(+++) CHILDHOOD PERILS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Overcoming ADHD: Helping Your Child Become Calm, Engaged, and Focused—Without a Pill. By Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D., with Jacob Greenspan. Da Capo. $25.

Making Friends: What You Need to Know about Your Child’s Friendships. By Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer. Da Capo. $13.

     If you have experienced the heartbreak of a child with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder – or experience the condition, or the closely related attention-deficit disorder, yourself – you knows that the primary current treatment is pharmacological: Ritalin and other drugs are the first-line approach of medical professionals from pediatricians to psychiatrists. Ritalin is in fact the most commonly prescribed of all psychostimulant drugs; others that are often used are Adderall and Concerta. These medicines can sometimes be remarkably effective – but not all the time. They can have side effects, especially in long-term use, that can include psychosis, drug addiction, withdrawal symptoms and more. And many parents are understandably wary of using a psychoactive drug on their children unless there is no alternative. Stanley Greenspan says there is one: a form of behavior modification that gets at the root causes of a particular child’s ADD or ADHD and works to eliminate the problems that cause the condition to express itself. Overcoming ADHD is a bold book, willing to look past the apparent simplicity of using a pill to counter a life-altering condition toward a more difficult and time-consuming approach that has the potential to improve patients’ long-term living conditions. Greenspan thinks of attention as “a dynamic, active process involving many parts of the nervous system at the same time,” which means that if any part (or several parts) of that system malfunction, ADD or ADHD can result. If this analysis is correct, it follows that finding the malfunctioning area of the nervous system and correcting whatever is making it misfire can lead to mitigation, if not outright cure, of ADD or ADHD. Greenspan breaks his “comprehensive intervention approach” down into seven areas: strengthening motor function (balance, coordination, etc.); helping plan and sequence action thoughts (verbal sequencing, response to visual cues and more); modulating response to sensations; reflective thinking (helping a child know his or her own strengths and weaknesses and adapt to them); building self-confidence; improving family dynamics; and creating a healthful physical environment. Even this brief overview should indicate just how difficult Greenspan’s program is to implement in real-world (as opposed to clinical or inpatient) circumstances. The single element of modifying sensation response, for example, first requires figuring out whether a child is “sensory craving” or “sensory overreactive,” then determining in what ways the out-of-kilter sensory response manifests itself, then modifying the child’s environment to help the child adapt. Try doing that while raising other children, holding down a job (or two in a two-career household), and taking care of one’s own health. And this is but a small part of the time-intensive complexity required to implement Greenspan’s ideas. Thus, if Overcoming ADHD has a significant flaw, it is in minimizing the importance of having Ritalin and similar medicines available not only for the benefit of a child with ADD or ADHD but also for the benefit of siblings and parents. For parents determined not to give psychoactive medicines to children with attention-related disorders, Greenspan points the way toward a potentially excellent alternative approach to treatment, and provides the basics of how to go about implementing it. But there is an underlying naïveté to some of what Greenspan says – for example, on top of all the other things going on in their lives and their ADD/ADHD child’s, parents should have “regular time with each other in the evening not just to discuss the child but also to nurture one another.” Greenspan’s ideas are excellent, but they are also very time-consuming and very, very difficult for already stressed families to put into practice – a fact of life to which Greenspan pays far too little attention in formulating what is otherwise a thoughtful approach to a serious health problem.

     Any family dealing with ADD/ADHD would agree that the problem is a serious one, worthy of at least a book-length discussion. But what is the justification for a book about kids making friends with other kids – something that seems to come naturally to almost all children? Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer believes parents must direct and monitor their children’s friendships when the kids are young, with an eye toward helping them be socially successful as teenagers and in adulthood. This is at best an arguable proposition, although Hartley-Brewer seems to consider it almost self-evident. It seems more reasonable to suggest that parents be aware of difficulties their children have in forming and sustaining friendships – and in fact, Making Friends is in large part about how to handle friendship-related troubles, such as shyness, bullying (both real-world and online), cliques, imaginary friends and more. Hartley-Brewer deserves credit for including so many “tips” (set aside in the book in boxes, with the tips themselves separated by bullet points) that can help parents who choose to follow her lead as regards various aspects of friendship. For example, tips “to help a child become less clingy” include keeping important family relationships regular and secure; frequently telling him or her how lovable he/she is and how important he/she is to you; showing in small ways that you think about him/her even when you are apart; and more. Tips “if your child becomes the butt of gossip and rumor” include taking his/her feelings seriously, boosting his/her self-esteem, listening and empathizing without trying to fix the problem, monitoring any offensive text messages, and so on. Making Friends starts before elementary school and runs until middle school – a friendship minefield of a different sort – with Hartley-Brewer suggesting stages of friendship that mesh with a child’s age and grade level. This is a bit too facile, as is her underlying belief in parental direction of friendship in general. But given the fact that many children have friendship-related problems at various times, Hartley-Brewer’s book can be a useful resource for parents who encounter bumps along the social-relationship road and want to help their children find ways to get past those obstacles safely and with their ability to make and maintain friendships intact – or, even better, improved.

