(++++) HOP, SKIP AND JUMP

Watch Me Hop! By Rebecca Young. Illustrations by Von Glitschka. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $12.99.

Wrapped-Up FoxTrot: A Treasury with the Final Daily Strips. By Bill Amend. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.

Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel. By K.A. Holt. Random House. $15.99.

     Lenticular animation, a new version of a technology as old as the 19^th century’s seminal zoopraxiscope and kinetoscope – precursors of modern movies – is making a comeback of sorts in kids’ books. The new version of the technology makes still pictures seem to move, often in remarkably lifelike ways and always in fascinating ones. The best version of the technology is a patented form developed by Rufus Butler Seder for museums and other public places. It has been used in several books published by Workman. But others have created versions of this still-but-animated design as well, such as the one in Watch Me Hop! This is a simple book in which animals all hop – or don’t hop, but do something else shown through the same apparent-motion technology. It’s a clever idea. At one point, Rebecca Young writes, “It’s hard to see me, then up I POP. I’m a GRASSHOPPER…watch me HOP!” But then, “I have a snout, and a tail like a SQUIGGLE. I don’t hop – I like to WRIGGLE!” And the picture shows a pig, which does indeed wriggle instead of hopping. Von Glitschka’s pictures here are in color – those in Seder’s books are black-and-white – and their movement is less extensive and can be harder to see than in Seder’s books (you have to hold the pages at the right angle). But this becomes part of the fun: first the animals don’t seem to move, and then suddenly they do, and the result is likely to be squeals of delight from the young children for whom the book is intended. There are eight animals in all here, from the small (frog) to the huge (elephant), each of them attractively displayed and moving interestingly – the kangaroo is particularly good.

     You can skip the oversize FoxTrot “Treasury” volume, Wrapped-Up FoxTrot, if you already have Houston, You Have a Problem and And When She Opened the Closet, All the Clothes Were Polyester! Those two smaller-size collections of Bill Amend’s strip are reprinted here, with no changes except for color Sunday comics in Wrapped-Up FoxTrot. But if you don’t have the smaller collections and have any fondness at all for Amend’s wonderful and now-truncated strip, the new volume is a must-have. Heck, you could probably talk yourself into buying it for the silly cover alone: it looks like a package wrapped in bright purple wrapping paper emblazoned with the heads of FoxTrot characters and “torn” on the back enough to reveal the publisher’s name, the UPC code, and so on. That’s clever, and so is, or was, FoxTrot, which is now a Sunday-only strip and the merest shadow of its former self. Wrapped-Up FoxTrot includes the final daily strips, in which Amend subtly thanked his readers and the newspapers that carried his work for so long. Before that, it contains many, many examples of the reasons the daily strip is missed: a week in which the characters talk about their cartoonist getting sick, resulting in stick drawings, a sideways panel and an imitation of Pearls Before Swine; a week in which Jason makes his own King Kong film, with his brother, Peter, as the giant ape – but in a Donkey Kong costume; a week of crossword-puzzle hints, such as “computer havoc-wreaker” being not “virus” but, since this is the Fox household, “daddy”; a week of Jason’s Halloween costumes, including a full-body Snickers bar and a black hole to attract all the candy; and much more. The character comedy of FoxTrot comes through far more clearly in the daily strips than in the remaining Sunday-only ones. It is wonderful to have one final collection of those dailies – and sad that it is the last one.

     FoxTrot always remained fully grounded on Earth, but Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel jumps all over the place. In fact, the title character – Michael Newton Stellar, whose name is typical in a book with such other characters as Hubble Hawking and Mrs. Halebopp – jumps into space, toward Mars, through a wormhole and back, out of and back into a spacecraft, and…well, all over the place. This is K.A. Holt’s first book for young readers, and is cleverly constructed so that it can stand on its own or, if she and her publisher agree, become the first of a series. The book is clever in other ways, too. It is a story of a space-age family, but this is no lighthearted The Jetsons – although it starts pretty much that way and retains elements of humor throughout. Mike Stellar and his scientist parents get eight hours’ notice to move to Mars; that’s how things start. Coming along is his mom’s assistant, whose name is pronounced “Shoo-gah-bear,” certainly not “Sugar Bear.” But Mike’s sister, Nita, isn’t coming, because she is a member of “Earthlings for Earth,” and EFE members are considered faintly subversive because they want money spent on our home planet, not on colonization of others. Mike’s mom and dad don’t seem too upset about all this, though. And then there’s another scientist, Jim, with “an utterly bizarre girl” named Larc who has bright blue braces, bright blue eyes and a lot of knowledge about things that she really shouldn’t know but that Mike is curious about, too. What Holt does so well is give the book increasing depth as it moves along, even if the characterizations remain once-over-lightly. For instance, it turns out that Mike’s parents are under a cloud of suspicion because of the presumed loss of a previous spacecraft they designed. Mike’s best friend, nicknamed Stinky, is the brother of Hubble, who was aboard that earlier ship and was Nita’s boyfriend. Larc knows a little too much about that earlier voyage and about suspicious things involving the current one. Just who is a good guy and who is a bad guy, and why, becomes a hopeless muddle until everything is eventually (and neatly) sorted out. Through it all, Mike’s preoccupation with MonsterMetalMachines remains – and turns out to be important. And although there is no romance – the book is strictly for preteens – there is a bit of handholding between Mike and Larc that turns out to be very important indeed. The future-ish language is overdone (“drivedropper,” “electri-car,” “vis recorder”), but the plot follows the best time-tested SF approach by focusing on human relations more than technology. In fact, a sequel would be most welcome.

(+++) REALITIES AND ALMOST-REALITIES

China: Land of Dragons and Emperors. By Adeline Yen Mah. Delacorte Press. $17.99.

The Other Half of Life. By Kim Ablon Whitney. Knopf. $16.99.

Kaleidoscope Eyes. By Jen Bryant. Knopf. $15.99.

     Three sensitive women writers, three nations, three eras – it all adds up to three books that mix fictional and nonfictional elements and that young readers will enjoy even as they learn from them. China: Land of Dragons and Emperors, for ages 12 and up, is the most straightforward work, but so fascinating is China’s culture, and still so little known in the West, that Adeline Yen Mah’s book is filled with revelations as fascinating as many to be found in fiction. The 10 chapters here – supplemented by a timeline and a useful list of references for further information – trace China’s long history from a disunited group of petty states through a lengthy imperial period, through conquest and being conquered, into the modern era and the establishment of Communist rule over the mainland and Nationalist control of Taiwan. An apolitical book, China: Land of Dragons and Emperors takes no sides in modern (or many older) quarrels, presenting balanced portraits of historical figures and focusing much of the time on the rich tapestry of innovation that is Chinese history. Silk and gunpowder, paper and pigtails, the Great Wall and the reasons for the importance of the numbers eight and nine – all are here, and much more besides. Mah’s names for some Chinese dynasties are a clue to her style: the Ming was the “eunuchs’ dynasty” and the Qing the “crippled dynasty,” for example. In her focus on China’s many cultural achievements, Mah does tend to downplay the nation’s many-centuries-long periods of violence with such simple sentences as “Famine, banditry and strife continued.” And some of her more interesting statements could use a bit of additional explanation: “The Song paid tribute to the Liao and the Jin because it cost them less to pay them than to create an efficient army to fight them.” These are minor matters, though. The book is filled with fascinating snippets of history, lovely drawings and beautiful photographs, and its entire design – including the typesetting – is at once accessible and exotic. It is a fine introduction to a fascinating land and history.

