from 8 a.m. to “evening,” plus space for weekend must-dos) and which features one of the inimitable New Yorker cartoons on every two-page spread. Doctor, handing patient a prescription: “Try this – I just bought a hundred shares.” One of the two well-dressed women on a couch, to the other: “Can you imagine what he would look like without money?” As a bonus, the book includes six recent winners of the magazine’s Caption Contest, which invites readers to think up cartoon captions to capture the imagination of the magazine’s editors.

      A little too hoity-toity, perhaps? Prefer a day-to-day calendar, with pages you tear off? How about going all the way downscale to Pearls Before Swine, the darkly hilarious comic strip by Stephan Pastis? The 2008 Pearls calendar includes such gems as Pig dancing the hula, Rat proclaiming himself the world’s most superior being (as usual), and two of the not-too-bright crocodiles becoming roadkill and ending up way underground, leading to this calendar’s title, Dis Not Plan Me Have in Mind, Floyd.

      Does that word use, or misuse, trouble you? Perhaps you’d prefer The Word Origin Calendar, which includes brand names and clichés as well as everyday words. Want a little background on “blasé,” “goody two shoes” or the Brooklyn Dodgers? It’s here – along with hundreds of other definitions and bits of the history of the English language and its users.

      Some of the best modern use of English – at least in books ostensibly for younger readers – comes from Philip Pullman in his trilogy, His Dark Materials. The first book of the series, The Golden Compass, has now been made into a special-effects-spectacular movie, and that film is the basis of The Golden Compass 2008 Calendar. Whether you have seen the movie or not, you will find this selection of scenes from it – featuring witch queens, ice bears, and heroine Lyra Belacqua and the golden compass (officially known as an alethiometer) that helps guide her – to be fascinating glimpses of the visualization of a modern classic. Each page explains something about the inhabitants of Pullman’s complex and extraordinarily well-realized alternative worlds, giving book and movie fans alike something to think about.

      But what if you like to exercise your fingers as well as your mind? How about Tangram Magnetic Puzzle-a-Day, which is the heaviest day-to-day calendar around (well over two pounds) and provides a brief daily dose of fiddle-around-with-something time? Actually, it can provide a lengthy dose, since some of these Tangram puzzles – which involve rearranging seven shapes into hundreds of different configurations – are really difficult. Solutions are provided for days on which you just can’t figure out how everything fits together.

      Over at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the custodians of great art have managed to fit together a wall calendar with, shall we say, somewhat lesser art. It’s hard to imagine a fan of really bad sci-fi flicks who would turn up his or her nose at this beauty. Actually, it’s hard to imagine a fan of these flicks turning up his or her nose at almost anything; but in truth, the full-color posters advertising these delightfully awful movies (not all of which were themselves in color) are triumphs of really bad (but really effective) graphic design. A couple of these films have become classics of a kind, including the original versions of The Blob and The Fly. But even the movies that dwell in deserved obscurity have posters that are worth a look. There’s Invasion of the Saucer-Men (complete with hyphen), which features a perfect illustration of type BEM (bug-eyed monster clutching a scantily clad human woman); Attack of the Crab Monsters, another BEM offering; The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, whose poster is weirder than the film; It! The Terror from Beyond Space, featuring a truly awful title; and half a dozen more – one heaping helping of the strange and silly per month. Hey – maybe if you hang this on your cubicle wall, you’ll keep all the straitlaced coworkers out. Or at least find out who the truly weird ones are (they’ll want to hang around longer).

(++++) CLOSING IN

A Closer Look. By Mary McCarthy. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $16.99.

Where the Giant Sleeps. By Mem Fox. Pictures by Vladimir Radunsky. Harcourt. $16.

      The more closely young children observe the world around them, the more amazing things they will see. That’s the premise of both these books, but in very different ways. A Closer Look, the first children’s book by handmade-book creator Mary McCarthy, starts with abstract shapes and then “pulls back” to a wider view, showing kids ages 2-5 what larger thing includes the shapes. This is not done photographically but with attractive collages, such as the opening one, which is simply a large black dot entirely surrounded by a deep, rich red. The following pages show the dot, the red and a diagonal grey line, and then (in a still wider view) a portion of a second dot, and then a shape that almost looks like something, and finally – a ladybug perched on a leaf. The text here is minimal, which makes sense for this age group, and the observation game – which includes three objects in all – has a neat conclusion in which McCarthy offers a much wider view that shows everything happening within a flower garden. For parents, there is a final page explaining what she has portrayed – a nice touch for children who, after playing the “what is it?” game a few times, may want to know a little more about just what these fascinating real-world objects are.

