(+++) THE WORLD THROUGH MUSIC

Mohammed Fairouz: Symphony No. 3, “Poems and Prayers”; Tahrir. Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano; David Kravitz, baritone; David Krakauer, clarinet; UCLA Chorale, UCLA University Chorus and UCLA Philharmonia conducted by Neal Stulberg. Sono Luminus. $24.99 (Blu-ray Disc+CD).

Margaret Brouwer: Shattered Glass; Clarinet Quintet; Whom do you call angel now?; Lonely Lake; Arrangements for Blue Streak Ensemble. Sandra Simon, soprano; Daniel Silver, clarinet; Maia String Quartet; Blue Streak Ensemble. Naxos. $9.99.

Hampson Sisler: Israeli-American Festival Overture; Cantata for Living; Japan Tragedy 2011; Faiths Cohabiting. Soloists, chorus and orchestras conducted by Arkady Leytush. MSR Classics. $12.95.

Scott Brickman: Dear Darwin; Mayday Rose; International:Bridge:Peace. Nancy Ellen Ogle, soprano; Ginger Yang Hwalek, piano; electroacoustic instrumentation. Ravello. $16.99.

Sergio Cervetti: Unbridled; Plegaria y Danza; Mémoires du Paradis; …from the earth… Navona. $16.99.

     Composers often try to use music to further a particular social or political cause, but the results are rarely great music – think, for example, of Beethoven’s cantata, Der glorreiche Augenblick. These sorts of occasional pieces, written for specific occasions, persist into today, and if anything are becoming more grandiose and far-reaching, as in Mohammed Fairouz’ Symphony No. 3, “Poems and Prayers.” This is nothing less than a musical attempt to explore the apparently unending mess that is the Middle East conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, ending with a heartfelt plea for reconciliation in the form of a movement called “Memorial Day for the War Dead.” The work was commissioned by Northeastern University’s rather awkwardly titled Middle East Center for Peace, Culture and Development, and the symphony itself is on the awkward side. It is as well-meaning as it can possibly be – no doubt the organization that commissioned it is, too – but it is also an ungainly work, dutifully combining Jewish and Arab elements so as to produce a musical microcosm of a hoped-for real-world macrocosmic reconciliation. The work starts with the traditional Jewish Kaddish, a hymn of praise to God, sung in Aramaic; its later movements (there are six in all) include contemporary poetry by both Israeli and Arab poets: Mahmoud Darwish, Yehuda Amichai, Fadwa Tuqan. The fact that the work’s composer is Arab-American has a great deal to do with the work’s sensibilities and no doubt with the decision to commission it from him. There is skilled craftsmanship here, and there are even some lovely tunes, notably in the “Lullaby” movement, where mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke shares the spotlight with clarinetist David Krakauer.  Like Cooke, baritone David Kravitz sings with feeling and sincerity, and indeed the whole work is sensitive from start to finish. It is a gesture – and that is where it falls short. It is only a gesture, going through the expected paces to emphasize the similarities between Jews and Arabs (similarities that those perpetuating conflict deny), showing the depth of shared loss of the two sides (again, denied by those who have brought matters to their current state), and ending with a plea for reconciliation (considered impossible by those who view the others as implacable enemies). Well intentioned and well written, very well recorded – and presented in both Blu-ray and CD form, with digital copies included, to get the music out in as many ways as possible – the symphony is very ably performed by university forces directed by a sensitive and understanding Neal Stulberg. Fairouz’ work is sure to garner praise from all those favoring its sentiments – who are precisely not the people in whom those sentiments need to take hold for there to be any hope of lasting peace in the Middle East. The symphony is paired with Tahrir, for B-flat clarinet and orchestra, another work calling for unification of disparate cultures that outsiders consider closely allied but that members of both deem unalterably in opposition. The piece’s title refers to the Tahrir Square location where protesters gathered to demand change in Egypt. The work itself, a tour de force that Krakauer performs with aplomb, mixes elements of Arab music (principally rhythmic complexities and specific modes) with ones of traditional Jewish street music (of the klezmer type). Like the symphony, Tahrir reaches out effectively to those who are predisposed toward peace and mutual accommodation, feel-good beliefs that such people do not share at all with those who perpetuate the ongoing Middle East stalemate.

     Margaret Brouwer also tries to address matters relating to the Middle East and the forces of war and violence in some of the works on a new Naxos CD called Shattered. Brouwer is at least as concerned about, and dismayed by, the United States as by any other country, using Shattered Glass (2007) to express anger at what she sees as U.S. aggression overseas. The work is entirely instrumental, so its intent of expressing frustration about the United States will be known only by listeners who make it a point to find out its extra-musical meaning: the music itself, while certainly reflective of upset and hostility, does not specifically and unequivocally deal with any particular subject matter. Likewise, the Clarinet Quintet (2005), intended by Brouwer to express her feelings about American policies and actions and also to comment on the 9/11 terrorist murders in New York City, does not address her concerns in any forthright way, although here the inclusion of Middle Eastern sounds amid the strictly contemporary Western rhythms and harmonies, and the use of a soprano voice in one movement out of four, at least make a pass at showing aurally what subject matter has here inspired the composer. It is difficult to know how Brouwer really feels about the murderers who blew up and burned to death so many people in 2001 in the name of their god, and who continue to destroy women, children and civilization whenever and wherever they can. The post-9/11 David Adam poem, An Angel’s Song, is the basis of the affecting second-movement Adagio of the quintet, and here the image of the crying angel, lamenting humanity’s woes while the clarinet intones a long legato passage, is deeply moving. But the setting of the same poem in Whom do you call angel now? (2005) is altogether starker and therefore more ambiguous: Brouwer certainly condemns what she sees as American adventurism overseas, but her attitude toward the mass murder of Americans seems more formulaic and less heartfelt. Brouwer is quite capable of communicating effectively, touching an audience directly, deeply and with sensitivity, when she wants to: Lonely Lake (2011), with its wistful and thoughtful hope for a better future, makes its points eloquently. But to the extent that Brouwer tries for direct sociopolitical commentary, her music has a sense of ambiguity and fence-straddling that does not serve the audience with much understanding. It is just as well that this CD concludes with the well-orchestrated and interestingly colored Arrangements for Blue Streak Ensemble (2011), in which Brouwer focuses on the great music of the past rather than the unsettling geopolitical realities of the present day.

     Geopolitics looms large as well in a new MSR Classics release, entitled Trans-Cultural Bonding, of music by Hampson Sisler – and here as in other well-intentioned (and well-made) music intended to evoke understanding and comprehension of the cross-currents of world events, it is hard to fault the quality of the music but equally hard to deem it a successful foray into building or mending fences. Sisler, like Fairouz and Brouwer, sees the many complex and interrelated Middle East conflicts as defining elements of our time, and in Faiths Cohabiting (2012), he tries to come to terms with the religious factors that pervade them all. In four movements – “Hebrew,” “Christian,” “Muslim” and “Finale” – Sisler attempts to show musically both the distinctions among the great Abrahamic faiths and their similarities. The work is effective on a purely musical basis and as tone-painting of a sort, but it is ironic that the Middle East trauma runs so deep that the fact that the orchestra here is the Jerusalem Symphony would likely prevent many non-Israelis in the troubled region from appreciating Sisler’s work on its own terms (it is worth remembering that the music of Wagner is still enormously controversial in Israel, although no longer banned outright). The more overtly upbeat Israeli-American Festival Overture (2013), performed by the Israel Symphony Orchestra, makes less of a sociopolitical statement; it too is a well-made piece that works well on a purely musical basis. Japan Tragedy 2011, for soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra (here, the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony) has less to offer: its sentiments are tied directly to the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster at Fukushima – it was written in the year in which the events occurred – but while there is nothing to fault in what Sisler has to say here, neither is there anything particularly new or striking in the sentiments or the music in which they are expressed. The greatest outreach among the pieces here, all of which are world première recordings, is in the earliest of the four works: Cantata for Living (1974), in which a vocal quartet, chorus and orchestra (the New Symphony Orchestra of Israel) present some life lessons and life thoughts that are tied to no specific time or place and that, as a result, reach beyond particularity of experience in a quest for the universal. The six movements’ titles neatly encapsulate the work’s arguments and its progress: “New Year, New Day,” “Interactions,” “Outcomes,” “Commemorations,” “Flirtations,” and “Maturity.” Arkady Leytush leads all the music and all the ensembles with empathetic understanding of Sisler’s musical approaches and his ideas. If those ideas are unlikely to have much real-world impact, that is simply a lesson in reality – sort of an added, unspoken element of Cantata for Living.