     The Other Half of Life, also for ages 12 and up, has a more modern focus: it is set in 1939 and based on the story of the St. Louis, a luxury liner that carried Jews away from Hitler’s Germany but that ended up being turned back by Cuba, Canada and the United States. Eventually, passengers were allowed to disembark in France, Holland, Belgium and Great Britain, but 254 of the 937 aboard nevertheless died in the Holocaust. With this story as her basis, Kim Ablon Whitney creates a piece of youth-oriented historical fiction focusing on 15-year-old Thomas, son of a Jewish father and Christian mother, who is traveling alone on a ship that is here called the St. Francis; and 14-year-old Priska, who is with her family. Also aboard are Nazi crew members and an upstanding captain (this part is fact) who insisted on treating the Jewish passengers just like everyone else. In the story as Whitney tells it, Priska determinedly remains optimistic, as when the Cubans claim that the passengers’ documentation is not good enough: “It’ll get sorted out with time. If the landing permits were no good, they wouldn’t have given them to us.” Thomas is more of a realist, and wonders about his friend’s attitude: “Before they had arrived in the Havana harbor, her outlook had seemed stubbornly optimistic. Now it seemed only foolhardy.” Together, the two observe the doings of a Nazi spy; Thomas plays chess; the ship’s children write a letter to President Roosevelt; and the two young friends are eventually forced apart, to very different destinies. The Other Half of Life is heartfelt, highlighting an event of some historical significance: the true tale of the St. Louis led to significant improvements in U.S. treatment of refugees. But the book is also highly melodramatic, squeezing the heartstrings in every way possible – and, in the end, rather too tightly.

     Kaleidoscope Eyes deals with much more recent times, but ones that will likely seem just as remote to its intended readers, ages 9-13: the 1960s. Told as a series of poems in free verse – Jen Bryant is a poet as well as a writer of prose – the book is set in 1968 but looks back to the 17^th century. The factual basis of this work is the excavation of a sunken steamship in the mid-1800s by a father and son, added to the many legends of the notorious pirate, Captain Kidd. Bryant weaves these threads together in the tale of 13-year-old Lyza, who discovers three old maps in her late grandfather’s attic. Accompanying the maps is a letter specifically addressed to her – and it sends Lyza, with her friends Malcolm and Carolann, on a secret treasure hunt throughout their small town of Willowbank, New Jersey. The town is, unfortunately, becoming even smaller, as its young men go off to the Vietnam War; patriotism is offset by worries about the safety of the towns’ sons. The whole book is intended to give a kaleidoscopic view of its times, and Lyza’s possession of a kaleidoscope is a little too obviously symbolic. It comes up again and again, for instance at the Fourth of July celebration: “Carolann’s family arrives. They set their chairs/ and blankets next to us, and as we’re/ twirling sparklers and watching/ the first rockets/ and pinwheels go off, I wonder: What must they look like/ through Harry’s color-blind eyes? And what would/ he see inside my kaleidoscope?” There is no particular reason for this book to be told as a series of poems, and in fact some important elements – a letter about the maps’ authenticity, excerpts from the (fictional) log of Captain Kidd, and more – are entirely in prose. The lilting rhythms of some of the poems help move the story along, but the poetic structure often seems arbitrary. Still, the story has a number of exciting elements, and the idea of laying a portrait of the Vietnam War era over a mystery from 300 years earlier is an intriguing one. The characters in Kaleidoscope Eyes never really come alive as individuals, but the story – each of its parts introduced by lines from a song of the 1960s, the last of them of course using a “kaleidoscope eyes” quotation from the Beatles’ Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds – is unusual enough to keep middle-graders’ interest throughout.

(+++) DEATHS AND AFTERMATHS

The Ride: A Shocking Murder and a Bereaved Father’s Journey from Rage to Redemption. By Brian MacQuarrie. Da Capo. $26.

Black Tooth Grin: The High Life, Good Times, and Tragic End of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott. By Zac Crain. Da Capo. $15.95.

     The search for meaning after a horrible death is frequently undertaken not only by those immediately affected but also by those who feel they were closely tied to the victim in some important way, even if not through an official relationship. The dead thus become symbols, standing for more than they did in life – and symbols become books like these two. The Ride is the more harrowing of the two and is better written, but is also more novelistic in its treatment of a nightmarish scenario. Its focus is what happened after the murder, in 1997, of 10-year-old Jeffrey Curley. The boy was lured into a car by two men, Salvatore Sicari and Charles Jaynes, who took him to the Boston Public Library and used a computer there to visit the Web site of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). Later, Jaynes tried to assault the boy sexually, gagging him with a gasoline-soaked rag when he resisted – eventually killing him and sexually assaulting his corpse. Even in bare prose, this is almost too awful a story to tell, and Brian MacQuarrie’s prose is far from bare. MacQuarrie, a longtime Boston Globe reporter and editor, makes it clear from the outset that his will be an interpretative book, filled with thoughts and feelings that an objective reporter could not know: Jeffrey’s father, Bob Curley, “tossed a glance toward the Boston skyline three miles away” just after waking up, MacQuarrie writes, and later “blocked out the jarring sound of heavy trucks bouncing in and out of gaping potholes.” These are likely things to do but not journalistically certain ones; they are the touches of a novelist. And such touches abound as MacQuarrie focuses more and more on Bob Curley’s remarkable emotional journey after his son’s murder – a journey that eventually turns him into a strong critic of the death penalty rather than the staunch advocate that any reader, and especially any parent, would likely expect him to be. As it progresses, The Ride becomes less the story of one family and one murder than a societally oriented look at the death penalty, tending to emphasize comments like one by state representative Tom McGee after a vote to reinstate the penalty in Massachusetts: “In the pit of my stomach, I had this feeling when you know something isn’t right.” MacQuarrie makes an effort to be fair, and his knowledge of the ins and outs of Boston and its surroundings – and the politics of Massachusetts – is everywhere apparent. And The Ride does tell a remarkable story, for if Bob Curley could become an activist against sexual predators instead of an advocate for the death of his son’s killer, then does that not tell us something about the inherent immorality of the death penalty? The problem is that no, it doesn’t. Bob Curley’s tremendously admirable conquering of the desire for vengeance reflects greatly on him but does not necessarily indicate anything about the way other relatives of murder victims feel or should feel. Curley and his wife, Barbara, did file a lawsuit against NAMBLA, claiming that it had incited Jeffrey’s murder, but they dropped the suit last year when the judge ruled that their sole witness who would testify to a link between NAMBLA and the killing was not competent to give testimony. But except for the lawsuit, Bob Curley’s reaction – after a period of tremendous anger – is an exceptionally positive one. That makes The Ride an uplifting book, but not a convincing one for death-penalty proponents, whose “pit of the stomach” feeling may well be that it is Sicari’s and Jaynes’ continued life after the hellish killing of Jeffrey Curley that they “know…isn’t right.”

     The killer of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott did not provoke any grand debates about whether or not he should continue to survive after committing murder: Nathan Gale’s rampage, in which he shot three people dead in addition to Abbott, ended abruptly when police officer James D. Niggemeyer killed Gale as the murderer held a hostage as a shield. Unlike The Ride, in which the killing occurs at the beginning, Zac Crain’s Black Tooth Grin puts Abbott’s murder near the end of what is essentially a chronological biography of the heavy-metal guitarist. There is a lot here about Abbott’s influences (Van Halen, KISS), his metal cover band (Pantera), his major-label albums (starting with Cowboys from Hell in 1990), the creation of Damageplan after Pantera’s messy breakup, and of course all the alcohol and drug stories that are de rigueur in books about the rock-and-roll world. In a sense, Abbott’s heavy metal was already fading when he died: punk was on the rise. But Black Tooth Grin is clearly aimed at the remaining fans of heavy metal in general and of Abbott in particular. Crain, senior editor at D Magazine and former music editor of the Dallas Observer, suggests that, despite the inevitable ups and downs of any career, Abbott pretty much went where he was always destined to go: “Darrell never changed. …He just wanted to play his guitar and live his life as loudly as possible. He just wanted to be himself, and being himself was more than enough to make him a star.” If so, it may have been enough to get him killed, too: Gale, an ex-Marine discharged from the Corps as a paranoid schizophrenic, apparently thought that Pantera had stolen lyrics from him – or possibly that Abbott and other band members were reading his mind. Black Tooth Grin is a book for a very limited audience – one that will gravitate to the 16 pages of black-and-white photos, the information that Abbott was killed exactly 24 years after John Lennon was shot to death, and the fact that Abbott was buried in a KISS coffin, and holding Eddie Van Halen’s Fender Stratocaster guitar.