(++++) WHERE OPERETTA WENT

Edward German: Tom Jones. Marianne Hellgren Staykov, Richard Morrison, Heather Shipp, Donald Maxwell, Simon Butteriss, Richard Suart, Gaynor Keeble, Giles Davies, Paul Carey Jones, Ashley Bremner; National Festival Orchestra and Chorus conducted by David Russell Hulme. Naxos. $17.99 (2 CDs).

Lehár: Friederike. Kristiane Kaiser, Sylvia Schwartz, Klaus Florian Vogt, Daniel Behle; Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Münchner Rundfunkorchester conducted by Ulf Schirmer. CPO. $33.99 (2 CDs).

     The middle and late 19^th century were operetta’s golden age. Gilbert and Sullivan regaled British audiences with topsy-turvy plots and sly parodies of grand opera. Jacques Offenbach ruled in France and was perhaps the greatest practitioner of the operetta form anywhere. Franz von Suppé brought the Offenbach style to Vienna, where the homegrown approach of Johann Strauss, Jr., flourished as well. But by century’s end, operetta had become rather tired – and was decades away from its later transformation into the modern musical. It was primarily the works of Franz Lehár and a handful of other composers (such as Emmerich Kálmán and Karl Michael Ziehrer) that kept the form going in the 20^th century. But different composers took it in very different directions, as these new recordings of two less-known works show.

     Edward German (1862-1936) provides a direct link to the Gilbert and Sullivan lineage: Sullivan himself once said that only German could succeed him at the height of success in operetta. In fact, German completed Sullivan’s final operetta, The Emerald Isle, with libretto by Basil Hood, after Sullivan died in 1900; and a few years later, Gilbert approached German to write an operetta based on Gilbert’s The Wicked World – which eventually became the unsuccessful Fallen Fairies (1909), the last stage work by either Gilbert (who died in 1911) or German himself. In his more successful productions, German often attempted to take British operetta into a more avowedly nationalistic realm, not only through his best-known work, Merrie England (1902), but also through A Princess of Kensington and other pieces. Yet his most accomplished work, even if not his most famous, may well be Tom Jones (1907), which has a quintessentially British source (Henry Fielding’s picaresque novel) but a “love eventually conquers all” theme that transcends both time and place. The workmanlike libretto by Alexander Thompson and Robert Courtneidge follows a simplified version of Fielding’s plot (although not its eroticism) rather closely, as the foundling Tom and squire’s daughter Sophia fall in love, are separated by issues of class and circumstance, and are eventually united. David Russell Hulme conducts the National Festival Orchestra and Chorus with a strong hand and considerable attention to the nuances of German’s music – which is better than the libretto. The Morris Dance, Jig and Gavotte, all imitative of old musical styles, are particularly attractive. And the soloists handle their parts with charm and a certain level of appropriate coyness. Marianne Hellgren Staykov does a lovely job with Sophia’s For to-night; Heather Shipp as her maid, Honour, sounds delightful in The Green Ribbon; Simon Butteriss, as the servant Gregory, handles the West Country accents of Gurt-Uncle Jan Tappit well; and Richard Morrison as Tom sounds especially good in If Love’s Content, with emotion-laden cadences straight out of Lehár, and A Soldier’s Scarlet Coat, a number (with words by Harry Bestwick) that was added after the operetta’s first London run. It is perhaps inevitable to look for influences of Sullivan in the music, and there are some to be found: a couple of patter songs and an Act I number, Here’s a Paradox for Lovers, that resembles a madrigal of Sullivan’s type. But by and large, German’s music sounds little like Sullivan’s, and many elements of this operetta’s structure – including the very operatic finales to Acts I and II and a finely wrought chorus that opens the whole production – clearly point British operetta in new directions, although in point of fact neither German nor anyone else really took it beyond this. It is a pleasure to be able to hear this first-ever complete recording of the music of Tom Jones. Indeed, the music is more than complete: the recording contains, as a bonus, three numbers that were dropped after the original production. However, it is a shame that the dialogue – which remains under copyright until 2019 – could not be included.