     Scott Brickman’s electroacoustic International:Bridge:Peace (2003) is, intentionally or not, a somewhat more accurate portrayal of matters of geopolitical conflict than the works by Fairouz, Brouwer or Sisler. It is one of those Babel-like works in which the composer mashes together spoken words, sung texts, sampled sounds and other noises, layering and combining and altering and calling the result “music,” which it is under a sufficiently stretched definition. The overall sound of the work is one of confusion, its overall feeling an attempt to bring order from chaos – and of course the work is carefully ordered, since its elements are selected and assembled by the composer. Although not especially distinguished in sound or effect, the work is worth listening to in juxtaposition with one such as Fairouz’ Third Symphony, since Brickman, intentionally or not, places the larger and more-ambitious work in what feels like a real-life context. The Ravello CD also includes another electroacoustic work, Mayday Rose (2006), one of those self-consciously self-indulgent pieces: it contains fewer than 100 notes, with the composer deciding for himself (and any audience) just what a “note” is. The most interesting piece here, however, is Dear Darwin, a set of 26 songs arranged as an abecedarium. Written in 2012 for soprano and piano, using poetry by Kathleen Ellis, Dear Darwin does not wade at all into continuing arguments about evolution, and in fact focuses more on Darwin the man and scientist than on On the Origin of Species or The Descent of Man. Darwin was in fact a man whose interests were wide-ranging, and this music is thus appropriate in its scope, including (in appropriate alphabetical placement) “Double Crosser,” “Kissing in Indonesia,” “Quotidian Sunday,” “Underutilized Species,” and so forth. Perhaps in tribute to the multifaceted Darwin, Brickman gives soprano Nancy Ellen Ogle and pianist Ginger Yang Hwalek multiple roles: sometimes they collaborate in art-song manner, but more often they are somewhat at odds – the piano imitates or supports the voice but also contradicts it, provides harmonic support, underlies it or undermines it. The 45-minute work feels somewhat on the long side, even though many individual movements last less than a minute, but there is some thoughtfulness here as well as some cleverness.

     Sergio Cervetti is thoughtful and clever, too, but Unbridled, his overt attempt to declaim musically on the financial excesses of American capitalism, is really a bit much. Written in 2013 for string quartet and performed on a Navona CD by the New England String Quartet (Julia Okrusko and Klaudia Szlachta, violins; Lilit Muradyan, viola; Minghui Lin, cello), the three-movement piece is quite explicit in what it seeks to portray and comment upon: “Unbridled Capitalism,” “Greed Unchecked” and “Derivatives.” The music is fine, but there is nothing in it that convincingly relates to the titles of the work and its movements – music simply is not a very effective form of direct sociopolitical commentary. The other works here are more interesting. Despite its unwieldily punctuated title, …from the earth… is quite intriguing. This 1973 chamber work uses five notes from Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde as the foundation of a series of transformations (actually, this work could be called “Derivatives”!). Cervetti produces new melodies, harmonies and musical structures from the Mahlerian kernel, and although the piece goes on rather too long (15 minutes), it has many effective moments. Cervetti himself performs here on electric organ and also conducts an ensemble consisting of Jon Deak, contrabass; Garret List, trombone; Natalie Ghent, viola; Jon Gibson, flute; Bryant Hayes and Dan Goode, clarinets; Gene Scholtens, bassoon; and Jerry Pav, oboe. The odd instrumentation is actually used to good effect. The other works on this CD are somewhat more straightforward. Plegaria y Danza, written in 1994 for solo violin and well played by Israel Chorberg, is simply a prayer and dance, as its title says; the movements are effectively contrasted, if not particularly distinguished. Mémoires du Paradis (2012), for piano trio, is subtitled Cinq Morceaux d’après Salvador Dali, and in fact has a double derivation: the five Dali paintings that inspired Cervetti were themselves inspired by scenes from Milton’s Paradise Lost. The movements’ French titles translate as “The Temptation,” “Innocent Sleep,” “The Tree of Life,” “The Flight of Satan,” and “The Kiss.” And although none of the music directly portrays or reflects the specific paintings or the poetry on which the paintings are based, Cervetti gives pianist Karolina Rojahn, violinist Ethan Wood and cellist Leo Eguchi plenty of interesting ways to mingle, contrast and generally converse about themes and harmonies. This sort of nonpolitical conversation is one that music does do well.

(++++) CURIOSITY SHOPS

The Cabinet of Curiosities. By Stefan Bachmann, Katherine Catmull, Claire Legrand and Emma Trevayne. Illustrated by Alexander Jansson. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $16.99.

The Gollywhopper Games 2: The New Champion. By Jody Feldman. Illustrations by Victoria Jamieson. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $16.99.

     Anthologies are rarely as well-thought-out, well-written and successful as The Cabinet of Curiosities, but then, this is more than the traditional sort of anthology in which vaguely connected works on similar themes are rather haphazardly assembled. The Cabinet of Curiosities grows organically – a rather frightening concept, given what the book is about – with its four authors, all experienced in creating works for preteens and teenagers, producing what the book’s subtitle accurately characterizes as “36 Tales Brief & Sinister.” The stories, whether as short as five pages or as long as 28, serve up chills that range from the moderately cool to the genuinely frigid. They are gathered loosely into eight sections, labeled “Drawers” as if they are indeed parts of a cabinet: “Cake,” “Love,” “Luck,” “Tricks,” “Flowers,” “Travel,” “Song” and “Fairy Tales.” Those titles are only general guidelines: “Cake,” for example, is really about food and the people – and things – that eat it. The “framing tale” of the book casts Stefan Bachmann, Katherine Catmull, Claire Legrand and Emma Trevayne as “curators” of the “cabinet,” searching the world (and perhaps beyond it) for oddities to store in the drawers and stories to tell about those peculiar things. The curators exchange notes in the course of the book, and this is one thing that makes the work far more unified than a typical anthology. But what really sets the book apart is the way each of the contributors subsumes his or her authorial personality into the concept, producing stories that focus effectively on the eerie, even creepy themes, encapsulating the strange and outré without delving into the stylistic flourishes that Bachmann, Catmull, Legrand and Trevayne bring to their work elsewhere. Because the book targets young readers, there is no dwelling on gore, but the very absence of explicitly descriptive mayhem makes some of the stories more frightening (a lesson that writers of works for adults might well take to heart). Legrand’s “The Cake Made Out of Teeth,” for example, sees to it that a particularly nasty child gets his comeuppance after he is presented, by the requisite mysterious stranger, with a cake that looks just like him. And Legrand’s “The Sandman Cometh,” a retelling of a truly frightening Hans Christian Andersen story (Andersen’s works are far scarier than people who know only their sanitized or Disneyfied versions realize), makes the boy’s trials very terrifying indeed in a psychological way. The other authors are equally good and handle equally diverse topics. For example, Bachmann offers a chilling take on the apparently innocent statement, “I just love babies.” Catmull considers how one little girl’s very, very good luck may be other people’s very, very, very bad luck. Trevayne considers what may happen to people who can hear the music that spiders make. There are all sorts of scares here, and if a particular tale is a touch too frightening – or, less likely, not chilling enough – there is always another just a few pages ahead. The Cabinet of Curiosities is, as Lewis Carroll’s Alice would have said, “curiouser and curiouser” as you enter farther and farther into it. But it is worth remembering, while doing so, just what curiosity is proverbially said to have done to the cat….