      Where the Giant Sleeps is a bedtime rather than an “anytime” book, and it moves kids’ perception in more or less the opposite direction. That’s “more or less” because Mem Fox and Vladimir Radunsky start with a little boy, in bed, looking at a wide view of an imaginary landscape shaped like a giant (with trees for hair, houses for eyes, and so on), and then focus in more closely on what could be happening at various “parts” of the giant. For example, “here the fairy dozes” in the giant’s hair, which is a forest, and “here the dragon lays his head, breathing fire, and snoring,” beneath the lighthouse at the tip of the promontory that is one of the giant’s feet. After showing the entire giant at the start, Radunsky then shows only a portion of the figure as Fox describes someone or something sleeping – and then provides a closeup of the little boy spotting whatever is asleep. One page, for example, shows a field containing six cows and a haystack, as if seen through a telescope, as Fox writes that “in a haystack, safe and warm, a little goblin twitches.” The next page is a closeup of the big-lipped, big-eared goblin sleeping peacefully with a teddy bear that looks a lot like the little boy’s. Although not every creature in this book for ages 3-7 is sleeping – the elves are awake, sewing the boy a quilt so he can sleep comfortably – the bedtime message is clear. And the final two-page picture, reminiscent of the famous one in Goodnight Moon, neatly pulls all the elements of the “giant” together by showing all the objects in the boy’s very own room.

(++++) CUTE STUFF TO SEE AND DO

Collectopia: A Friendship Scraptacular; Wacktivity. By Catherine Rondeau & Peggy Brown. Random House. $12.99 each.

I Spy Treasure Hunt. Photographs by Walter Wick. Riddles by Jean Marzollo. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $13.99.

      When reading isn’t enough, when there’s got to be something to do in addition to something to look at, here are some delightful ways to have fun. The Collectopia series, intended for girls ages 8-12, is a book-box-and-game mixture that also includes small fuzzy collectible figures and a place to display them. These pom-pom critters, collectively known as C’lectomaniacs, are only a part of the rather silly charm of these offerings. There are four each with A Friendship Scraptacular and Wacktivity, each of which comes with a little box of cubbyholes suitable for holding a total of 12 C’lectomaniacs. This is, of course, a great opportunity to trade. The focuses of these two offerings otherwise differ a bit, but their presentation is the same: each includes a 128-page spiral-bound book and three sheets of stickers. The book that comes with A Friendship Scraptacular includes spaces for photos (the old-fashioned, non-digital kind, of course), places to write in friends’ names next to such descriptions as “most talkative” and “most carefree,” pages on which to keep mementos, suggestions for various games, a place to save pictures of hot guys cut out of magazines, plus hints on writing poetry (limericks, haiku, etc.), making maps and more. Wacktivity has many similar scrapbook-like elements, plus a variety of brainteasers (from math games to choosing button shapes that lead to secret codes that lead to secret messages). There’s a collect-things-with-your-favorite-color activity, some palm-reading information, and even instructions on how to have a great ice-cream party. Not every girl in the target age range will enjoy every activity, of course, but the variety is enough to give Collectopia the potential for very wide appeal.