     Unlike German, Lehár continued looking for new directions for operetta for decades after his greatest success, The Merry Widow (1905) – eventually creating, in 1934, a work that was neither quite operetta nor quite grand opera, Giuditta, and considering it his legacy (although audiences have never agreed). Between the early years of the century and that final work, Lehár constantly sought to expand the reach of operetta both musically and dramatically. His sad endings became as legendary as his long professional relationship with tenor Richard Tauber, for whom Lehár wrote so many of his later starring roles. In the 1920s, Lehár created three works focused on real historical figures: Paganini (first performed in 1925), about the great violinist; Der Zarewitsch (1926), loosely based on the self-imposed exile of Alexei, son of Peter the Great; and Friederike (1928), whose protagonist is none other than Goethe. The first two of these are operettas, but Lehár vigorously opposed that designation for Friederike, calling it a Singspiel – a term that harks back to such works as Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio. The Singspiel is in fact the ancestor of operetta, and the word clearly connoted to Lehár something deeper and more serious than the word “operetta.” Lehár described Friederike as his most deeply felt work, and indeed it has an inward-looking quality that his previous stage creations do not. The libretto is by Fritz Löhner-Beda and Ludwig Herzer (who later wrote Das Land des Lächelns, while Löhner-Beda became coauthor of Giuditta). It uses Goethe’s own words liberally and integrates Goethe’s tale Die Neue Melusine into the story, which is essentially one in which the young Goethe finds love with Friederike but must abandon her to journey to Weimar and pursue his higher calling. Goethe’s wonderful aria, O Mädchen, mein Mädchen – written for Tauber – is a highlight of Friederike, but Friederike’s lovely and heartfelt Warum hast du mich wachgeküßt? (after which she nobly gives Goethe the freedom to leave her) is equally affecting. Ulf Schirmer and the cast in the new CPO recording of Friederike give this work the seriousness it deserves, with Klaus Florian Vogt as Goethe and Kristiane Kaiser as Friederike playing particularly well against each other. The Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Münchner Rundfunkorchester handle their roles smoothly and with excellence. So do members of the Bayerische Theaterakademie August Everding, who speak the dialogue that is so crucial in a Singspiel. Unfortunately, as in all recent CPO operetta recordings, no libretto is provided or offered online, so non-German speakers are left floundering – a particularly unfortunate circumstance when it comes to Friederike, whose dialogue is crucial. Listeners who can overlook this significant omission will find this recording an excellent one, fully in tune with Lehár’s stage of musical development and the increasingly dramatic – and sad – content of his stage productions.

(++++) A DOZEN DIFFERENT DELIGHTS

Einojuhani Rautavaara: 12 Concertos. Elmar Oliveira, violin; Marko Ylönen, cello; Esko Laine, double bass; Reija Bister, harp; Marielle Nordmann, harp; Patrick Gallois, flute; Richard Stoltzman, clarinet; Kari Jussila, organ, Ralf Gothóni, piano; Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano; Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra; Tapiola Sinfonietta; Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra; Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; Leif Segerstam, Max Pommer, Jean-Jacques Kantorow, Juha Kangas, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Vladimir Ashkenazy, conductors. Ondine. $29.99 (4 CDs).

     What a wealth of music, and what a wealth of expression, is here! Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara (born 1928) is not exactly a household name, yet he is considered one of his nation’s greatest composers since Jean Sibelius. This wonderful four-CD set – a compilation of performances recorded between 1989 and 2004 – includes all concertos and concerto-like works that Rautavaara has composed to date. A number of them are quite wonderful, and practically all showcase different elements of this composer’s creativity.

     The works date to a variety of times in Rautavaara’s compositional life. The three piano concertos, for example, are from 1969, 1989 and 1998. All are in the traditional three movements, but all are quite different. Rautavaara wrote the first for himself, and it is fairly simple, since he is a good pianist but not a world-class one. The second was written for Ralf Gothóni, who performs it here, and the third (called “Gift of Dreams”) for Vladimir Ashkenazy, who plays and conducts it. In fact, Ashkenazy requested a work that he could both play and conduct, and that affected Rautavaara’s handling of the solo part. But what is interesting in listening to all three concertos is to hear how little the external elements – Ashkenazy’s request and Rautavaara’s own limited technique – affect the sound of the works. All three of the concertos blend cluster writing and other modernist techniques with a more classical approach, with some highlights being the concluding samba of No. 1 and the well-managed stylistic integration of No. 3.

     Rautavaara’s first string concerto was written in 1968 for cello; it is, in fact, his first concerto for any instrument. In the traditional three movements, it comes clearly from the Romantic tradition in its grand melodies and virtuoso writing for the solo performer. In 1977, Rautavaara wrote his Violin Concerto and was clearly at a different point in his thinking both stylistically and structurally. This is a two-movement work that ranges in style from the Romanticism of the Cello Concerto to a much more modern-sounding, texturally fragmented approach. Then, in 1980, Rautavaara wrote a concerto for double bass; it is called “Angel of Dusk” and has three movements subtitled (so to speak) beneath its overall title: “His First Appearance,” “His Monologue” and “His Last Appearance.” The second movement is the heart of the work, and its title is apt, since it is a very extended (almost nine-minute) cadenza for the soloist. Although in no way directly descended from the music of Giovanni Bottesini, the great 19^th-century double-bass player who composed extensively for his instrument, Rautavaara’s concerto is a worthy successor, challenging both the virtuoso capabilities and the expressive capacity of the largest instrument in the string family.