     Curiosity of a different kind – the intellectual sort – was at the heart of Jody Feldman’s very clever The Gollywhopper Games (2008) and remains central to the book’s newly released set-one-year-later sequel, The New Champion. Clearly modeled on books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and resembling the much more recent Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, Feldman’s new novel focuses on the second year of the Games and on one unlikely contestant, Cameron Schein, who lives constantly in the shadow of his super-successful older brother, Spencer. The Golly Toy and Game Company poses a series of mathematical questions and word problems to the various contestants, and Feldman uses this setup to throw some actual educational information at readers in ways that Chris Grabenstein does but Roald Dahl does not. For example, when a question requires would-be contestants to pick the name of one of four famous people, the answer is gradually revealed as the wrong choices are eliminated: “‘So long to the architect whose accomplishments include the pyramid at the Louvre in Paris and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.’ I.M. Pei’s name was gone.” It is highly unlikely that both Cameron and Spencer will become Game participants, but the whole point of the book is that they do both end up as competitors, so Feldman arranges for them both to participate. Many of their interactions are quite predictable – Cameron learning self-reliance and discovering his own (heretofore latent) abilities, Spencer being forced to admit that Cameron has abilities and deserves respect. Cameron’s eventual triumph, which comes through an unusual twist that shows just how special he is, is scarcely a surprise. But if the overall sibling-rivalry elements of the plot are straightforward, and the notion of the Games themselves no different from the one set forth by Feldman in the original book (which was her debut novel), the specific puzzles and questions are unusual and are structured in a way that encourages readers to try to solve them on their own. Now that is something. “It’s like an endurance test,” one contestant says of the Games, and in fact one “challenge card” late in the Games begins, “The day’s been long, but you’ve been strong.” But the book is not a slog for readers, because Feldman does a fine job of showing how Cameron thinks through the various problems – his thinking is the book’s narrative on many pages, so readers figure out the questions along with him. The New Champion is the second book of a planned trilogy – the third will be called Friend or Foe – and does have some of the running-in-place feeling of a middle volume. But because this particular Games competition is self-contained, readers who missed the first book can pick this one up and enjoy it from start to finish. And Feldman’s clever building blocks – the puzzles that make up the Games – ensure that the book is not just an adventure, not just a finding-yourself book, not just a family-becomes-closer work, but is all of those plus an experience in thinking things through and understanding the importance of everything from punctuation to math. It is the way Feldman combines all the elements of the story, both the usual-for-this-age-group ones and the unusual intellectual ones, that makes this novel a standout.

(++++) SMALL WONDERS FOR ALL AGES

What Do You See? By Erika Kuster. Illustrated by Milena Kirkova. Accord Publishing/Andrews McMeel. $6.99.

The Little Book of Stress. By Rohan Candappa. Andrews McMeel. $8.99.

Pocket Posh: Charles Dickens; Sherlock Holmes; William Shakespeare. By the Puzzle Society. Andrews McMeel. $7.99 each.

     Small in size but large in entertainment value and overall enjoyment, these little books are especially delightful because of the way they engage readers’ imagination. What Do You See? is a lift-the-flap book – it says so right on the cover – but it is more involving and creative than most short board books for kids up to age four. The reason is that the flaps, when opened, reveal scenes that help challenge and develop the imagination of the youngest readers and even of kids too young to read the book on their own. Erika Kuster’s very simple words combine beautifully with Milena Kirkova’s drawings to produce some very delightful effects indeed. “What do you see when you look at the sky?” is the first question – and in a typical book of this sort, the answer would be something like, “Clouds of all sizes and shapes.” Not here: lift the flap, which looks like an open window through which clouds are already visible, and the answer appears – “Anything you wish, like a train chugging by!” Yes, the ordinary clouds shown before the flap is lifted become train-shaped clouds after the flap is opened. Very imaginative. Each of the six scenes here is at the same level. A little boy looks at a stack of pancakes and wonders, “What sings and hums when the morning sun rises?” Lift the top pancake for the answer: “A pile of pancakes that is full of surprises” – including two blueberry eyes, a bacon-strip mouth and several musical notes. The final question sums up the book very neatly, asking, “When I look in the mirror, what do I see?” The illustration simply shows a full-length mirror with the boy’s reflection – but lift the flap (which lifts the whole mirror) and there appears a scene with the boy as an astronaut, floating in space, with the words, “Anything I can imagine. Anything I want to be!” For encouraging imagination in the youngest children, What Do You See? is a real, not imaginary, treat.

     For grown-up kids – especially ones with a cynical bent, whose imagination runs in some nontraditional channels – there is a very-small-size, non-illustrated book (indeed, a pocket-size one, about as big as a smartphone) that turns some standard adult assumptions neatly on their head. It is The Little Book of Stress, and Rohan Candappa’s premise in it is that stress is a good thing; so good, indeed, that people need to know how to create more of it. Each page bears a headline and offers a small, homily-like nugget of wisdom. “Nurturing Is Good: Nurture your grievances. If you don’t they’ll die and then whoever’s done you wrong will have got away with it.” (That should be “gotten away with it,” but why quibble about grammar at a time like this? That might cause stress. Or not.) Another example: “Communication Breakdowns: If you are stressed, make sure you communicate this to those around you. Soon they’ll be stressed too.” And another: “Know Limits: Recognize your limitations. Then ignore them.” And there is one page where only the headline is provided, since it is the only stress-building remark necessary: “Become a Politician.” Candappa manages not to be mean-spirited (well, not too mean-spirited) in his pro-stress prescriptions, and his sense of humor will make the temporarily (or permanently) overstressed laugh, or at least chuckle from time to time – as, for instance, when he exhorts readers not to worry only about big things, because “small things need to be worried about too.” Or when he notes that “worrying is meditation carried out by realists.” The Little Book of Stress is so stress-filled that it is actually de-stressing to carry it around and read a page or two from time to time. Of course, that is a bad thing, since the whole idea is to increase stress; so this must be a bad book masquerading as a good one. Or vice versa.

     Now, if you really want some pocket-size self-induced stress that only looks like a form of de-stressing, how better to create it than with brain teasers and brain twisters and diabolically clever puzzles and word problems that show you how little you know about things that you thought you knew a lot about? Oh yes, those folks at the Puzzle Society know how to stir things up – and it is not only a matter of twisting and turning popular culture. Nothing so simple! The wonderful Pocket Posh book line, each book filled with 100 puzzles and quizzes guaranteed to make you feel far less knowledgeable than you thought you were, has dipped its toe into British literature. In fact, it has plunged its entire metaphorical body into those heady and somewhat chilly waters. Three cases in point are the delightfully designed volumes on Charles Dickens, Sherlock Holmes and William Shakespeare. Quick: which of those was not a real person? The answer is supposed to be Sherlock Holmes, but obviously that name appears on the book because it attracts more interest than does that of Holmes’ creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (and never mind that some people still think Shakespeare was not a real person, or at least not the author of the plays attributed to him). Consider that “real person” question a warm-up for the ones in the books, which are quite a bit more mind-muddling, if not necessarily mind-boggling. The Dickens book, for example, offers a 26-number grid that you have to decipher, figuring out what number goes with which letter of the alphabet, so you can then fill in the correct letters in a crossword puzzle that, when completed, will give you a quote from David Copperfield. That is just one puzzle, mind you. Another asks 10 fill-in-the-blank questions and explains that when you answer them all correctly and transfer the answers to a grid, “the top shaded line will spell out the name of Mrs. Clennam’s servant in Little Dorrit.” Not abstruse enough for you? How about a “Wordsearch” in which appear 15 names from Nicholas Nickleby, including Snawley, Folair and Smike? Or maybe you prefer a cross-out-the-letters grid in which, by removing all letters that appear more than once, you get “a word relating to Oliver Twist.” Or perhaps you would like the “Arroword” puzzle that you must solve to spell out a word – the arrows show where to put your answers, after which you have to rearrange the letters that appear in shaded squares “to spell out the name of a chapter from Sketches by Boz.” If you were not a Dickensian when you started this book, you will certainly not be one when you finish it.

     Perhaps you would rather get the same treatment where Sherlock Holmes is concerned. Then you may want to take the 10-question “Character Quiz,” which asks “What is Dr. Watson’s first name?” and “Who is the head of the Baker Street Irregulars?” Or try “Add a letter,” in which you must add a letter to each of 10 words so the resulting words fit a clue, then place the added letters in boxes to complete the title of a specific Holmes story. Or try “Wordwheel,” which gives you 10 minutes to make words from the letters around its spokes plus a specific central letter that must appear in each word – oh, and “there is at least one nine-letter word, the surname of a police inspector featured in a Sherlock Holmes story.” (In another such wheel, there is at least one nine-letter word that is associated with Dr. Watson. You get the idea.) Even devoted fans of Baker Street’s most famous fictional resident will pause before declaring that these puzzles are “elementary.”