      The I Spy books have wide appeal already, and the new edition of I Spy Treasure Hunt – complete with a page of attractive foil stickers – shows why. Originally published in 1999, I Spy Treasure Hunt is as clever now as it was then, with a narrative of sorts tying together the usual format, in which Walter Wick makes and photographs fascinating miniature assemblages of objects, and Jean Marzollo provides rhyming clues to help kids of all ages (that’s including adults) locate, or try to locate, specific items. The focus here is a village called Smuggler’s Cove, where readers arrive, find a map, and search for treasure that they eventually track down. This sequence provides an extra layer of fun, but the basic layers are quite enough in themselves: marvel at the fascinating detail of Wick’s constructions while looking oh-so-closely at every nook and cranny to try to find the items to which Marzollo points you…only to realize that they were right in front of you all the time, but so cleverly hidden in plain sight that you just didn’t notice them. A nighttime scene, featuring a lighthouse and showing a lightning streak in the middle of the two-page spread, is especially attractively built and photographed here – as is the interior of a smuggler’s cave, crowded with objects made more difficult to distinguish because everything is a shade of tan or brown. I Spy Treasure Hunt is a great recipe for fun – and potentially for eyestrain, so look away from your search every once in a while!

(++++) ANIMAL ENDEARMENTS

The Best of “Mutts.” By Patrick McDonnell. Andrews McMeel. $24.95.

      Aside from a few specialty publishers, no one seems to take comic strips seriously – except Andrews McMeel, the book-publishing arm of Universal Press Syndicate. This is the publisher that delivered a highly praised (and highly priced) three-volume hardcover set of the complete Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. And now Andrews McMeel has gone hardcover again, for another of the best strips available anywhere: Patrick McDonnell’s warm, beautifully imagined and lovingly drawn Mutts. The Best of “Mutts” covers the strip’s first 10 years, from 1994 through 2004, and thus puts McDonnell in the same “retrospective” class as one of the predecessor cartoonists he most admires: Walt Kelly, whose Ten Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo commemorated that strip’s first decade.

      McDonnell’s strip is quite different from Kelly’s – and from those of George Herriman, Chester Gould and other great cartoonists to whose work McDonnell occasionally pays tribute in the opening panels of his Sunday strips. McDonnell is a “cause” cartoonist, whose first cause was simply the celebration of the wonderful relationships between humans and companion animals (from the animals’ points of view) and whose causes now encompass spaying and neutering programs, adoption, vegetarianism, preservation of endangered species, and more. This new hardcover, whose strips are McDonnell’s personal favorites, shows the strip’s naïve and charming beginnings and the greater complexity and focus that it developed over its first decade.

      So here, on a year-by-year basis (with each year given an introduction in text by McDonnell), we have the first strip in which Earl the dog and Mooch the cat meet; the gradual introduction of other regulars, such as Guard Dog – who was originally intended as a villain, but quickly became one of the strip’s most poignant characters, perpetually chained outdoors while wishing to come inside and be loved; and a variety of strips that deserve to be called classics, such as the summer-Sunday one in which ice cream topped with a cherry melts into what looks like Earl’s shape, causing Mooch to wail and cry and eventually…take a little taste. If there is one thing that Mutts has and most other strips lack, it is poignancy: for example, a wild bird falls in love with a caged one, is able to help her get the cage open, but then learns that her wings are clipped, so she cannot fly away with him; or, for another example, Shtinky Puddin’, the little cat who first turns up lost and in a trash can, tells Earl and Mooch about the “angels” who found him when he was alone, hungry, scared and lost, who fed and cuddled him and fixed his broken leg – and, in the final panel, arrives at an animal shelter.

In one superb three-panel Sunday strip, the first panel shows a lineup of magnificent endangered animals (gorilla, tiger, elephant and more); the second shows them becoming transparent; the third shows only the background and bears the four words, with ellipses, “…right before our eyes…” Indeed, this Sunday offering shows everything that is right and special about Mutts – but also points to a weakness that has become more pronounced in the years after this book’s 2004 cutoff. As McDonnell has become more and more committed to his various causes, the strip has spent more and more time on them and less and less time exploring everyday human-animal contacts. To McDonnell, this is clearly progress; but he risks turning away readers who are now less likely to find simple delights in the strip and more likely to find repeated reminders of complex (and not always uncontroversial) issues. Still, the first ten years of Mutts were wonderful, and whatever may happen to the strip in the future, this treasury of its initial decade is, and is likely to remain, a real treasure.

(++++) LITTLE THINGS THAT MEAN A LOT

Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things. By Richard Wiseman, Ph.D. Basic Books. $26.

Great Kids: Helping Your Baby and Child Develop the Ten Essential Qualities for a Healthy, Happy Life. By Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D. Da Capo. $22.95.