(++++) THE ONCE AND FUTURE BACKUP KING

Seagate Replica. Windows Vista or XP with NTFS format. 250GB single-user version, $130; 500GB multi-user version, $200.

     Seagate Technology makes quiet, efficient internal and external hard drives that are found in computers worldwide. It also makes tough business decisions: in May, it announced a 2.5% reduction in its workforce (about 1,100 people) in an attempt to save $125 million a year and be cash-flow and earnings positive in fiscal 2010. Tough balancing act: make ever-better products to generate ever-better financial results with ever-fewer people. Yet Seagate seems to have the technology and management to do just that. A case in point is its fascinating and super-efficient single-use product, the Seagate Replica external hard drive.

     The reality of computer backups is that everyone advocates them, everyone believes in them, and far too few individuals and small businesses do them. The usual complaints: they are time-consuming; it is hard to set up the software to do them; they interfere with smooth computer operation; they are difficult to configure; even if you do get a backup made, a restoration is complex; they back up data files but not program files, meaning a restoration takes so many hours that you might as well just put the data on a new computer; and so on. All these complaints have some validity. What is wonderful about the Seagate Replica is that it pre-empts them all.

     This is a small external drive – less than six by four inches, less than an inch thick, weighing about half a pound – that looks like a miniature of some Apple products even though it works only on Windows PCs. It is designed to do one thing and one thing only: back up your entire computer, which means not only the data but also the programs, settings and the operating system itself. The first backup takes two to three hours for an average computer; the process is completely silent and does not interfere with or slow down use of the computer for other purposes. Leaving the Seagate Replica plugged in results in constant incremental backups, or you can unplug it (it is powered through a USB port) and start it again when you want an updated backup. The best approach is to leave it plugged in permanently, if you can spare the USB port. In fact, if you can’t, it’s worth investing in a USB hub just to keep the Seagate Replica running. Why? Again, simplicity: this is the easiest-to-use backup drive currently available, and it is hard to see how its approach could be improved (although it will be interesting to see whether it will work with Windows 7 when the new operating system comes out later this year).

     The Seagate Replica has considerable competition, including from Seagate itself: the Seagate FreeAgent Go has as much capacity as the multi-user Replica and is more flexible in letting users design their own backups. But that drive does not back up everything, and its software, although it works well, requires some setup – while the Replica software installs quickly and with minimal fuss. Other companies’ backup-oriented hardware, such as the Maxtor OneTouch line and drives from Clickfree, SimpleTech and Western Digital, will also do a good backup job. Online backup, through such services as Mozy, has its attractions as well – the most important being that your backup is stored remotely, so a disaster that destroys your entire home or business does not wipe out your backup as well as your computer itself.

     But consider, once again, the matter of ease of use. There is no competitor out there offering the simple elegance of the Seagate Replica. This drive is designed to do a single thing – back up an entire PC or, in the case of the 500GB version (which comes with a dock), several PCs – and then restore everything, from the operating system up, in case of disaster. The restoration really works – the software boots directly off the CD drive and functions even if your C drive has crashed and must be replaced. A full restore can take as little as an hour or so, depending on how much needs to be rebuilt. And it really is a full restoration – no searching for original programs or re-downloading software. This is simplicity itself – an increasingly important goal in personal computing: witness the success of limited-function netbooks in a world that was until recently dominated by do-it-all laptops and desktops.

     It is certainly possible to nitpick the Seagate Replica. The supplied USB cable is unusually short; you may need to use a different one. But any standard mini-USB cable works. If you get the 500GB version, the cable hardwired to the dock is two-headed to ensure that it gets enough power – a single USB port is not enough to run it on some laptops. That may make it harder to leave the drive permanently attached, since it could mean giving up two USB ports permanently. But USB hubs are inexpensive, and it is worth buying one, if you need to, for the sake of protecting a computer that may contain everything a household or small business needs to keep functioning. Think of the whole purchase – Seagate Replica plus, if needed, a longer cable and USB hub – as very inexpensive business-interruption (or household-interruption) insurance.

     Ideally, a computer user will supplement the Seagate Replica with online storage of key data files: the argument in favor of keeping crucial material offsite is a compelling one. But the strongest argument of all is to make backups in the first place, and far too many computer users remain far too cavalier about this essential task. Whatever Seagate’s corporate circumstances may currently be, the company has proved one thing again and again: it knows how to make highly functional drives that do their jobs with a minimum of fuss. The Seagate Replica does only one such job – any Seagate or other hard drive, equipped with backup software from Symantec or other companies, can make a backup and do other things in addition. But the Seagate Replica does what it does with such ease, such simplicity and such a straightforward approach to such a critical task that it deserves to be anointed the king of the backup field for all users who have thought, until now, that backups are just too difficult or time-consuming. With the Seagate Replica, they are neither. Procrastinators are hereby declared out of excuses.

(++++) BEETHOVEN PLUS

Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 6. Royal Flemish Philharmonic conducted by Philippe Herreweghe. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

Idil Biret Beethoven Edition, Volume 13: Symphony No. 3 (Liszt Piano Transcription). Idil Biret, piano. IBA. $8.99.

Idil Biret Concerto Edition, Volume 2: Tchaikovsky—Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 3. Idil Biret, piano; Bilkent Symphony Orchestra conducted by Emil Tabakov. IBA. $8.99.

     Philippe Herreweghe’s march through the Beethoven symphonies continues to be distinguished by some very fine playing and some rather unusual handling of this canonic music. In No. 2, Herreweghe and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic give the work a modicum of weight, but not too much – the work clearly sounds like a successor to No. 1 rather than an anticipation of the “Eroica.” Tempos are judicious – the second movement does not drag, and the third is a bit slower than in most performances – and instrumental balance is careful, with the result that the symphony has more structural interest than it often does while being handled in a fairly matter-of-fact way: Herreweghe makes no attempt to highlight forward-looking elements of the work, simply letting it flow naturally. But his concept of flow is different in No. 6, the “Pastoral.” Here the first movement is significantly quicker than usual – this is no stroll through the country but a fast walk. It takes some getting used to, but turns out to work surprisingly well, with a brightness and bounce that the movement does not always possess. And the contrast with the second movement, whose tempo is much more traditional and therefore seems particularly slow after the speedy opening, is pronounced and quite effective. Here as in No. 2, Herreweghe takes a straightforward interpretative approach: the storm of the third movement is not an overwhelming Romantic-era tempest but a rather moderate downpour. But he is at pains to bring out instrumental touches that other conductors downplay or miss, such as the bassoon in the third movement. These are attractively unusual performances that may not be the best first choice for someone just building a classical library, but that contrast very pleasantly with more run-of-the-mill readings. And the sound, as usual on PentaTone SACDs, is excellent.