     And if Dickens and Doyle’s detective are not dastardly enough mind-stretchers, there is always Pocket Posh William Shakespeare. Many of the types of puzzles in this volume are the same as in the other books, but not all: here, for example, is an anagrams page requiring word sequences to be unscrambled into play titles – sequences such as WHEREOF A TENTH MIGHTS, NEVER THE FIT COACHMEN, and DIARISTS A SCOUNDREL. And when the puzzles here are the same types as those in the other books, what solutions the reader/puzzler must discover! Try the quiz that asks, among other things, “What is the largest female role, by line count, in Shakespeare?” Or the King Lear word search requiring the puzzler to find Heath, Oswald, Storm, Beggar and, of course, Betrayal. Or the one featuring terms and characters from The Winter’s Tale, such as Polixenes, Florizel, Mamillius, Paulina and Autolycus. Or “Wordwheel” puzzles whose nine-letter words are the names of Shakespeare characters. Intense academic study of Shakespeare is not required to answer the questions and solve the puzzles, but you do need more than a passing familiarity with the Bard of Avon to get everything right. If you do not have such familiarity at the start of the book, you will surely have it at the end – even if you need to take advantage of the answer section that appears in every Pocket Posh book. There is, in fact, nothing at all wrong with checking out the back of the book for information you do not know. Part of honing your imagination involves packing your mind with new material that you can engage in flights of fancy at a later time. Or, equally likely, that can engage you – as all these imagination-pleasing little books do.

(++++) CHARACTER COMPILATIONS

Zoe’s Jungle. By Bethanie Deeney Murguia. Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic. $16.99.

Nancy Clancy, Book 4: Secret of the Silver Key. By Jane O’Connor. Illustrations by Robin Preise Glasser. Harper. $9.99.

Alien in My Pocket 3: Radio Active. By Nate Ball. Illustrated by Macky Pamintuan. Harper. $4.99.

The Berenstain Bears’ Lemonade Stand. By Mike Berenstain. Harper. $3.99.

Favorite Stories from Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa: School Days. By Erica Silverman. Painted by Betsy Lewin. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $12.99.

50 States to Celebrate: Celebrating Massachusetts. By Marion Dane Bauer. Illustrated by C.B. Canga. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $3.99.

     Stories matter, of course, but in some kids’ books, the attraction of recurring characters is as much an element of the fun as is the plot. Zoe’s Jungle brings back Bethanie Deeney Murguia’s charmingly imaginative character from Zoe Gets Ready and Zoe’s Room (No Sisters Allowed), this time in a story in which Zoe is thoroughly comfortable with her little sister, Addie, whom she imagines as the elusive “Addiebeast” that Zoe must capture within a strict five-minute time limit. The real-world part of the story takes place at a playground, where the girls have been given a five-minute warning by their mother – it is just about time to leave. Zoe volubly protests the deadline in a wonderful two-page layout connecting her words and body language with a dotted line along the lines of those in The Family Circus cartoons: “Is there no respect for the explorer and her quest?” she finally asks. But the countdown continues inexorably, and Zoe’s imagination shifts into high gear for a chase game: “No human has ever come so close to catching this strange animal,” the Addiebeast. This “career-defining mission” (the language here is wonderful) eventually brings explorer Zoe past all sorts of imagined perils – which Murguia contrasts with scenes in the actual playground – until “a lifetime of preparation comes down to this moment,” which is “a great moment in the history of everything.” So Zoe takes Addie’s hand and the two get ready to leave the playground with their mom – a not-quite-mundane ending, since the book concludes with Zoe promising that they are on their way to story time and that she has a great one about a fearless explorer. Zoe is a wonderfully ebullient character whose everyday adventures are anything but ordinary, thanks to her imaginative approach to her world.

     A more-directed form of imagination is needed by Nancy Clancy – the chapter-book, somewhat-more-grown-up version of “Fancy Nancy” – as she and best friend Bree solve a series of minor mysteries, the fourth being Secret of the Silver Key. Nancy was ebullient when younger – her French-language-obsessed, big-word-using, tutu-wearing younger self is still one of the most attractive characters around – but she is more ordinary in these mild-mystery books. In this (+++) volume, Nancy’s family buys an old desk at a yard sale, and Nancy finds a key in a secret compartment. The key is not for the desk itself, so Nancy and Bree set out to discover what it is for. As Nancy puts it to the woman who sold the desk, “‘I’m hoping you know what secret the key will reveal.’ ‘Reveal’ was also one of Nancy’s favorite words. It sounded so much more mysterious than ‘show.’” The mystery turns out not to be a very significant one at all, at least in traditional Nancy-Drew-like terms, but it does bring about the unexpected reunion of two women who had lost track of each other over the years, and that produces a happy if somewhat overly sweet ending. The Nancy Clancy books are less exuberant than the Fancy Nancy ones, but older girls who have outgrown the picture books will enjoy the continuing adventures of the central character.

     The continuing adventures in the silly Alien in My Pocket series are those of Zack McGee, who is host and friend to a four-inch-tall alien named Amp who crash-landed in Zack’s bedroom and has no way to get home to his own planet. This is not an “E.T.” sort of series – it is more an annoying-little-brother series in which the little brother just happens to be really little, colored blue, and able to affect people’s minds so they do not realize they have seen him. Actually, Zack already has an annoying little brother, Taylor, who knows Zack is keeping something secret but isn’t sure what it is and is constantly trying to figure out the mystery. True, it’s not much of a mystery, but Nate Ball’s (+++) books aren’t really intended to be much more than easy-to-read, somewhat humorous stories for kids who find jokes about passing gas endlessly fascinating (the whole first chapter of Radio Active and much of the second are taken up with that topic). The story here has ordinary-guy Zack and his obligatory really-smart friend and sidekick, Olivia, trying to stop the town from panicking after Amp builds a “quantum radio” to contact his home planet and accidentally makes everyone think aliens are about to invade Earth. There is really not much to the plot or, for that matter, the characters, but the book is a quick and easy read – and the bonus material, which shows kids how they can actually build an AM radio, is quite good, being well and simply explained and containing matter-of-fact comments such as, “Like any project, it might not work perfectly on the first try.” Fans of Blast Off! and The Science UnFair, the first two books in this sequence, will enjoy this third entry.

     Even easier books, still with recurring characters at their core, can be found in various publishers’ early-reading series. The I Can Read! sequence from HarperCollins includes books at five levels, from “My First” to Level 4; The Berenstain Bears’ Lemonade Stand is at Level 1 (“simple sentences for eager new readers”). It is a (+++) book in which Brother, Sister and Honey Bear set up a lemonade stand and soon have so much business that they run out of the cooling drink. Early readers will quickly come to recognize the very-often-repeated phrase, “Aaah! It is good.” And fans of the Berenstain Bears will enjoy the straightforward story, which thankfully lacks the sometimes heavy-handed moralizing of Berenstain books. Slightly more-advanced readers, especially ones with a taste for horses, will enjoy Favorite Stories from Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa: School Days, which includes the school-focused stories “A New Friend” and “A Report.” In the first of these, Cocoa becomes temporarily jealous of Kate’s new friend from school; in the second, Cocoa helps Kate do a school report on horses by, of course, showing her all the things horses do. The Houghton Mifflin Harcourt “Green Light Readers” series, in which this book appears, has only three levels rather than five, and this (+++) book is at level 2 (“reading with help,” intended for kids from kindergarten through second grade). Another book in the same series – this one written for young readers with an interest in facts rather than fiction – features a character known as Mr. Geo, a professorial guide to the U.S. states who helps young readers explore throughout the country. This book is at level 3 (“reading independently”). It is slightly more complex than the Cowgirl Kate book and considerably more advanced than The Berenstain Bears’ Lemonade Stand, but it is not really difficult: officially intended for grades 1-4, it will mostly attract first- and second-graders. The story, being essentially a recitation of facts (including some trivia), will not “pull in” readers in the way that the fictional adventures likely will, but the book does make some attempts to lighten what could otherwise be a dry recitation: “This state is home to more than 100 colleges and universities. …Many colleges have great rowing teams. How do they make it look so easy?” A (+++) book for a clearly targeted audience, Celebrating Massachusetts will appeal to kids for whom recurring fictional characters need not be shaped like aliens or bears but can simply be people who provide an introduction to informative subject matter.

(++++) SERIES OF HEROICS

The Hero’s Guides, Book 3: The Hero’s Guide to Being an Outlaw. By Christopher Healy. Drawings by Todd Harris. Walden Pond Press. $16.99.

The Testing, Book 3: Graduation Day. By Joelle Charbonneau. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $17.99.