     The harp is a string instrument as well, at least in a sense, and Rautavaara has written both a concerto-like one-movement Ballad for Harp and Strings (1973/1981) and a full-scale three-movement Harp Concerto (2000). The earlier, 10-minute work is pleasant and nicely constructed, but the later one is more unusual: Rautavaara decided to find a way to overcome the reality that the harp is easily drowned out by a full orchestra, so he scored the concerto to include two “assisting harps” that broaden the solo sound and give the harp’s delicacy a considerable boost. Both the harp concertos are interesting works with something of the experimental about them – not Rautavaara’s strongest concertos, but testimony to his skill in creating pieces for many types of solo instruments.

     There are wind concertos in this set, too. The four-movement Flute Concerto, titled “Dancing with the Winds,” dates to 1975 and actually requires the soloist to handle four instruments: concert flute, bass flute, alto flute and piccolo. Patrick Gallois is especially distinguished here, sounding equally at home with all four instruments and delivering lovely tone throughout – with the more piercing piccolo fitting the work’s scherzo beautifully. The Clarinet Concerto (2001) was written for and with the assistance of Richard Stoltzman, who plays it here with a fine combination of virtuoso dexterity and middle-movement songfulness.

     At the most basic level of sound production, the organ is a wind instrument, and Rautavaara has written a sort-of concerto for this grandest of instruments. It is called “Annunciations,” dates to 1977, and is for organ, brass quintet and symphonic winds. There is a certain mysticism to this concerto that may put some listeners in mind of Olivier Messiaen, for all the difference in sound and compositional technique. Strictly from a sonic standpoint, it is the second-most-unusual of Rautavaara’s concertos.

     The most unusual of all is the Concerto for Birds and Orchestra, “Cantus Arcticus” (1972). The birdsong comes from tapes made by Rautavaara himself in northern Finland – and the taped birds contrast strangely and surprisingly effectively with the rather Romantic scoring of the orchestral part. Rautavaara is far from the first composer to use recorded birdsong – Respighi included a taped nightingale in Pines of Rome in 1924, causing controversy that still sometimes reemerges today – but Rautavaara handles the integration of the birds with the orchestra over a long period (almost 20 minutes) very effectively, creating a highly unusual work that has become one of his most popular.

     All the solo playing in this four-CD set is exemplary, and the orchestras – especially the Helsinki Philharmonic, which plays eight of these 12 works – handle their roles with a cogent understanding of and empathy for Rautavaara’s style. Now in his 80s, Rautavaara has not written a concerto since 2001 – but if he does write more, he could scarcely hope for them to be more effectively presented than are the dozen heard in this CD set.

(++++) REPEAT PERFORMANCES

Encore, Opera Cat! By Tess Weaver. Illustrated by Andréa Wesson. Clarion. $16.

Duck & Goose Find a Pumpkin. By Tad Hills. Schwartz & Wade. $6.99.

     Encore, Opera Cat! really is an encore: Tess Weaver and Andréa Wesson’s first book about the musical feline was simply called Opera Cat. In this sequel, the talented Alma tires of singing only within the confines of Madame SoSo’s apartment – a complete layout of which opens the book. Alma “dreamed of singing onstage…thrilling people with her voice.” But this is not so simple for a cat, and even when Madame SoSo decides that she really must tell Maestro about Alma and arrange for a human-feline duet, things do not go well: Maestro is preoccupied, “checking to see if she had a fever” when Madame SoSo becomes insistent. So cat and diva hatch a plan to disguise Alma and bring her on stage in Switzerland; but things get derailed, so to speak, when they try to board the train and Madame SoSo is told that pets are not allowed with people and Alma must travel in the baggage car. “It was a long, cold ride” for Alma, and then there is a problem with her disguise, which cannot conceal her whiskers, feline paws or tail – or the fact that she is, after all, the size of a cat. It is only when the dejected Alma makes a wrong turn and finds herself accidentally on stage – to the astonishment of Maestro, the orchestra and the audience – that this cat’s impossible dream comes true. Alma sings as wonderfully as Madame SoSo always knew she would: “I’ve never heard anyone sing about love with such passion,” says Maestro after the performance. In both narration and illustration, this is an utterly delightful fairy tale – and the two-page spread showing how “opera has never been the same since” Alma’s triumph, complete with dogs and cats galore enjoying the ambience of the opera house, is simply marvelous. Now what will Weaver and Wesson do for another encore?