     The re-release of Idil Biret’s march through Liszt’s transcriptions of Beethoven’s symphonies continues, too, and Biret’s handling of the “Eroica” is in its own way as unusual as Herreweghe’s versions of Nos. 2 and 6. The 1986 recording, like others in this Biret series, is flawed by its inconsistent handling of repeats – in large part a function of the original release on vinyl, which has more time constraints than CDs. But leaving that element aside, Biret’s way with the “Eroica” is fascinating. She starts the opening movement so slowly that it seems there will be no forward momentum at all, but it turns out that this is merely Biret’s rather intellectual approach to the work being put on display: she is at pains to bring out all Beethoven’s lines (which Liszt reproduced with considerable care), even at the expense of some of this symphony’s drama. The second movement is also taken at a very slow pace -- it runs 20 minutes – but it actually comes across better than the first, as Biret expertly builds each section while keeping part of her attention on the overall structure. The third and fourth movements are, in contrast, comparatively light – a flaw not of Biret but of Beethoven, if it is a flaw at all. Biret handles the contrasts well in both, and the very end of the finale is a real triumph of virtuosity. But there is a certain coolness to Biret’s interpretation of these movements, as if she has given her all to the symphony’s emotional heart, the funeral march, and now falls back on a certain distancing – a characteristic that she brings to many of her performances of these Beethoven transcriptions. (Incidentally, listeners interested in owning the entire 19-CD Biret Beethoven series will be confused to see that this release is Volume 13 when the previous one was Volume 9. Volumes 10 through 12 will appear later.)

     The performances in Biret’s Concerto Edition are considerably newer than her Beethoven transcriptions. The second volume in this series features Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in a 2004 rendition, and the one-movement No. 3 in a recording from 2007 (actually, No. 3 does have three movements, but only the first is usually played, since the second and third were revised and scored by pianist Sergey Taneyev after Tchaikovsky’s death). There is plenty of Biret’s virtuosity on display in these concertos, and her fondness for slow tempos that border on the ponderous is present as well – especially at the very start of No. 1. Equally clear here is Biret’s thoughtfulness: these are well-designed performances in which the contrast between the works’ episodic elements and their long lines is nicely highlighted. But both performances lack a couple of things. One is headlong emotion: Biret is so tightly in control, especially in No. 1, that the sheer intensity of the work tends to get lost. It is easy to appreciate Biret’s interpretation intellectually, but no one is going to be swept away by it. Secondly, the recording overemphasizes the piano through microphone placement and mixing that relegate the orchestra too far to the background. Even when the ensemble has the main theme, it is the piano’s subsidiary elements that are always heard most prominently. Emil Tabakov paces the Birkent Symphony Orchestra – of which he was music director at the time of these recordings – quite well, but the CD’s sonic design gives everyone but Biret insufficient weight. The CD gets a (+++) rating for Biret’s fine playing and carefully considered interpretations, but it will be of considerably more interest to fans of Biret than to fans of Tchaikovsky.

(++++) FAIRY-TALE AND EVERYDAY FUN

Gone with the Wand. By Margie Palatini. Pictures by Brian Ajhar. Orchard Books/Scholastic. $16.99.

Princess Pig. By Eileen Spinelli. Illustrated by Tim Bowers. Knopf. $16.99.

The Sleepy Little Alphabet. By Judy Sierra. Illustrated by Melissa Sweet. Knopf. $16.99.

Scholastic First Picture Dictionary. By Geneviève de la Bretesche. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $15.99.

     Some fairy tales teach. Some are pure enjoyment. Gone with the Wand is nothing but fun. Told by “Tooth Fairy Second Class, Edith B. Cuspid,” it is the sad (but not really sad) tale of Bernice Sparklestein, “once the best Fairy Godmother in the entire universe and beyond,” who has lost her wand-wielding ability (hence the book’s title). Edith and Bernice are BFFs, and when it comes to fairy-tale creatures, forever really means forever. So Edith tries to help Bernice get over the blues and come up with some new magical position to assume. The ideas, and the costumes Bernice dons as she tries out the various jobs, are hilarious – Brian Ajhar’s pictures are every bit as delightful as Margie Palatini’s story. Alas, fairy dusting, snowflake making, the sugarplum-fairy look – none proves quite right for Bernice. Edith sleeps on the problem and comes up with…well, let her tell it: “I woke up with a snort, a bit of embarrassing chin drool, and late for work, but – with one wonderful dream of a plan!” So Bernice and Edith make the tooth-fairy rounds together, and in so doing, Bernice finds her own idea (well, she thinks it’s her own) of how to be useful; and her expression and Edith’s are utterly delightful as they hatch the plan together. Gone with the Wand is exactly what a just-for-fun fairy tale should be, complete with (of course) a happy ending.

     Princess Pig is a fairy tale, too, but this is one with a message. It’s all about an adorable pig who wakes up one day to find herself bedecked with a banner that says “Princess” (the local Pickle Princess’s sash blew off in the wind). Pig tells all her barnyard friends that she is now a princess, and when they object that she needs certain things – a crown, a necklace, a pleasant smell – she makes sure to get them. Eileen Spinelli’s story is wonderfully complemented by Tim Bowers’ pictures – the expressions of Pig and her animal friends as they look at each other are just right. It is Pony who repeatedly informs Pig that she is not really a princess, but Pig will have none of it – she sits on her royal throne (the seat of an old tractor), insists on royal food (a pie instead of slop), and even has a royal bath (complete with bubbles). Then Pig attracts visitors (who show up when she wants to sleep) and a famous painter (for whom she has to pose in the hot sun); and soon she starts to realize that there is something to be said for being just plain Pig, who can do things that are not appropriate for a princess (such as rolling in the mud and going to a “regular old party”). And so she returns, happier and wiser, to being “just a regular old pig” – and a good time is had by all. Which, of course, is the whole point.

     There is a good time to be had in Judy Sierra’s The Sleepy Little Alphabet, too, but that is not the whole point of the book. It is, of course, an alphabet story – or, more precisely, “A Bedtime Story from Alphabet Town.” The capital letters – that is, the mothers and fathers – need to get the small letters (their kids) ready for bed, but the little letters aren’t ready to sleep just yet. Each letter has a reason for staying awake: “f is full of fidgety wiggles – g has got the googly giggles.” Melissa Sweet’s illustrations are, well, sweet, whether showing k refusing a good-night kiss or m being mopey. But eventually, it gets closer to bedtime, as “t tucks in her teddy bear – u takes off his underwear – v is very, very snoozy – w is wobbly-woozy.” By the end of the book, and the end of the alphabet, there are plenty of zzzzzz’s to go around, with a final two-page spread showing all the letters quietly sleeping (except for naughty n, who is about to start a pillow fight!). Both an alphabet book and a bedtime story, The Sleepy Little Alphabet is fun on two levels.

     The only level on which Scholastic First Picture Dictionary operates is the educational one: the book is packed with more than 700 words and pictures, with everything arranged in six sections focusing on the body, the house, school, the city, the grocery store, and exploring nature. The pictures are super-detailed and make it easy to understand what words go with which illustrations. There are also occasional questions related to the pictures, to give young children’s minds a simple workout – for instance, “Which animals are shown with their babies?” (The answers are upside down, right below the questions). What is slightly disappointing about this book – resulting in a (+++) rating – is the complete lack of scale (a ball, a die and a rocking horse are all the same size) and some occasional oddities in picture selection, such as “book” showing a book open to a colorful two-page illustration of someone playing a xylophone, which seems more like an illustration for the instrument (which actually is shown in the “music” pages within the “at school” section). Scholastic First Picture Dictionary has been updated since the book’s original appearance in France in 2003, but some of the pictures seem a bit old-fashioned – the analog alarm clock, for example, and the incandescent light bulb. And there are some distinctly European illustrations – for example, both black currants and red currants are shown. Nevertheless, as an introduction to hundreds of items, from headbands to pebbles to lobsters, parachutes, leaves, grapes and leeks, Scholastic First Picture Dictionary is attractive, easy to read and easy to understand – a fine introduction to the world of humans and the world around us.