Dualed #2: Divided. By Elsie Chapman. Random House. $17.99.

Star Carrier, Book Five: Dark Matter. By Ian Douglas. Harper Voyager. $7.99.

     It is possible, barely possible, to create an extended heroic-fantasy series that does not draw largely on cliché and is not largely patterned on other, earlier heroic-fantasy series. It is, however, extraordinarily difficult, which is why it can be so hard to be sure just which heroic-fantasy series you are reading: the characters’ names and the names of the settings may change, but all too often, there is a sense of “déjà vu all over again” in the occurrences and plot twists. Christopher Healy’s The Hero’s Guides therefore deserve a smattering of applause – no, make that more than a smattering – for their creativity and the sheer fun they bring to the whole “epic heroic stuff” model. This does not mean Healy is oblivious to earlier series of this type – in fact, he is so aware of them that he constantly draws attention to them and turns them neatly inside-out. Healy’s world here is that of fairy tales, and his whole trilogy turns fairy-tale tropes on their heads by having princes be bumbling, princesses be quite able to take care of themselves, and the various dastardly villains be as dastardly as usual, but usually in different ways. This in itself is nothing new: many authors have done fairy-tale reconsiderations for adults and young readers alike, and some (such as Vivian Vande Velde) have regularly engaged in humorous retellings of the old stories. But Healy – abetted by some really wonderful drawings by Todd Harris – goes a few steps further than others, and at considerably greater length: this is a 500-plus-page book. The various fairy-tale “Princes Charming” have names in Healy’s trilogy – Liam, Duncan, Frederic and Gustav – and, despite in many ways remaining determinedly one-dimensional, have considerably more personality than in the original tales. They also have significant anger-management and interpersonal-relationship issues. And in The Hero’s Guide to Being an Outlaw they’re wanted for murder – along with Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel and Lila – because Briar Rose has been reported murdered. Thus, there is plenty for princes and princesses/fair maidens to do in the Thirteen Kingdoms, a map of which is thoughtfully provided. And there are plenty of amusements along the way, such as tongue-twisting references (the Jade Djinn Gem); suitably named stuck-up functionaries and compatriots (Euphustus Bailywimple, Daggomire Hardrot, Stumpy Boarhound, Deeb Rauber, Erik the Mauve); odd names for this and that (a boat called the Wet Walnut); and occasional references that only adults, and not all of them, will get (Val Jeanval, arrested for stealing a loaf of bread – see Jean Valjean of Les Misérables). The chapter titles are part of the ongoing amusement here (“An Outlaw Does Something Rash,” “An Outlaw Forgets to Pack a Change of Clothes,” “An Outlaw Doesn’t Know What Kind of Bird She Is,” “An Outlaw Puts His Right Foot In, Puts His Right Foot Out,” and so on until the final chapter, “The Villain Wins”). In fact, everything is part of the amusement, and the eventual happy ending(s) is (are) just silly enough and just absurd enough to make perfect sense in so senseless a context. There have been sagas aplenty in which fairy tales are eviscerated in one way or another, but few as amusing as this one.

     On the other hand, The Testing, Divided and Dark Matter, the first two books intended for teenagers and the third for adults, are series in which the paths are so well-worn that they have become ruts. These are (+++) books for readers seeking quick entry into offerings entirely typical of their genres and willing to look past numerous plot holes and a vast supply of clichéd characters and actions. Non-fans of these genres will give the books no rating at all, since they will have no reason whatsoever to read them. The Testing is an entirely typical dystopian trilogy based so closely on The Hunger Games that readers of Suzanne Collins’ books may find themselves wondering whether Joelle Charbonneau simply wandered into Collins’ universe and stayed a while. The Hunger Games trilogy is itself not very original and not particularly well-written, but it has become a gigantic success for a variety of reasons relating to timing and some excellent publicity machinery. The Testing is presumably for young readers who want more of the same: same vaguely troubling dystopia, same background of some sort of vague worldwide catastrophe, same vague delineation of characters (Charbonneau’s are vaguer), same horrendously murderous competition propagated because it apparently makes sense to kill off a lot of the small number of survivors of the aforementioned catastrophe, same shadowy government doing awful things because that’s what shadowy governments do, and so on. Graduation Day, sequel to The Testing and Independent Study, brings Cia Vale through the usual maze of deception, danger and betrayal, forcing her to make the usual difficult choices while as usual endangering those closest to her in order to allow the usual choice between a narrow, fear-driven future and a broad, hope-defined one. This is all so formulaic that it is hard to understand how anyone could consider it original. But originality appears to be beside the point: the idea here is to tap into readers’, umm, hunger for more stories about the heroism of a strong female protagonist in a dark and dismal near-future (and/or alternative-universe) world, complete with mild romance, substantial violence and all sorts of predictable trials and tribulations. Graduation Day goes nowhere particularly unexpected, but readers who want still more of its type of adventure will find it here.

     Divided follows a similar pattern, and in fact also involves a deadly test. It is the sequel to Dualed, the debut novel by Elsie Chapman, which featured a 15-year-old girl named West Drayer who, in yet another of those standard-issue dystopias, is forced to hunt down and kill her Alternate, a genetic twin raised by another family. Only by destroying her Alt can West prove that she herself is worthy of future life in the city of Kersh. This world makes less sense than do many similar dystopias, because there is little explanation of why there are Alts in the first place and why one has to be killed. Furthermore, it is unclear in the first book why West, apparently an ordinary girl, becomes a striker – an assassin hired by the rich and powerful. It would have been good to understand this early on (it happens rather early in the first book), because in Divided, the whole point is that West is told she must take on another contract-killing assignment – and this one comes with unusually potent inducements, including safety for her future children as well as a clean slate for West herself. It will be obvious to readers that so attractive an offer must mean the target is one that will cause West significant difficulty, and so it turns out: she is supposed to kill her dead brother’s Alt. Complications abound, including the development of the love between West and Chord from the first book (which was not very convincing there and is not much more so here). The main issue is that the Board, which is in charge of Kersh and which has given West her assignment, is clearly corrupt. This is thoroughly unoriginal, but as in the first book, Chapman keeps the pace of events moving quickly enough so readers will not be tempted to think too closely about the holes in the plot – and at least this time the rationale for the Alts is explained, even if it is not a very good one. Divided is not the end of West’s story – it concludes with a very clear setup for the next book – and hopefully some of the lack of clarity here will be resolved in the follow-up volume, as some loose ends from the first book are tied up in this one. The fact remains, though, that there is little surprising in Divided, a book for readers looking for a certain type of adventure and not wanting to think too closely about the rather rickety superstructure on which the story is hung.

     Ditto Dark Matter, in this case for readers who think space-opera military fantasy is the same as science fiction. Dark Matter, the fifth book in the ongoing Star Carrier series, is yet another thoroughly unbelievable, fast-paced novel in a sequence devoted to wars and politics both on Earth and around the universe. The first four books, Earth Strike, Center of Gravity, Singularity and Deep Space, firmly established the heroism of Admiral (later President) Alexander Koenig, the evil of the relentless Sh’daar, the necessity of sometimes making a pact with the (metaphorical) devil, and the inevitable negative results when one does so. By the time of Dark Matter, there is civil war on Earth between those who want humanity to stride triumphantly into the future and those who want to give in to the Sh’daar and become part of their massive Collective – at the price of limiting human technology. Ian Douglas (one of the many pen names of William H. Keith, Jr.) is always ready to bring in a new deus ex machina to complicate matters further and prevent his plots from bogging down into, say, thoughtfulness. This time he has another alien race show up, through an artificial wormhole 16,000 light years from Earth, leaving Koenig with a severe moral and resource dilemma: continue fighting the Sh’daar and possibly weaken Earth forces in the face of the new alien threat, or ally with the Sh’daar against the others and take the huge risks that are now known to come with trusting this implacable enemy? This is, to be sure, a rather ho-hum plot in space adventures, and has been done so many times before that it is hard to see what new directions Douglas may take it in. In fact, he does not move it anywhere new, but uses a combination of old and newly introduced characters to move the story along and allow plenty of time for battle scenes, last-minute turnarounds of fortune, and other predictabilities. Just as Graduation Day and Divided are no worse in plot or writing than others of their ilk, so Dark Matter is fine for what it is. The problem is that, again as is also the case with Graduation Day and Divided, it just isn’t very much. These books are mildly entertaining, mildly engaging novels for people already predisposed to read works of a particular type. The fact that Graduation Day, Divided and Dark Matter are eminently forgettable will not be of any particular concern to readers who find the books congenial: they can remain secure in the knowledge that where books like these exist, more, from these authors or from others, are sure to follow.