     Tad Hills creates sequel after sequel in his ongoing stories of the small-bodied, huge-beaked Duck and Goose, with Duck & Goose Find a Pumpkin being a board book with an autumnal twist. Filled with orange and other fall colors, it is a typically simple Hills story: the two friends search for a pumpkin after they find another friend, Thistle, carrying one. But Duck and Goose aren’t quite sure where pumpkins come from – a leaf pile, an apple tree, under water? So they search and search without success until Thistle suggests they try…a pumpkin patch, where they manage to discover one so big that it takes both of them to lift and carry it. Easy to read, charmingly written with minimal text, and illustrated with Hills’ usual expressiveness (he does great things with eyes and the tilt of an avian head), Duck & Goose Find a Pumpkin is more than a seasonal treat – it’s another delicious helping of friendship on the cute side.

(+++) FIRST VISITS

The Poisons of Caux, Book One: The Hollow Bettle. By Susannah Applebaum. Illustrations by Jennifer Taylor. Knopf. $16.99.

The Clockwork Dark, Book 1: The Nine Pound Hammer. By John Claude Bemis. Random House. $16.99.

Malice. By Chris Wooding. Illustrated by Dan Chernett. Scholastic. $14.99.

     First-time novelists Susannah Applebaum and John Claude Bemis both have the same basic idea: a sprawling, wide-ranging, multifaceted fantasy-adventure for preteens and young teenagers, packed with friendships and mysteries and the inevitable confrontation between good and evil. But Applebaum’s The Poisons of Caux and Bemis’ The Clockwork Dark approach their underlying quest tales in tremendously different ways. Applebaum uses the trappings of fairy tales to frame her story. There is an 11-year-old heroine, Ivy Manx, niece of an “apotheopath healer” who has disappeared from a kingdom now ruled by an evil king and queen. Ivy’s search for her uncle is the basis of the quest story, which takes place amid familiar character types: “In the ancient walled city of Templar, Arsenious Nightshade was suffering badly from a cramp in his royal foot. …It had been over a year since he’d drawn the country’s attention to his embarrassing disfigurement. …He’d endured smelly ointments and mustard poultices, bitter teas and mud baths. Still, he suffered so, enduring shooting pains and muscle spasms. …The King of Caux, the notorious King Nightshade, was a small man and painfully thin to look at. The dull light of the gray morning added nothing to his dreary complexion from the front and almost gave up entirely as he turned away.” Yet his queen is even more unpleasant – a regular Lady Macbeth for the preteen set. The king has a deaf, “gluttonous lump” of a brother, and servants bearing such names as Lowly Boskoop – no question who the bad guys are here. The king and queen have poisoned all that is good about Caux, and indeed, poisoning is common in the kingdom, which means food tasters are crucial members of the citizenry – while they live, anyway – and that fact helps Ivy get together with one taster, Rowan, who joins her on her quest after accidentally poisoning 20 of the king’s men. Among the other offbeat characters is a white boar named Poppy (“Rowan was easily endeared to pigs of any variety”). And of course there is a prophecy – “The Prophecy of the Noble Child,” which “was written long ago, but the ancient pages have gone missing from their binding.” The prophecy says “that a child of noble birth – a child of extraordinary circumstance – will banish the darkness from the forests, evil from where it dwells, and restore Caux to truth and light.” You can easily see where this is going – and young readers familiar with fairy tales and other fantasies will quickly see, too. Nevertheless, Applebaum’s clever, often humorous writing, and her willingness to twist genre conventions, make The Hollow Bettle a fast, amusing and enjoyable read. Oh – and the “bettle” of the title is a gemstone, not a misspelling of “beetle,” the insect.

     The Clockwork Dark is much more intense and serious stuff, featuring characters out of American legends rather than ones patterned on fairy-tale types. Here the hero is a 12-year-old orphan named Ray, and his adventure calls on the romance of train travel, the attraction of the circus and the discovery (or rediscovery) of a world in which machines are used for evil and human strength is needed to fight them. The prototypical American tale of this type is of railwayman John Henry’s battle with a steam engine – a fight that the human wins, only to die afterwards with his hammer in his hand. This story has a direct parallel in The Nine Pound Hammer, one of whose characters is John Henry’s son – and the climax of which occurs atop a steam-powered locomotive. But Bemis pulls together a variety of other characters as well, notably a noble but loose-knit group called the Ramblers: sideshow performers and sworn enemies of an evil being known as the Gog. At one point, a peg-legged character named Nel provides some of Ray’s background and his own, saying that he himself was a Rambler “long ago. Until a Hoarhound took my leg off. …The Machine was destroyed, but not the Gog. I was a part of a band of Ramblers – along with your father, Ray – who hunted him down. There was a battle against the Gog’s army: men and beasts of clockwork and frost. Many Ramblers were killed. I was attacked by a Hoarhound. I was fortunate to only lose part of my leg. In the end, the Gog’s army was defeated. But the Gog escaped.” But not forever – and the eventual climactic confrontation involving the Gog, a Hoarhound and the Ramblers is a dramatic and effective one. Some of the characters, notably the sideshow’s crocodile-riding pirate queen, are effective as well, although neither the good guys nor the evil characters seem to have much motivation beyond being, respectively, good and evil: “‘There was a time when I would have considered [the Hoarhound] my greatest construction,’” the Gog reveals at one point. “‘But I have been working on another, one that will soon reshape this sad world into something truly great and useful.’” All that is missing is the nasty laugh of the melodramatic villain. The Nine Pound Hammer is indeed melodramatic, but its intriguing settings and folktale-echoing characters keep it interesting.