(+++) SUMMER SEANCES AND SUCH

Gifted, Book 1: Out of Sight, Out of Mind. By Marilyn Kaye. Kingfisher. $7.99.

Gifted, Book 2: Better Late Than Never. By Marilyn Kaye. Kingfisher. $7.99.

     Basic summer-reading-for-fun recipe for preteens and young teenagers: keep it light and maybe flirty, typecast characters so readers don’t need much brain power to figure out who behaves how, toss in some interpersonal drama, and if you really want to be trendy, add a dash of the supernatural. And there you have Gifted. Enough said.

     Well, not quite enough. Marilyn Kaye handles the formula with skill, using language transparent in its simplicity to advance plots that move quickly enough so readers ages 10-14 will be able to breeze through the Gifted books with barely a pause for some suntan lotion and a beachfront or poolside hookup or two. The underlying idea here is a clever one: what if “gifted” students weren’t necessarily smart but were actually, you know, gifted with unusual powers? What if Meadowbrook Middle School had nine of them, and all were thrown together into a special class to learn about their powers and how to control them, even though – outside the class – they have little in common with each other and don’t even necessarily like each other very much? What happens if you add a mind reader to a speaker-to-the-dead to a girl who can see the future?

     What happens is actually pretty predictable: everything gets tangled, confused and mixed up. But the “occult powers” gimmick keeps these books from being merely conflict-at-middle-school lightweights. Oh, they’re still lightweight, but with differences here and there. Out of Sight, Out of Mind focuses on Amanda Beeson, who is beautiful and popular and (what else?) the Queen Bee of the school. Her talent, if you can call it that, is jumping mentally into other people’s bodies: she’s a body snatcher. This is not necessarily a good thing, as Amanda discovers when she wakes up one morning to find that the face in her mirror belongs to Tracey Devon – an unpopular utter nobody with whom Amanda would not deign to associate. But now she is Tracey, and can’t wait not to be her anymore. “She’d thought of a way to occupy her time and actually do a good deed while she was here. (Not that good deeds were a habit with her, but she figured she might be rewarded for it by positive forces and get out of Tracey’s body even sooner.)” But nope, it doesn’t work like that, and soon enough, another of the Gifted, Jenna Kelly, figures out that the apparent Tracey is really “Little Miss I’m-Too-Cool-for-Words Amanda Beeson,” and things become even more complicated when it turns out that Tracey too is Gifted – she has the ability to become invisible. So where exactly is she while Amanda is in her body? And will Amanda learn empathy from temporarily being the sort of person she has always scorned? And what’s the deal with Serena Hancock, the new student teacher foisted on the Gifted class that has been firmly under the icy auspices of the woman known as Madame? All will eventually be revealed – well, not all, but enough to whet readers’ appetites for another volume in this series.

     And that volume is Better Late Than Never, where the focus turns to Jenna, the one who figured out that Amanda was in Tracey’s body. Jenna is the streetwise, hard-shelled rebel among the Gifted (Tracey, of course, is the mousy girl; and then there are future-seeing space cadet Emily Sanders, talk-to-the-dead handsome hottie Ken Preston, and so on). Actually, the focus here is on both Jenna and Tracey, who are evolving a friendship despite Tracey being ignored by almost everyone even when she is not invisible, and Jenna being the child of an absent father and a mother who is in and out of rehab. Emily’s prediction of a tall, handsome stranger entering Jenna’s life leads Jenna to wonder if maybe her father is about to come back: “An image flashed across her mind: a family, made up of a mother and a father and a daughter, living in a real house, having a normal life… [But] she was not optimistic by nature, and she wasn’t going to start looking on the bright side of everything now.” The pattern of these books is pretty clear by this second volume: the teens, despite their psychic powers, are going to turn out to be just plain folks with everyday worries and problems, and are going to learn to handle life partly by figuring out how to cope with their powers and partly by learning how to lean on each other. But their underlying personalities will keep peeking through – as when Amanda again takes over someone’s body in this book (on purpose this time). The phrase “if she’d known then what she knew now – about people and feelings” is applied here to one character, but is likely to be applicable to all the Gifted as the series continues, as it will after summer is over: the third volume is due out in October.

(+++) DOWN WITH MEDICINES!

The Depression Cure: The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression without Drugs. By Stephan S. Ilardi, Ph.D. Da Capo. $25.

Eating for Autism: The 10-Step Nutrition Plan to Help Treat Your Child’s Autism, Asperger’s, or ADHD. By Elizabeth Strickland, M.S., R.D., L.D. Da Capo. $17.95.

     The medical miracles of the 20^th century, which vastly extended the lifetimes of millions, have become passé in the 21^st, with a groundswell of people proclaiming that medications are not the answer to many diseases and chronic conditions – that, indeed, they may make matters worse rather than better. Most of the “evidence” for these positions is anecdotal rather than scientifically valid, and that is scarcely a surprise: the placebo effect shows that people given sugar pills (or their equivalent) frequently get better, largely because they believe they are getting effective medication and, equally important, are being closely observed and cared for. Opponents of medication – call them pharmaskeptics – turn their attention in particular to chronic, difficult conditions that can be mitigated but not cured by traditional medical treatment. These include mental illnesses and behavioral problems, among others.

     Many promoters of treating medical conditions without medicine are charlatans. Their claims are often transparently loopy, as in the laetrile-from-peach-pits-cures-cancer assertion a few years ago. Today, scammers and well-meaning but misguided pharmaskeptics are more likely to promote “nutraceuticals” and products with impressive-sounding chemical names that they claim (typically in ads filled with anecdotal testimonials) are available only for a limited time or in a limited way, but without a prescription – taking advantage, in the United States, of a major loophole in regulation that allows dietary supplements to be marketed without the proof of efficacy required of prescription medications.

     But – and it is a very large “but” – not all advocates of non-drug treatment of serious conditions are hucksters, and not all such treatments are valueless. There is compelling evidence that certain forms of nutrients and certain lifestyle elements, such as regular exercise, have a strong correlation to health – think of folate enrichment being used as a way to prevent serious birth defects. And both Stephen Ilardi, an associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of Kansas, and Elizabeth Strickland, a registered dietitian and specialist in nutrition therapy, have the credentials and experience to back up their assertions about non-medication approaches to serious conditions. This does not mean their ideas will work for everyone all the time; indeed, the word “cure” in the title of Ilardi’s book is an overstatement compared with the more modest “help treat” in Strickland’s. But if you approach these books as sources of potential alternative – or supplementary – treatment plans, you can pick up a lot of valuable information and perhaps ameliorate, if not cure, some serious problems.