(+++) MYSTERIOUS POWERS

Dreamer, Wisher, Liar. By Charise Mericle Harper. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $16.99.

Saving Lucas Briggs. By Marisa de los Santos and David Teague. Harper. $16.99.

The Hypnotists, Book One. By Gordon Korman. Scholastic. $6.99.

     Back in 1958, a collection of 11 short stories by Theodore Sturgeon appeared under the wonderful title, A Touch of Strange. Modern authors of books for preteens and young teenagers may or may not know the half-century-old book, but many certainly do try to bring “a touch of strange” to their own writings. Charise Mericle Harper, for example, introduces the idea of a “wish jar” with time-traveling powers as part of the plot of Dreamer, Wisher, Liar. The jar turns up one unhappy summer in the basement of the house where Ash lives. The summer is unhappy because Ash wants to spend it at camp with her best friend, Lucy, before Lucy moves away, but instead is being forced by her mother to spend it at home with a seven-year-old irritant named Claire. Ash’s mom has told Ash that she must babysit Claire, the daughter of a friend, and Ash is quite upset enough about losing Lucy without being told to babysit instead of going to camp. Ash is frightened of new people and of change in general, and she suffers from a condition called prosopagnosia, “face blindness,” which means she cannot recognize people after first meeting them – a day or less later, she needs to be reintroduced. Lucy has always helped Ash with this, whispering names or hints, but now she is leaving, and Ash’s life cannot possibly get worse. It can, however, get stranger, when she finds the old jar, tries to use it to make wishes (primarily one that Lucy will stay and not move away), and discovers that that is not how it works: it contains someone else’s wishes. And when Ash starts reading them, strange things happen: she is carried back in time and becomes an invisible, ghostly presence observing the ups and downs of the friendship of two other girls. So now we have Ash as a dreamer and wisher, and she becomes a liar as she tries to figure out what is happening to her without telling her mother or Claire or other people know what is going on, because “that’s the kind of thing a crazy person would say.” Claire, meanwhile, turns out really to like old people, so she and Ash spend time at “the old people’s home,” where Claire bubbles and Ash starts to discover connections to the past that tie in, somehow, with the wish jar. There are also scenes involving a thrift store, and crying clowns, and – well, Dreamer, Wisher, Liar is a grab-bag of a book, somewhat overdone and overcomplicated even though its heart is certainly in the right place. The tie-everything-together ending is almost too neat, but its emotional warmth will be just what readers are looking for at that point, and the final affirmation of the magic in everyday life makes for a very satisfying conclusion.

     Time travel is at the heart of Saving Lucas Briggs as well. Margaret O’Malley’s family has the ability to time-travel, but there are strict rules and strict requirements. There is a rather convoluted explanation of how it all works, courtesy of Margaret’s father: “Time is a garden hose stuffed in a suitcase. …An infinitely long garden hose stuffed into a very big suitcase, a suitcase larger than just about everything you can think of, including our universe. …And the hose is stuffed in such a way that every bit of it is touching every other bit of it, if you can imagine that. …But the point is that every bit of time is actually curled up cozily beside us, all day every day, even if it is hopelessly, eternally just out of reach. Out of reach unless – and here’s where things get tricky, so please pay attention – you figured out a way to poke a pinhole in the walls of the hose, those walls being otherwise known as the limits of reality as we know them, and you slipped through the pinhole from one loop to the next in an instant.” There is more of this – a lot more – and it is all equally convoluted and incoherent and, really, meaningless. But it is not the point of the story by Marisa de los Santos and David Teague. What Saving Lucas Biggs is about is Margaret’s determination to go back in time to change the past of a cruel man known as Judge Biggs – who has sentenced Margaret’s father to death for a crime he did not commit. Margaret teams up with her best friend, Charlie, and Charlie’s grandfather, Josh, to go through a hose pinhole (or whatever) that leads to a year in which Lucas Biggs was changed forever into the cruel person Margaret knows. Of course, changing the past, while not impossible in this context, is quite difficult, because the hose (or whatever) resists being changed. Margaret ends up back in the year 1938, a time when there is a murder, a faked suicide-murder, and a whole series of consequences “which would lead to my father’s life being in terrible danger in ways that I also couldn’t tell” anyone about. Well, as Margaret is told point-blank by someone who knows what Margaret is trying to do, “history doesn’t want to change, you know. History resists.” And “no human being’s stronger than history when it’s resisting.” There are back-and-forth plot complications galore here, not surprisingly in a book about time travel, but eventually the solution Margaret comes up with takes place in the present day and has the sort of family focus that is typically central to books for this age group. Saving Lucas Biggs takes a long time (in several senses) and goes through a lot of byways before getting to its satisfying conclusion, but it does get there, and readers willing to stick with the rather twisty plot will be very glad indeed when they finally find themselves with Margaret “right there in the one now.”

     The adventure is more surface-level and the plot more straightforward in the first book of a new series, The Hypnotists. Gordon Korman, who to date has contributed five books to The 39 Clues sequences and written six in a series known as Swindle – not to mention a number of other individual books and trilogies for preteens and young teenagers – writes formulaically, but in a way that makes his books distinctly attractive to adventure seekers who are not looking for anything particularly profound or philosophical. There are no images here of face blindness or time as an infinite garden hose. Instead, there is 12-year-old Jackson (Jax) Opus, who discovers that he has color-changing eyes with hypnotic abilities that he barely understands and cannot control: they lead to a wild ride on a city bus, a doctor’s apparent nervous breakdown, and a series of what Jax thinks may be out-of-body experiences for Jax himself. His parents send him to a ridiculously overwrought psychiatrist with an “endless forehead,” who is given to pronouncements such as, “There is no lying in this office. Even when you speak an untruth, deeper truths are revealed to me.” This works out about as well as might be expected – worse, actually, since Jax tells the pompous doctor to jump out the window and the doctor promptly does just that, or tries to until Jax stops him. Clearly, as Korman writes, “Something was very wrong.” Well, enough initial setup – soon The Hypnotists proceeds in some entirely expected directions, as Jax hears from the Sentia Institute (“sentia” as in “sentient”) and its director, Dr. Elias Mako (“mako” as in “shark”). Things there are clearly not as they seem; indeed, it is not even clear what they seem to be. Jax quickly tires of hearing that Dr. Mako has “devoted his life to New York City education and is an inspiration to every single one of us.” Readers will know that the repeats mean something is seriously amiss. And lest that not be immediately clear, Jax’s father soon becomes distressed and reveals that “the whole Massachusetts branch of the Opuses was burned at the stake during the Salem witch trials!” This is utter nonsense, but of course it is not intended to be believable – Korman does not do “believable.” What he does is “exciting,” and The Hypnotists delivers on that score. Unsurprisingly, as Jax gets more deeply into what Sentia and Dr. Mako do and plan, he starts to question whether he is learning to use his talent or is himself being used. For it turns out very quickly that Jax is more than an ordinarily able hypnotist – if the types of hypnotists trained at Sentia can be considered ordinary. Jax is a super-hypnotist, able to practice, among other things, “remote mesmerism,” in which even a recording can hypnotize people. Readers will realize long before Jax does – as a protagonist, he is rather dim – that Dr. Mako is up to no good, a fact made super-clear when the not-so-good doctor tells Jax, “Sometimes, Jackson, true greatness can only be achieved through extraordinary methods,” and then reveals that Jax’s parents will be safe only as long as Jax cooperates with Sentia’s plans. There is, of course, a good guy available to help Jax – his name, Axel Braintree, is a giveaway, although, as Jax points out to Braintree, “You’re a convicted art thief who holds self-help meetings in a Laundromat.” Even with all the absurdity and occasional flashes of humor here, The Hypnotists is intended to be taken as an adventure story, not a sendup of adventure stories, despite the fact that the one person Jax cannot initially command is a friend who is color-blind. Korman mixes things up satisfyingly for readers who do not choose to look at any of the plot holes and clichés too closely, and it is a fair bet that the next book in this series, Memory Maze, will provide more of the same.

(++++) TRIPLES, LIVE

Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 39-41. Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century conducted by Frans Brüggen. Glossa. $24.99 (2 CDs).