     Malice is far from a first novel – Chris Wooding has more than a dozen to his credit – but it is the first volume of a series in which stories are presented through a combination of traditional narrative and comics. It’s a sort of partial graphic novel, told also through E-mails, instant messages, a newspaper story and other multimedia elements. There is a deadly comic book called Malice about which only a few people, some of them doomed, know; those who find the comic but are not ready to enter its world will find that “every – single – panel – was – blank” (with one word per page in Wooding’s book); to enter that world, there are rituals to be observed, including the repeated chanting of the phrase, “Tall Jake, take me away”; and within that world, for those lucky or unlucky enough to get there, are a variety of evil clockwork creations, including creatures that feed on time itself. And there is Tall Jake himself – first seen in 3-D, menacingly glaring from the book’s cover, then shown by Dan Chernett with skeletal thinness and an evil stare within the comic-book sections. Malice, the novel, veers between excitement and self-parody, with characters placed in real danger but also behaving – in the comic-book sections -- with comic-style aplomb. In the narrative, for example, a boy who has not yet found the Malice comic encounters a strange comic-book-store shopkeeper: “His heart was racing. He didn’t want to be caught back here. He wasn’t the kind of boy who was afraid of getting into trouble – ordinarily, the idea of getting shouted at by some fat guy was no big deal – but the shopkeeper was a different matter. Seth had looked into his eyes, and he’d seen emptiness. No passion, no pity. The dead eyes of a predator. That man could be very, very dangerous if he chose to be.” However, within a comic-book section, as characters are being chased by a mechanical monstrosity that throws things at them, one says, “Not a very good shot, is he?” And another replies, “You ever try throwing a MOOSE? They’re not built to be aerodynamic.” As a whole, Malice does not quite hang together, but its clever presentation and undeniable energy make it the thrill ride that Wooding intends it to be, and will undoubtedly and will have readers looking forward to the upcoming sequel, Havoc.

(+++) WIZARDRY BROUGHT DOWN TO EARTH

The Real Wizard of Oz: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum. By Rebecca Loncraine. Gotham Books. $28.

     The great European creator of fairy tales in the 19^th century, Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), had a counterpart in the United States not much later: Lyman Frank Baum (1856-1919). Andersen’s stories were mostly short, building on centuries-old models of Grimm and Perrault fairy tales so effectively that even today, many people believe “The Little Mermaid,” “The Little Match Girl,” “The Ugly Duckling” and others must be part of an old oral tradition rather than the products of one man’s literary mind. Baum’s tales, perhaps influenced by the expansiveness of the nation in which he was writing, are on a grander scale, delivered in particular in 14 Oz novels suffused with geography, a sprinkling of politics, and attempts to lend some depth to characters beyond what was customary in children’s literature of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

     There is no shortage of biography of Baum, and Rebecca Loncraine’s strictly chronological book is a worthy addition to the field. Loncraine is a British journalist and creative-writing teacher, viewing Baum from a literary angle and in the context of fairy-tale creation in general. Thus, in writing about the illustrated Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz – a Sunday newspaper feature intended to promote Baum’s second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904) – Loncraine says not only that “the motivation for the series was primarily marketing” but also that “the disoriented, mischievous Ozites would…tell fairy tales (here were stories within stories within stories).” Loncraine’s across-the-pond perspective sometimes leads her to over-interpretation, as when she discusses the two infamous December 1890 editorials in which Baum railed against Native Americans – writing for which two of Baum’s descendants apologized to the Sioux in 2006: “His thoughtless comments were incoherent, full of the pain and frustration of his own life out on the prairie, which surfaced in his writing as irrational emotions fueled by fear and guilt, twisted into terrible anger.” Here, Loncraine doth protest too much, especially when she goes on to lump these long-discredited writings with other elements of Baum’s life as the basis for his move into fantasy: “Baum’s rage against the established church, his badly expressed fury at the terrible history of U.S.-Native American relations, his frustration with the drought, and the failures of his political projects, forced him to look outside his immediate reality, to escape it by plunging into the unseen world of the spirits and imaginary futures.”