     Ilardi, however, does not see his approach as a supplement to drug treatment for depression, but as a replacement for it. Using patient success stories – that is, lots of anecdotes – he says that depression can be defeated by focusing on lifestyle elements that have fallen by the wayside for many people in our industrialized age. His primary dietary recommendation is to consume substantial amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, found mainly in fish; and there is indeed scientific evidence of these compounds’ benefits (although not specifically relating to depression). His other ideas are in the social and behavioral spheres: exercise to stimulate serotonin and other brain chemicals; do things you enjoy so your mind does not turn to negative thoughts; keep your circadian rhythms regular by ensuring sufficient exposure to sunlight; maintain a strong social support network; and develop healthful sleep habits. These ideas are unexceptionable and certainly have value for anyone, not only for people with depression. But for people who are depressed – certainly those with a clinical diagnosis, not ones merely “feeling blue” – they constitute a somewhat naïve prescription. Depression causes withdrawal from social situations; it makes sleep difficult; it makes it difficult to get moving at all, much less in the active way required for exercise; and it prevents sufferers from engaging in enjoyable activities or even identifying activities that would be enjoyable. This “black dog,” as Winston Churchill called his depression, is a controlling factor in life. Ilardi is aware, at least to an extent, that his prescription has flaws – “increasing social connection is easier said than done,” he writes at one point. But his upbeat ideas about overcoming difficulties are themselves much easier to suggest than to implement. In the case of social connection, for example, they include educating friends about your depression, asking them for help, maintaining video or Internet friendships, reaching out through church and volunteer groups, caring for animals, and so on – all fine ideas, but none practical for someone who is truly depressed. Indeed, Ilardi’s comment that “all of us are born to connect, hardwired to live in the company of those who know and love us,” is likely to make an isolated, indrawn depressive feel even more hopeless. Ilardi’s book is useful in many ways – his appendices, a “depression scale” and symptom tracking chart, are a particularly good idea – and his chapter “When Roadblocks Emerge” acknowledges that his book will not work for everyone, “at least not right away.” But still, Ilardi’s unrelenting certainty that depressives can be cured through lifestyle changes flies in the face of the realities of life – and disease – that many depressives, and those who care for or about them, encounter day in and day out. Churchill, after all, attempted to ward off his “black dog” with compulsive overwork and excessive drinking, but even though those approaches worked for him – to a remarkable degree – it would scarcely be responsible to recommend them to others. Similarly, Ilardi’s far more benign ideas, as useful as they can be, are far from a panacea.

     Nor does Strickland have the answer to autism, Asperger’s and related conditions – but she may have an answer for some people, some of the time. This group of conditions – not everyone calls them “diseases” – remains poorly understood. Their behavioral components vary, as do their onset and their progression before and during treatment. Treatment options also vary; none is fully satisfactory. A nutritional component makes intuitive sense: certain foods, such as refined sugar, are known to cause behavioral changes in many children, so it makes sense that they would do so in children with autism, Asperger’s or ADHD as well – and perhaps to a greater extent, since the sensory response of children with these conditions often seems to be exaggerated. Therefore, it is sensible to limit affected children’s exposure to substances that may worsen the behavioral manifestations of their conditions. This also promotes healthful eating in general, and that is certainly a good thing. Strickland talks about artificial colors and flavors, preservatives and sweeteners, trans fats and pesticides, and all the other modern bugaboos of the healthful-eating movement; but she is to be commended for doing so as a clinician, not an advocate trying to score political points. She is too quick to accept anything labeled “organic” as inherently superior, and she is naïve about parents’ stress levels and time availability in suggesting that a child get three small meals and two to three snacks a day – that is, food every three hours – and that the focus of eating be on whole grains, legumes, oatmeal, starchy vegetables and so on. This is a Puritan-ethic approach to food and is likely to increase the tension of parents already pressured by having a child with, say, ADHD – especially if they have more than one child. Still, Strickland mitigates the absolutism of her prescription by providing dozens of appealing recipes, from spaghetti and meatballs to chocolate chip muffins. She emphasizes cooking without gluten or casein – more substances that may affect some children, if not all. And she provides loads of tabular material (probably too much for most people to absorb) on foods’ protein and fiber content and calcium levels, recommended daily intakes of various food-based or supplementary nutrients, and more. She sprinkles the text with stories – those anecdotes again – of children whose conditions improved when their nutrition was modified. And she writes throughout in a straight, no-nonsense style, even when saying such things as, “Pyridoxine and Pyridoxal 5-phosphate (P5P) are not the same thing. …Some healthcare practitioners believe that autistic children may have difficulty converting pyridoxine to P5P, so they suggest using supplemental P5P or a combination of pyridoxine and P5P supplements.” Strickland’s treatment of issues such as this one is detailed to the point of nitpicking, but of course parents seeking help for a child with autism, ADHD or a related condition will want all the assistance they can get. The main thing missing in Strickland’s book is a certain level of humility. An acknowledgment that nutritional changes are not necessarily the answer to the conditions she studies would be welcome; so would a statement that she understands the additional difficulties her approach asks already frazzled parents to assume as they try to cope with children’s conditions that produce more than enough stress on their own.

(++++) A MOUSE (OR TWO) IN (OR OUT OF) THE HOUSE

Microsoft Mobile Memory Mouse 8000. Windows Vista, XP or NT/SP 4, or Macintosh OS X v.10.2-10.4X. Microsoft. $99.95.

Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000. Windows Vista or XP/SP 2. Microsoft. $79.95.

     The interoperability of computer input devices is one of those technological wonders of which everyone is dimly aware but which few users sufficiently appreciate. Just imagine computer hardware as chaotic as cell phones, which require their own mutually exclusive chargers, and you will have a sense of gratitude for the fact that you can switch out a keyboard or mouse pretty much whenever you like for a different one made by the same or another company, and get identical or better functionality. (In fact, the major cell-phone manufacturers are moving toward the computer-hardware model by agreeing to make all their chargers interoperable within the next few years – to which users will say in enthusiastic chorus, the sooner the better.)

     The ability to switch a device such as a mouse whenever your needs change can help extend your computer’s life, enabling it to do functions you did not need when you first acquired it; or you can simply make a switch for fun, out of boredom with your previous mouse, or for any other reason. The simplicity of switching has spawned hundreds of inexpensive mice, some even available for free through rebate programs or as retailers’ loss leaders. More interestingly, it has also spawned some outstanding higher-end mice with neatly tailored functions – such as two of the many notebook-focused mice from the hardware division of Microsoft Corporation.

     Think about it: a mouse designed specifically for use with laptop/notebook computers. That in itself is a significant development. These mice need to be smaller and more readily portable than standard-size ones, but not so small that people with large hands will find them cumbersome to use. They need to be easy to transport – both the ones considered here come with their own carrying cases – and simple to use in a variety of different circumstances; hence a wireless design is significantly better than a wired one (who knows on what sort of surface, of what size, a traveler is going to be working with a computer and mouse?). The days of mice requiring mouse pads for traction are long gone, but not all mice work equally well in less-than-ideal settings. These two, using wireless laser technology, are just fine on airplane tray tables, in coffee shops, at airport lounges, even in gate areas of airports and train stations – where accommodations may be spartan at best.

     Yet the design concepts of the two mice are ultimately quite different, symptomatic of the ability to create specialized and targeted input devices for a wide variety of purposes. The Microsoft Mobile Memory Mouse 8000, which runs on both PCs and Macs, has a particularly neat recharging system, using the same type of magnetic connector found in Apple products. It also has a Bluetooth transceiver with built-in 1-GB flash memory – a wonderful accessory for travelers, since it allows you to bring all the data you are likely to need for presentations or reports in the same place as the transceiver that wirelessly connects the mouse to your computer in the first place. This not only means one thing fewer to carry and potentially forget – it also makes the chance of losing your data much smaller, since the likelihood of leaving behind the transceiver that lets you connect the mouse (and that fits into the case with the mouse itself) is not very high. The mouse is powered by a single AAA battery that is rechargeable – a nice touch, since travelers do not need to be caught in an unfamiliar location with a dead battery, and do not want to be burdened by carrying spares. The mouse even has a neat built-in battery status light that warns you when power is low and you need to recharge. And it has an on-off switch – why don’t more mice have those? – to extend battery life as much as possible. However, left-handed users will be disappointed: the mouse is optimized for righties, although using it left-handed (with a little bit of contortion) is certainly possible.