      Richard Wiseman is a wise man. And he has a marvelous job: he is the first and only Professor of Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in England. In connection with that wonderfully titled position, Wiseman has spent two decades running experiments that illustrate what Freud called the psychopathology of everyday life – and demonstrating that there’s nothing pathological about most of it. Wiseman looks at human behavior and observes the psychological benefits or difficulties that arise form it. For example, if you use your dominant hand to trace the letter Q on your forehead, and the tail of the letter goes to the left, you are probably a better liar than someone who makes the tail of the letter go to the right. The reason: drawing the Q to make it readable by someone else means you are more aware of how other people see you – and are probably better at lying. Another example: is there a scientific basis for love at first sight? Probably. Wiseman had men look at two nearly identical photos and decide which was more attractive. Most chose the photo that had been digitally enhanced: the woman’s eyes were larger than in the other picture. The pupil of the eye enlarges when we see something or someone we like – and we respond in kind, tending to like people who like us. So enlarged pupils lead to other enlarged pupils, leading to attraction literally at first sight, for entirely unconscious reasons. (Or perhaps conscious ones: 400 years ago, women used a plant extract that dilated their pupils to make themselves more attractive. Hence the plant’s name, belladonna: bella donna is Italian for “beautiful lady.”) Quirkology is full of this sort of information, all discussed very entertainingly after Wiseman describes the fascinating experiments through which he has demonstrated various psychological truths. This book is amazingly varied: it explains why jokes are funny and which ones are the funniest, explores real-world explanations for paranormal phenomena (low-frequency sound waves, for example), shows how to tell a real smile from a fake one, discusses why women’s personal ads would get more replies if men wrote them (but men’s would not get more responses if women wrote them), and a great deal more. This is one of the cleverest, most entertaining, and, yes, wisest popular-psychology books in recent years – and one of the most enjoyable to read.

      Stanley Greenspan’s books on family issues are always worth reading, and Great Kids is no exception. But there is something more important about it: it offers useful advice on helping children develop, over time and in small doses, qualities that will make their lives healthier and happier – and it does not demand that busy parents drop out of the work force and spend all their time giving their kids carefully apportioned doses of particular forms of enrichment and enlightenment. Greenspan’s “Ten Essential Qualities” are not particularly new: engage your child; model empathy; encourage curiosity; foster communication; balance your emotions so your child can learn to balance his or hers; build self-esteem; encourage self-control and persistence; support initiative and imagination; help your child develop logical thinking; and instill a sense of ethics/morality. But what is important in this book is not novelty. Greenspan explains why these particular qualities are indeed essential for a child’s future happiness, and then shows parents how to foster them in everyday life – not by setting aside special learning (or indoctrination) times, but by living in a way that allows the qualities to develop and strengthen naturally. The “balance emotions” concept, for example, is a complex one, but Greenspan’s approach is not: express a range of emotions to your child, always with an eye toward making him or her feel secure – but counter more-extreme emotions by leaning the other way. This means offering warmth and reassurance when your child is withdrawn and sad, and becoming calmer when he or she is overexcited. To take another example, Greenspan’s idea of building self-esteem has nothing to do with giving phony awards and praising even the most rudimentary success to the skies. He recommends encouraging a child to figure out how to get what he or she wants by using gestures or words or by taking action directly; praising him or her for doing something better than the day before; and constantly raising your expectations – while emphasizing the importance of your child being satisfied with his or her own accomplishments, not with praise from others. This is a way of looking at child-rearing that is attractive, intelligent, and quite within the capabilities of most families – whether single-parent households or two-earner ones in which the amount of time available for interaction with children is more limited than parents would like it to be. Greenspan is a knowledgeable guide – but just as important, he is a pragmatic one.

(++++) SMILES THAT HIDE PAIN

Lehár: Das Land des Lächelns. Camilla Nylund and Julia Bauer, sopranos; Piotr Beczala and Alexander Kaimbacher, tenors; Alfred Berg, baritone; Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Münchner Rundfunkorchester conducted by Ulf Schirmer. CPO. $33.99 (2 CDs).