     Loncraine is on firmer ground when discussing the Oz books themselves – although her chronological approach means she is two-thirds of the way through her biography before she gets beyond the first and most famous, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). Loncraine is quite insistent on the relationship between Baum’s exterior life and the interior one from which he brought forth his Oz novels and a very large number of other works: “From 1903 to 1910, Baum lived between landscapes. …[H]e conjured tales in luxury hotel suites and first-class carriages, dressed in tailor-made suits, chewing on the best cigars… [But] if Baum’s life now looked on the surface like a graceful swan gliding on the clear waters of wealth and success, he was in reality working frantically to make it appear so, like the swan’s rough, scaly legs that pedal beneath its gleaming body to keep it afloat.” (One would expect a creative-writing teacher to have more literary style than Loncraine does in that last sentence.)

     Loncraine makes some intriguing points about Baum as a writer: “Girl children were always Baum’s favorite rulers, allowing him to make a carnivalesque world in reverse, where little girls are in power.” But, surprisingly for someone focused on her subject’s real-world life, she does not always connect these insights immediately to Baum’s personal beliefs and activities: he was an ardent proponent of women’s suffrage. Still, she does a fine job making other connections, including one with Andersen: “Baum thought of himself as an expert in fairy tales, old and new. …Hans Christian Andersen, ‘the glorious Dane,’ as Baum called him, had been the first author, as far as he knew, to originate new folktales. Andersen’s tales were an intimate melding of oldest Danish folk stories and new inventions of his own, and this was the model of the modern writer of fairy stories for Baum. …Baum took himself seriously even if some parts of the press didn’t.”

     Loncraine certainly takes Baum seriously – perhaps a little too much so. There is not much sense of joy that comes through in this biography – neither Baum’s own happiness nor the enjoyment he has brought to so many readers. And there are some curious missteps. John R. Neill, who illustrated all of Baum’s Oz books except the first, is mentioned only four times, although it was Neill’s illustrations that helped show the Oz books to go beyond the narrow confines of “children’s literature” (not always to Baum’s approbation). W.W. Denslow, who illustrated the first Oz book (1900) but had a complete falling-out with Baum by 1904, is treated at considerably more length.

     It turns out that The Real Wizard of Oz: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum is a very accurate title for Loncraine’s book, which focuses to a far greater extent on the author than on his works. There is a perpetual argument about the extent to which creative artists’ productions reflect their everyday lives; this book will appeal most strongly to readers who believe in a close relationship between the real and imaginary worlds: “Closing off the land of Oz in order to protect it from the outside world mirrored what Baum was trying to do in his own life,” Loncraine writes at one point. Yet even if reality and fantasy entwine closely in Baum’s life and work – a proposition that Loncraine does not really prove – it is certain that Baum’s books, especially those set in Oz, offer readers more joy and temporary escapism than this biographer fully acknowledges.

(++++) ARRANGEMENT POWER

Janáček: Orchestral Suites from the Operas, Volume 3—The Cunning Little Vixen; From the House of the Dead. New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peter Breiner. Naxos. $8.99.

Elgar: Cello Concerto, arranged for Viola; Schnittke: Viola Concerto. David Aaron Carpenter, viola; Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Christoph Eschenbach. Ondine. $16.99.

     The third and final volume of Peter Breiner’s thoughtfully assembled orchestral suites drawn from operas by Leoš Janáček is as effective as the first two. This time the six-movement suites draw from two late works, The Cunning Little Vixen (1924) and From the House of the Dead (first performed in 1930, two year after the composer’s death). There are lighter moments in The Cunning Little Vixen than in most of Janáček’s operas, despite the death of the title character, and Breiner does a good job of assembling a suite that preserves some of the Aesopian moments (such as the wedding celebration and the triumphal dance when the vixen dispossess the badger) as well as the lyrical ones (the lush courtship dance of the vixen and young fox). But there is melancholy throughout the opera and throughout the suite as well, with woodwinds representing late-summer heat, the orchestra depicting the hardships of winter, and solo clarinet and oboe heightening the tragedy of the vixen’s death before the suite ends with the opera’s paean to nature – a message whose ecological awareness seems, if anything, even more timely today than it was in the 1920s. For his suite from Janáček’s final opera – a non-narrative work based on Dostoevsky and filled with bitterness – Breiner intelligently opens with the opera’s overture, whose sounds (including that of chains) pull both operagoers and CD listeners immediately into the prison where the work is set. The middle portion of the suite uses music associated in the opera with the prisoners’ false hopes of liberty, and the work concludes – as does the opera – with musical pessimism. The pairing of these two suites works well on Breiner’s CD, and the New Zealand Symphony, here as in the two earlier volumes, plays very well for him. These suites are particularly effective for people who know the operas from which they are assembled, but even those unfamiliar with Janáček’s stage works will be pulled into his sonic world – and his philosophical one – by Breiner’s well-constructed arrangements.