     The Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000, although it costs less than the Microsoft Mobile Memory Mouse 8000, is even more full-featured – if and only if you have compelling needs for PowerPoint presentations and mouse-controlled media. If you do not have those needs, it is woefully over-engineered. Actually, the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 is engineered to integrate particularly well with PCs running Windows Vista (although it works on ones powered by XP as well); this is not a Mac-compatible mouse, and its feature set clearly shows why. The mouse has 12 – count them, 12 – buttons. In addition to all the usual mouse functions, this unit has forward, back and blank-screen controls on the bottom for use in PowerPoint presentations; it has a button that turns the mouse into a laser pointer; and there is even a Digital Ink feature so you can draw on screen. It’s a media-center control as well, with play, pause, volume control, and next- and previous-track buttons (some of the buttons are multifunctional, for both PowerPoint and media use). Yes, it has an on-off switch; and its symmetrical design makes it equally suitable for right- and left-handed users. But this is a specialty product and needs to be seen as one: there is no value to paying for PowerPoint and media functions you will not use. Also, this mouse runs on two AAA non-rechargeable batteries – an irritation, because its really cool clear hardshell carrying case has room only for the mouse and transceiver, not for spare batteries.

     Both these mice have certain features that will be useful to and appreciated by all users, such as four-way scrolling (side to side as well as up and down) and a magnifier (by default, a right-side button – but all the buttons on both these mice can easily be reassigned, which is another very nice and highly useful part of the design). Both come with three-year warranties. And either one will be an excellent addition to your mobile computing – and easy to replace with a different mouse if your needs change. Microsoft is a software company, not a hardware firm, but it is interesting to see just how good a job its comparatively small hardware division does at creating products that make it easier and more comfortable to use computers powered by Microsoft software – or even ones run by software created by Microsoft’s competitors.

(++++) LESS-KNOWN WORKS THROUGH THE CENTURIES

Bruch: Violin Concertos Nos. 2 and 3. Maxim Fedotov, violin; Russian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Dmitry Yablonsky. Naxos. $8.99.

Franz Xaver Richter: Grandes Symphonies, Nos. 7-12 (Set 2). Helsinki Baroque Orchestra conducted by Aapo Häkkinen. Naxos. $8.99.

Henry VIII, King of England (and other composers): Motets from a Royal Choirbook. Alamire consort singers; QuintEssential sackbut and cornet ensemble; Andrew Lawrence-King, gothic harp; David Skinner, director. Obsidian. $18.99.

     Many concertgoers are not even aware that Max Bruch wrote more than one violin concerto, so popular is the first of his three, in G minor. But Bruch did write three violin concertos, the second and third both in D minor, and although neither of the later works has the verve and combination of beauty and tight structure of No. 1 – which was Bruch’s first major work – both the later concertos are quite worthy of occasional performance. And both are undeniably by Bruch, containing his signature sweet themes and rhapsodic handling of traditional forms. The first concerto was dedicated to Joseph Joachim, who in 1867 helped Bruch shape it into the form in which we know it today. The second, which dates to 1878, is dedicated to another great violinist of Bruch’s time, Pablo de Sarasate, and has many of the same expansive elements as No. 1, although its extended finale does seem to go on rather longer than its thematic interest allows. The third concerto dates to 1891 and is the longest of the three, featuring an opening movement that is practically Tchaikovskian in scale and a concluding rondo in the form of a perpetuum mobile. Maxim Fedotov makes a good case for both these works, playing them with sensitivity and, in No. 3, with a sense of grandly heroic scale. And Dmitry Yablonsky and the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra provide fine accompaniment. It is hard to be more than lukewarm about the concertos themselves – this is one case in which less-known works actually deserve to be less known – but it is even harder to justify their nearly complete exclusion from concert programs. Both have lovely elements and ample virtuosic opportunities, and if they do not seem quite as creative as the G minor concerto, that simply means that Bruch set such a high standard for himself that even he could not surpass it.

     Pretty much all the music of Franz Xaver Richter is little known nowadays, but he was a fine composer and, in his day, a well respected one as a member of the Mannheim court orchestra. Yet Richter did not wholeheartedly adopt the techniques of the Mannheim school, believing that some of them glorified form over substance – for example, the famous “Mannheim Rocket,” rapidly ascending broken chords starting in the lowest bass range and ascending to the ensemble’s very top notes. Instead, Richter sought to balance elements of Baroque style with some that were considered quite modern in the mid-18^th century. Thus, his 12 Grandes Symphonies of 1744 – actually written before he joined the court at Mannheim – show considerable contrapuntal skill while also bringing more emotion to their slow movements and greater intensity to their outer ones than would have been the norm in compositions only a few years earlier. This is not to say that these are profound symphonies – they are in fact closer to the sinfonia style than to anything Haydnesque – but they are well structured and show some compositional creativity. Among the six works of Set 2 – two in C major, one in A major, one in B-flat major, one in E minor and one in G minor – are two symphonies in four movements and four in three. But one of the three-movement works (the G minor) has a finale that lasts less than a minute and is over practically before a listener gets used to it. Both the four-movement works end with minuets (which of course were generally placed in the middle, usually in third position, by Haydn), and the E minor symphony has an interesting fugue as its second movement. The pleasures of these works are in their details rather than their overall scope; the pleasures of listening to them on this new Naxos CD have a great deal to do with the verve with which the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra plays them on period instruments. Aapo Häkkinen paces the symphonies well, with suitable contrast among the movements, resulting in a disc that is worth hearing repeatedly by a composer who is not heard very much at all.

     And speaking of original instruments: a CD called Henry’s Music features some that are so authentic-sounding that the music itself seems almost to come from a different world. King Henry VIII was intelligent, cultured and musically skilled – modern views of him merely as a tyrant with six wives (and founder of the Church of England) are, to put it politely, seriously skewed. The highlights of Obsidian’s new CD are nine works written by Henry himself, plus six previously unrecorded motets taken from a famous and beautiful Royal Choirbook owned by the British Museum. Henry’s works express typical courtly sentiments of the 16^th century with grace and delicacy, while the six Royal Choirbook motets present Latin texts that are beautifully harmonized and elegant. Nor are Henry’s works and those from the choirbook the only pieces here: there are 21 works in all, including ones by Robert Fayrfax, John Taverner and Philippe Verdelot – famous names in their day if not in ours. The mixture of Latin, French and English verses, the wide variety of the works’ lengths (from less than a minute to more than 16), the wonderful accompaniments on some unfamiliar instruments, and the overall harmonic beauty of these pieces, add up to a highly unusual listening experience and a fine tribute to a monarch whose court was perhaps the most musical of its time.

(++++) FINE PERFORMERS, SO-SO MUSIC

Korngold: Violin Concerto; Overture to a Drama; Much Ado About Nothing—Concert Suite. Philippe Quint, violin; Orquesta Sinfónica de Mineria conducted by Carlos Miguel Prieto. Naxos. $8.99.

Prokofiev: On Guard for Peace; The Queen of Spades—Symphonic Suite arranged and elaborated by Michael Berkeley. Irina Tchistjakova, mezzo-soprano and narrator; Niall Docherty, boy soprano; Royal Scottish National Orchestra Junior Chorus, Royal Scottish National Orchestra Chorus and Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Neeme Järvi. Chandos. $18.99.

Harold Schiffman: Symphony No. 2, “Music for Győr”; Ninnerella Variata; Variations on “Branchwater”; Blood Mountain Suite; Overture to a Comedy. Katalin Koltai, guitar; Győr Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mátyás Antal. North/South Recordings. $12.99.

Marilyn J. Ziffrin: Moods; Sonata for Piano; Elizabeth Bell: Arecibo Sonata; Rami Levin: Passages; Rain Worthington: Hourglass; Tangents; Dark Dreams; Always Almost. Max Lifchitz, piano. North/South Recordings. $12.99.