      One of the most consistently popular of Franz Lehár’s later operettas, Das Land des Lächelns (“The Land of Smiles”) contains one of the “greatest hits” the composer ever wrote: “Dein ist mein ganzes Herz” (“Thine Is My Heart Alone”), which practically ever tenor, whether operetta and opera specialist, sings at one time or another. It also contains some of Lehár’s most carefully constructed music, which the composer uses to reflect the unbridgeable gap between East and West that the central lovers of the work try but ultimately fail to overcome.

      This is an excellent complete recording, with well-matched voices, top-notch pacing by conductor Ulf Schirmer and fine playing by the Münchner Rundfunkorchester. Das Land des Lächelns dates to 1929 and is an unhappy-ending reworking of a happy-ending 1923 operetta called Die gelbe Jacke (“The Yellow Jacket”). That jacket, symbol of ascendancy to the highest political post in 1912 Imperial China, figures in Das Land des Lächelns as well – precipitating the lovers’ eventual breakup. But while Viktor Léon’s original libretto contrived a happy reunion at the end, the revision by Ludwig Herzer and Fritz Beda-Löhner leaves the lovers sundered and forever apart.

      Thus, Das Land des Lächelns lies in the series of Lehár operettas in which societal pressures overcome genuine love. Paganini (focusing on the famed violinist-composer), Der Zarewitsch (about the young Czar Nicholas II) and Friederike (dealing with young Goethe) have similar themes. But the lovers in Das Land des Lächelns are fictional characters – and they stand for the Eastern and Western worlds.

The operetta opens with the longest and most elaborate overture in late Lehár – a piece that sets out the entire musical argument of the operetta through its contrast of Western-style music with sections written in pentatonic, percussion-suffused Chinese style. Lisa (Camilla Nylund) enters to a waltz and proclaims her hope for love; when it is offered by her longtime friend, Gustl (Alexander Kaimbacher), she turns it down, being preoccupied – she knows not why – by a Chinese tune. Gustl warns her that China is “ein andere Welt” – another world – but Lisa insists it is a land of wonder. Prince Sou-Chong (Piotr Beczala) introduces himself with “Immer nur lächeln” – “Ever a smile” – explaining that in his culture, one always smiles outwardly even when one’s heart is bursting with love…or breaking. Lisa and Sou-Chong discover their mutual love just as Sou-Chong is notified that he must return to China, having been elected prime minister. Lisa goes with him as his wife – but after they arrive and Sou-Chong receives the yellow jacket of authority, he is told that he must by custom take four wives, all of them Chinese; Lisa does not count. Bound by his background, he agrees, shattering Lisa’s heart. Sou-Chong then informs her that as a woman in China, she has no rights and must do as he commands. Gustl’s timely arrival lets her plan an escape, but Sou-Chong catches them – only to agree to let them go, remaining behind with an enigmatic smile on his face.

The traditional “second couple” of the operetta faces a similar split: while in China, Gustl becomes enamored of Sou-Chong’s sister, Mi (Julia Bauer). She and Gustl first flirt, then develop genuine affection for each other – but they too realize they can never be united, and at the end she is as bereft as her brother.

All the singers, including Alfred Berg as both Graf Lichtenfels (Lisa’s father) and Tschong (Sou-Chong’s uncle and the upholder of tradition), sing and emote effectively, but it is the music that knits this story together. Lehár’s careful research into Oriental musical style pays off handsomely, allowing him to create distinctive and contrasting arias for Lisa and Sou-Chong; making her singing along with his tune in Act I all the more poignant; and also letting Lehár neatly characterize Mi, whose ditty about desiring more freedom than Chinese women are allowed is the lightest and most upbeat number in the operetta. Although the Act III conclusion is a tearjerker, there is more pathos than tragedy in Sou-Chong’s eventual renunciation of his claim on Lisa. Still, the music effectively conveys depths of emotion that Sou-Chong himself conceals behind his smile. Interestingly for non-German speakers, the lack of a libretto in this CPO edition – although certainly unfortunate – is less important than in other Lehár operettas, since the summary of the action is good, the dialogue is shorter than usual, and it is truly the music that tells the greater part of the story. All in all, Das Land des Lächelns is an effective and very touching work, and this recording mines its melancholy with style and sensitivity.