Mahler: Symphonies Nos. 4-6. Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Lorin Maazel; Sarah Fox, soprano (No. 4). Signum Classics. $38.99 (4 CDs).

Mahler: Symphony No. 6. Gürzenich-Orchester Köln conducted by Markus Stenz. Oehms. $29.99 (2 SACDs).

     Couple the inherent enthusiasm of live performances with the very high quality with which it is now possible to record concerts and you have a recipe for some excellent music-making that has a certain level of audience involvement beyond what any studio recording can offer. Thankfully, audiences worldwide have become much better in recent years – in most cases – in remaining silent as concerts are recorded, so home listeners generally get the benefits of live performance without the coughs, sneezes, rustlings and general background irritation often present in the concert hall. (And recording producers’ much-improved ability to edit out those extraneous sounds certainly helps!) Thus, the Glossa release of Mozart’s last three symphonies, featuring live performances from 2010 by the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century under Frans Brüggen, is a highly involving recording of this thrice-familiar music. Brüggen chooses tempos judiciously; the orchestra of about three dozen players is light and transparent most of the time but full and rich – within appropriate 18^th-century, pre-Romantic bounds – when called for; and the sectional balance is excellent. Brüggen makes a few unusual, even questionable decisions, notably the very quiet endings of No. 39 and of the third movement of No. 41. But for the most part, his readings combine careful studiousness with plenty of verve and spirit, being especially strong in the way they highlight Mozart’s wonderful balance among instruments – high and low strings, strings and woodwinds, and so forth. Brüggen’s approach to No. 40 is particularly interesting for the way it thoroughly explores the work’s minor-key emphasis while avoiding the intense emotionalism that some conductors bring to (or extract from) this symphony. The result is a performance that is on the cool side – which is likely closer to what Mozart would have intended than are other, somewhat overheated versions. The recording, made in Rotterdam, is very fine, providing a real sense of being in the concert hall where these performances took place. Anyone interested in first-rate period-instrument renditions of Mozart’s final symphonies will be more than satisfied with this two-CD set.

     Satisfaction is somewhat harder to come by in the April and May 2011 recordings of Philharmonia Orchestra performances of Mahler’s Symphonies Nos. 4-6 as interpreted by Lorin Maazel. Maazel’s Mahler cycle at London’s Royal Festival Hall was widely praised in its time, but these very broad, deliberately paced and sometimes rather muddy readings are less satisfactory when heard at home than they apparently were during the concerts themselves. Maazel takes a very expansive view of these works. His No. 4 is one of the longest, if not the absolute longest, currently available: usually running 52 to 55 minutes or so, the symphony runs 61 here – and feels like it. There is considerable beauty in Maazel’s reading, as when he dwells lovingly on the extended string theme in the first movement and proves highly attentive to details such as pizzicati and timpani strokes in the second. The third movement, though, meanders so much that it seems to lose its way – although the “gates of heaven” climax is excellent. The finale, unfortunately, is not a very effective capstone: Sarah Fox’s voice sounds too mature, her delivery is too operatically expressive, and the final verse of Das himmlische Leben practically stalls instead of seeming transcendent. Maazel’s No. 5 runs 76 minutes – this symphony usually lasts about 70 to 72 – but what matters here is less the pacing than the conductor’s handling of the individual movements. The first, in particular, limps instead of marching, while the second opens strongly and dramatically but soon bogs down. The other three movements are better: the third, which is well paced, is broad but not too slow, with fine horn playing and effective timpani; the fourth starts very quietly indeed and is beautifully expressive throughout; and the fifth builds well to its climax, with fine playing from all sections. In Symphony No. 6, the length is a truly extraordinary 89 minutes, and again, what matters is not the inherent pacing but the way Maazel chooses to use the time. The first movement’s march is somewhat flaccid, and Maazel swoons rather too intensely when the lovely second theme appears – and by about 15 minutes into this 26-minute opening, the music has achieved stasis that Maazel apparently wants but that Mahler surely did not. Maazel takes the scherzo second – the order of the middle movements of this symphony remains a matter of dispute, with Mahler himself never having quite made up his mind – and here matters start strongly but soon slow to a point where the forward momentum practically stops. The third and fourth movements, however, are first-rate. The Andante is warm, expressive and involving from start to finish. And the huge finale builds well, with Maazel contrasting its sections effectively while still maintaining an overall sense of the movement’s scale and shape – something that was lacking in the first movement. In all, this set of three Mahler symphonies gets a (+++) rating: there are excellent elements here, but also a number of missteps that could easily be overlooked in the emotional atmosphere of a live concert but that inhibit the enjoyment and emotional connection of the music at home.

     Maazel’s handling of Mahler’s Sixth contrasts sharply with the (++++) one from Markus Stenz and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln in a live recording from 2013. It is not just that Stenz’s version is speedier, coming in at less than 82 minutes. Stenz seems to have thought through the symphony’s proportions and overall argument in a way that Maazel also must have but that comes through far more clearly in the very high-quality Oehms SACDs than in the Signum Classics discs (whose sound is adequate but not exceptional). Stenz launches the first movement strongly and maintains its march character throughout its faster sections, allowing the slow ones plenty of breathing room but handling them more as interludes within the march than as competitors with it. Stenz places the Andante second rather than third, a less musically satisfactory although entirely justifiable decision, and he keeps the movement sweet and lovely throughout, its flow strongly contrasted with that of the symphony’s jagged opening. Placing the Scherzo third allows a fine contrast among the first three movements, and Stenz’s Scherzo is very well played throughout, with especially good percussion. Having the Scherzo and finale back-to-back, though, is somewhat awkward, given the intensity of the last movement. Still, Stenz does a top-notch job with the symphony’s conclusion, offering strong and even pacing, a propulsive sense of inevitability interrupted by the famous hammer blows, and particularly outstanding brass playing. There is a cohesiveness to Stenz’s Mahler Sixth that is missing in Maazel’s, and not just because of the different tempos chosen by the two conductors. Stenz, whose Mahler cycle for Oehms now includes all the composer’s completed symphonies except No. 9, finds a unitary message in the Sixth that either eludes Maazel or that Maazel deems less important than the individual elements of the work. The Stenz approach, on balance, is the more involving and emotionally compelling of the two.

(++++) UNDERSTANDABLE MISUNDERSTANDINGS

Shark Kiss, Octopus Hug. By Lynn Rowe Reed. Illustrations by Kevin Cornell. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $14.99.

I Am Otter. By Sam Garton. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $16.99.

A Piece of Cake. By LeUyen Pham. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $16.99.

     One of the more amusing ways to make points about friendship and acceptable behavior for kids ages 4-8 – and to tell a good story – is to have characters mess things up significantly, then straighten everything out at the end. This approach works even better if the eventual straightening out will be obvious to young readers (or to adults reading them the books) from the start. Thus, Lynn Rowe Reed’s Shark Kiss, Octopus Hug quite clearly involves a large-mouthed but not-too-toothy kissable shark and an eight-armed, good-for-a-hug anytime octopus – as Kevin Cornell’s illustrations make abundantly clear. But Reed avoids the obvious until the very end of this story. She does indeed have Charlie the shark and Olivia the octopus, “the best friends the ocean had ever seen,” desiring, respectively, hugs and kisses – but it never occurs to either of them to offer affection to the other. Instead, Charlie and Olivia spend their time watching families play on the beach, and that play includes plenty of kissing and hugging. So Charlie and Olivia, pictured with suitably adorable expressions as they observe the humans, try to find ways to participate in the affection-fest. They start by simply offering hugs and kisses, but that scares the kids away. Then Charlie decides to do a one-man “Shark-speare on the Beach” show in order to get hugs afterwards, while Olivia opens a beach art gallery to get kisses from her fans; but neither artistic endeavor helps at all. The fishy friends offer free rides to the kids, but the parents won’t let their kids go. So Charlie and Olivia decide to stage an eating contest with hugs and kisses as prizes – but all Charlie knows how to make is “the most delicious algae soufflé you’ll ever taste,” and the beachgoers don’t consider that delicious at all: “Everyone ran away,” in one of Cornell’s funniest illustrations. Poor Charlie – now he really needs a hug. And poor Olivia – now she really needs a kiss. And just when things seem darkest, the two friends come up with the solution that kids reading the book will likely have seen from the start: Olivia wraps all her arms around Charlie, Charlie puckers up, and everything ends happily – doubly so when a little girl and dog notice the two friends embracing and come back to the water’s edge to join them. Of course, the entire problem could have been easily avoided without the unnecessary misunderstanding that gets the whole book going – but then there wouldn’t have been any warmly amusing story to tell.