     Well-played, largely unknown music can be wonderful to discover in recorded form – CDs provide an opportunity to hear pieces rarely, if ever, programmed in concert halls. But other works, no matter how well played, tend to fall a bit flat on CD, no matter how often you listen to them. None of the music on these four CDs could charitably be called “great,” but two of the recordings are worthy of discovery for at least some adventurous listeners – although the other two repay one’s attention less well.

     Erich Wolfgang Kongold (1897-1957) is best known as a film composer, and his works certainly have the sort of immediate melodic appeal and Romantic-era emotionalism that helped him fit well into Hollywood. His Violin Concerto, in fact, is built around a number of his film tunes. But despite this less-than-exalted provenance, it is an effective, interesting work and a genuine showpiece – if a rather superficial one – for an accomplished violinist such as Philippe Quint. Quint plays with enthusiasm and élan, never trying to elevate the music to heights that it does not seek or achieve, but making it quite effective within its limited emotional range. The Orquesta Sinfónica de Mineria plays well, if not particularly distinctively, under its music director, Carlos Miguel Prieto, both in the concerto and in Korngold’s early Overture to a Drama, which shows good command of sonata form but is not in fact especially dramatic – although it is an impressive work for a 14-year-old. Korngold’s Much Ado About Nothing suite is considerably more interesting, progressing in five movements from a fine scene-setter of an Overture to a witty and virtuosic concluding Hornpipe. The most interesting movement, called “Dogberry and Verges,” is a funeral march right out of Mahler – who was impressed with the young Korngold and clearly influenced him.

     The music on the new Chandos Prokofiev CD is decidedly lesser stuff in the composer’s output, but may be worth exploring for those familiar with Prokofiev’s better-known (and better) works. On Guard for Peace, the composer’s final choral work, is strictly a political composition in Socialist Realist style. The 10-movement oratorio is accessible, bombastic, appropriately celebratory of the Soviet Union’s military strength and eternal vigilance, and easily forgettable – a well-put-together propaganda piece. As for The Queen of Spades, it is only more-or-less Prokofiev. The suite heard here is based on film music that Prokofiev created in 1936 but that he stopped writing when Stalin’s regime halted production of the movie. British composer Michael Berkeley took the relatively paltry remains of Prokofiev’s work, expanded and orchestrated them, and produced a half-hour suite that sounds, basically, like fairly undistinguished film music. Prokofiev would probably have done better himself had he been given the chance; but this is all we are ever likely to hear of this particular music. Neeme Järvi leads the Royal Scottish forces with skill in both these works, but neither piece is much more than a curiosity – the CD gets a (+++) rating and will be of interest mostly to those seeking completeness in their Prokofiev collections.

     Two new releases from North/South Recordings get (+++) ratings, too. Both offer solid performances of not-very-memorable music from composers who do not have a great deal to say but have some skill in saying it. The works of Harold Schiffman, a student of Roger Sessions, have interesting parts but are less than convincing when taken as a whole. His second symphony, written last year, was inspired by the Hungarian city of Győr and is well played by that city’s orchestra under Mátyás Antal, but it is more pedantic than loving. Blood Mountain Suite, also from 2008, is a transcription of an earlier song cycle and is affecting without profundity. The remaining three works on this CD are earlier: Ninnerella Variata (Varied Lullaby) dates to 1956 and shows a good command of orchestral color; Variations on Branchwater (1987), for guitar and orchestra, has little of the U.S. South about it even though it was inspired by that region’s fondness for “Bourbon and branch,” but it has some effective writing and pits the guitar (well played by Katalin Koltai) nicely against the ensemble; and Overture to a Comedy (1987), written for a never-completed comic opera, is pleasant and light enough, if scarcely bubbly.

     Pianist Max Lifchitz performs sensitively on his CD of works by American women composers, but none of the featured pieces is especially distinctive. Marilyn J. Ziffrin’s Moods (2005) and Sonata for Piano (2006) are well structured but not very distinguished. Elizabeth Bell’s Arecibo Sonata (1968, revised 2005) is more interesting, with some challenges both for the pianist and for listeners. Rami Levin’s Passages (2002), designed as a work expressing mixed emotions, has effective elements but as a whole is a bit scattered. The four pieces by Rain Worthington, written between 1991 and 2001, also explore varying emotions, mostly superficially but with some melodic skill. All the works on this CD are pleasant rather than intense; there is an overall mildness to the recording that makes it interesting enough on a first hearing but that is unlikely to bring listeners back to it repeatedly.

(++++) YELPS AND GRRRS

A Small Surprise. By Louise Yates. Knopf. $16.99.

Grizzly Dad. By Joanna Harrison. David Fickling Books. $16.99.

     It’s not easy being little, but Louise Yates makes it much more fun for children ages 2-6 with A Small Surprise – which is actually full of surprises. The first one is that the book starts on the inside front covers, not (as usual) after the title page. Those inside covers show a very small bunny walking past a circus poster filled with pictures of HUGE circus animals bearing such labels as “tallest,” “fiercest” and “seriously savage.” On the poster is a notice that jobs are available, but “small animals need not apply.” But this is one determined (and adorable) bunny. He admits that he is “too small to wipe [his] own nose” or “tie [his] own shoes” – matters with which the huge animals, looking a bit puzzled, help him out. The bunny needs help with eating and even with walking! But then he points out that his small size lets him easily disappear and reappear – which he does several times, as the big animals try vainly to find him. (The funniest scene has him disappearing by jumping into the huge snake, which promptly coughs him up into a hat.) This disappearance-reappearance act, the bunny points out, makes him MAGIC! And the huge animals agree – and that is the end of the book, but not of the story. For just as Yates started things on the inside front covers, she ends them on the inside back covers, where the bunny has removed the “jobs available” notice, inserted his own picture into the middle of the poster of all the animals, and is changing the wording – for example, from “magnificent menagerie” to “magical menagerie” and from “biggest tallest longest largest” to “smallest bravest most interesting.” This bunny may be small on the outside, but within, he’s a giant – and that’s a wonderful (and subtle) message for children who may be worried that they too look small and insignificant to the rest of the world.

     On the other side of the size equation, Grizzly Dad is about just what the title says: a father who woke up in a “Grrrrizzly mood” and “grrroaned” and “grrrizzled” all morning until he went back to bed “just like a bear with a sore head.” His son explains that he went to check on him, “but it wasn’t Dad in bed at all…it was a GREAT BIG GRIZZLY BEAR!” Joanna Harrison manages to make the bear’s appearance startling but not scary – in fact, the father-turned-bear seems as befuddled as his son by the transformation. What is interesting here – and will appeal to the book’s target age range of 4-7 – is how quickly son and father accept and adapt to the “beary” unusual occurrence. The father cannot talk anymore, only grunt, but his son tells him not to worry and promises to take care of him. “So I wiped his eyes, combed his hair, brushed his teeth (he was a bit SMELLY) and gave him breakfast,” explains the boy – who, however, is put off by his bear father’s bad table manners, and yells at him for “making a horrible MESS!!!” And then – well, with no logical progression whatsoever (kids will love that), the bear is driving a convertible and taking the boy for a ride to town, where they go to the movies and the park before returning home for honey sandwiches and relaxation. And of course a “GREAT BIG BEAR HUG” climaxes the story, after which Dad stops being a bear, and he and the boy start cleaning up the huge mess they managed to make around the house. A story just amusing enough and just tender enough to engage kids while providing a decidedly soft-pedaled lesson about seeing past parents’ occasional grumpiness, Grizzly Dad will readily grunt its way into plenty of cub-sized hearts.