     Warmth, amusement and misunderstanding also combine in I Am Otter, Sam Garton’s tale of an unusual pet, the pet’s devoted stuffed-animal friend, and the human with whom pet and friend share a home. Otter narrates the book, referring to the human as Otter Keeper and the friend simply as Teddy (which is sensible, since the friend is an old teddy bear). Roly-poly little Otter is left on Otter Keeper’s doorstep one day and quickly adopted, being given Teddy for reassurance and as a playmate. Sure enough, the two become inseparable, with Teddy merely being a stuffed toy but with Otter behaving much like a human child, drawing pictures and riding in a toy car and even singing karaoke. Unfortunately for Otter (and Teddy), all their fun with Otter Keeper is confined to the weekend, since “every Monday we get bad news: Otter Keeper will be going to work.” Otter tries a variety of amusing ways to prevent that from happening, but all are unsuccessful, so he and Teddy decide that if Otter Keeper has a job, they should have jobs, too. And so they create “a toast restaurant” after Otter reads several cookbooks, one of them upside-down and one actually being a magazine called “Wok Weekly.” Well, things do not exactly go smoothly, with all the toys lined up as customers not having reservations or money and with Teddy, who is in charge of such things, not always getting toast orders right (one plate has a banana on it; another has a piggy bank spread with jam). Things do not improve after Otter fires Teddy and replaces him with Giraffe (also a stuffed toy): the wordless two-page illustration in the center of the book, showing the gigantic mess that the kitchen has become, is laugh-out-loud funny. Things are not so amusing for Otter, though: he realizes that Otter Keeper will be home soon, after which “things had to be cleaned up” and all the toys must be put back in the toy box. But then – another problem! Teddy is missing! And the last part of the book is a frantic and funny search by Otter and Otter Keeper for Teddy, after which all three characters are reunited and Otter and Otter Keeper, both completely exhausted, end up sound asleep at the kitchen table. I Am Otter piles misunderstanding upon misunderstanding until everything finally works out just fine – well, not entirely so for Otter Keeper, who goes off to work in the morning in his bathrobe and with the Z’s over his head indicating that he is still mostly, if not entirely, asleep. At least, though, as Otter says, “I have my best friend back,” and that is what matters.

     What matters in A Piece of Cake is that Mouse is too kind and Little Bird lives too far away from him. Mouse has baked Little Bird a birthday cake, but as he walks along to Little Bird’s home, he keeps encountering friends who think the cake looks delicious and ask for a piece of it – offering Mouse something in return that Mouse is too kind to refuse. So the cake gets smaller and smaller, while Mouse gets a variety of objects that the other animals say he will find useful but whose uses he cannot quite figure out; and Mouse is quite sure that those objects – a cork, wire, net and flyswatter – will not be good birthday gifts for Little Bird. Indeed, Mouse gets sadder and sadder as the cake gets smaller and smaller, and eventually arrives at Little Bird’s house without any cake at all. But Little Bird, “who was a very clever bird,” thanks Mouse and suggests that the two friends take a walk together – and as they do, they pass the same animals as before, in reverse order, and come up with trades that do make sense. Interestingly, LeUyen Pham invites young readers themselves into misunderstandings here, making the book unusually clever. Cow, for example, has lost a soap-bottle cap and would like a cork for the bottle, and Mouse has one – but instead of giving Cow the cork, Little Bird gives the cow the wire, which can be twisted into a loop and used for blowing soap bubbles. Bear wants something to swat bees that are annoying him, but instead of giving him the flyswatter, Little Bird gives him the cork “to close up the hole of the hive, so the bees can’t come out.” In this way, all the unhelpful items given to Mouse become helpful – in unexpected ways – for the various animals. And Little Bird makes just the right trades, getting milk from Cow, honey from Bear, nuts from Squirrel and eggs from Chicken, all of which become the ingredients for Mouse to make another cake, one “that looked and tasted even better than the first one.” And this time, Mouse and Little Bird and all the other animals get pieces – a very happy ending to a story in which misunderstanding is turned to everyone’s advantage.

(++++) SCHOOL, DAZED

Big Nate: Mr. Popularity. By Lincoln Peirce. Harper. $9.99

Super Silly School Poems. By David Greenberg. Pictures by Liza Woodruff. Orchard Books/Scholastic. $6.99.

     School always plays a prominent role in Lincoln Peirce’s Big Nate comics, but it is particularly important in the latest compilation, Mr. Popularity. This is not because of the strip “written” by Public School 38 itself: “Here’s a tip for the youthful 6^th grader/ who considers himself a school hater:/ Though I’m mortar and brick, and I can’t run a lick/ I’ll catch up to you sooner or later.” It is not because of the sequence in which Nate discovers that his substitute teacher is, like Nate himself, a cartoonist, or a would-be one, anyway. No, it is because of the extended series in which Nate decides to run for class president and, against all odds and every possible expectation, actually wins – by one vote. Peirce so often makes Nate a loser, tripping himself up at every turn, that it is easy to forget that Nate has a variety of talents that he displays, admittedly intermittently, in the strip. He is, for example, a first-rate chess player. In any case, Nate quickly finds that the reality of being class president is not quite what he expected. Despite his offer to take over the faculty lounge as his private office, the principal turns him down. His nemesis, brainiac Gina, who has been elected treasurer, tells him that “being sixth-grade class president is NOT that big a deal. It’s not like you have any POWER!” So Nate decides to assert himself and, incidentally and as an afterthought, do some good, by raising money for the local soup kitchen. This even earns him praise from his other nemesis, Mrs. Godfrey – who notices “your enthusiasm, your determination, and your work ethic,” and says that she expects “those admirable qualities to carry over into your SCHOOLWORK from now on.” Oops. Of course, the presidential matter is not the only school-related one here. There are also several sports sequences – Nate is school soccer goalie and on the basketball team – plus yet another of Nate’s perpetual plots to get his crush, Jenny, to go out with him…this one involving the temporary departure of Jenny’s boyfriend, Artur (the super-nice, super-competent student whose unassuming sweetness drives Nate crazy). There are various non-school sequences in Mr. Popularity as well: adventures in snow shoveling, problems with Nate’s ever-clueless father and shopaholic sister, rehearsals with “Enslave the Mollusk” (the band Nate and his friends Francis and Teddy have formed), and so on. But school is the focus here, complete with Nate’s usual detention stints (a point of pride with him) and even some sessions with the school counselor (which, like so much else at school, do not go quite the way Nate would like them to). Nate is scarcely a role model for 11-to-12-year-olds, but he has enough redeeming qualities, including stick-to-it-iveness and surprising (if occasional) doses of charm, so that this and other Big Nate collections are a lot of fun.

     School is also the focus, obviously, of David Greenberg’s Super Silly School Poems, a thin and easy-to-read collection on some expected topics and some unexpected ones. One expected poem is “My Teacher Is a Mind Reader,” which begins, “If you as much as whisper/ Your teacher is aware.” Another is “My Dog Ate My Homework,” which has only four lines: “More than crunchy biscuits/ More than juicy meat/ Homework is the food/ That doggies love to eat.” But then there are less-typical topics, such as “The Extremely Modern School Bathroom,” in which “The auto-flush toilet’s great/ There’s just one minor issue/ The toilet paper roll/ Is completely out of tissue.” Or “Snakes on the Loose!” – which starts, “Just before lunchtime/ All the snakes got loose/ You tried to get them back/ But it wasn’t any use,” and ends with the serpents E-mailing their friends to come join them at school. The poems are short; in fact, the whole book is short (32 pages). And Greenberg’s verse is nicely complemented by the amusing Liza Woodruff illustrations. The mixture of anticipated and unanticipated topics does not work terribly well, though, and not all kids will enjoy poems such as “The Tastiest Taste,” which ends with praise of boogers, or “The Worst Smell of All,” which compares the smell of a teacher’s perfume to “the smell of a class full of kids/ After recess when they sweat/ When none of the windows open/ And their tummies are, well, upset.” Still, this (+++) collection has enough high points to balance the low ones, although reading it during school is probably not the best possible idea.