     The new viola arrangement of Elgar’s Cello Concerto (1919) is less likely to please everyone – although violists, who have few enough grand works to play, will surely welcome it. Hindemith’s viola works, and the concertos by Walton and Bartók, are among the few 20^th-century viola-and-orchestra pieces around, and today’s violists are not fully satisfied by Telemann’s Viola Concerto or the viola arrangements of Bach’s Cello Suites (as tremendously challenging as those are). Nevertheless, the decision to produce a revised viola arrangement of Elgar’s concerto is bound to ruffle some feathers. The basic viola version has impeccable provenance, having been made by Lionel Tertis (1876-1975), for whom Bax, Vaughan Williams and others wrote pieces. Tertis actually played his version for Elgar in 1929, and the composer approved it. But that is not quite the version heard here: this one has been modified by the soloist, David Aaron Carpenter, to produce what Carpenter considers a work more closely attuned to Elgar’s intentions. Given the concerto’s near-classic status, this may well be deemed hubris by a 23-year-old violist making his first recording. So the question is: how does the Tertis/Carpenter version sound? The answer is that it is very effective, filled with lyricism and virtuosity, and played very well indeed by Carpenter, who gets top-notch support from the Philharmonia Orchestra under Christoph Eschenbach. In fact, Carpenter’s modifications occur at the margins, leaving most of the Tertis version intact. However, the interpretation seems a bit lacking in what can only be called maturity: this is an autumnal Elgar work whose depth of meaning Carpenter does not always seem to plumb, even though he gets the notes right. The Elgar arrangement is paired on the CD with a fascinating 1985 viola concerto by Alfred Schnittke, which is in the same slow-fast-slow sequence that Elgar used. This is a concerto that grows as it progresses – each movement is longer than the previous one – and shows the influence of Walton and Shostakovich as well as violist Yuri Bashmet, who inspired it and gave the first performance. Stylistically, Schnittke’s concerto is a synthesis more than a statement of personal style; emotionally, it is a bleak work. Carpenter’s technique here is highly impressive, although some of his heart-on-sleeve gestures can seem a bit over the top. But his overall reading, filled with a kind of intense melodramatic flair, actually fits the music quite well.

(++++) FROM HUNGARY TO NORWAY

Johan Svendsen: Norwegian Rhapsodies Nos. 1-4; Romeo and Juliet; Zorahayda. South Jutland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bjarte Engeset. Naxos. $8.99.

Liszt: Organ Works, Volume 1. Martin Haselböck, organ. NCA. $24.99 (SACD).

     The influence of Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies was widespread, extending even as far as Norway, where Johan Svendsen (1840-1911) used them as a model for four Norwegian Rhapsodies that he wrote in 1876 and 1877. Liszt’s works are “Hungarian” in only a very general sense – many of the supposed folk tunes were actually created by the composer himself in what he thought was the style of Gypsy music – but Svendsen made a real effort to incorporate Norwegian folksong into his works. The first rhapsody features a woodwind tune that was also used by Grieg in the third of his Norwegian Dances. The second combines syncopation, an elegiac theme, some rough good humor and an interesting use of muted strings. The third is distinguished by a timpani transition between its first and second themes. And the fourth features a theme drawn from the Hardanger fiddle music of southern Norway. All the pieces are well orchestrated and carefully constructed; and the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra, although not the smoothest-sounding of ensembles, plays them with verve and sensitivity under Bjarte Engeset’s knowing direction. The CD also includes two well-put-together tone poems, Romeo and Juliet (the Norwegian title is Romeo og Julie) of 1876 (four years before Tchaikovsky’s far more famous work attained its final form) and Zorahayda of 1874. Svendsen’s Romeo and Juliet contrasts a lively theme with an oboe melody perhaps intended to represent love, but sounding more plaintive than passionate. The coda is subdued rather than tragic and dramatic – a touch lacking in emotional punch, although well written. Zorahayda is more effective. It is based on a Washington Irving story about the love of a Moorish princess for a Christian knight. Strings and horn calls are heard at both the start and the end; in between, there is an attractive passage for solo violin with pizzicato accompaniment, and some fine contrast of woodwinds with strings. There is a sense of resignation at the conclusion here, much as in Svendsen’s Romeo and Juliet, but in this case – perhaps because the underlying story is less well known – the ending seems to flow more organically from what has gone before.

     As famous as Liszt was and is for his Hungarian Rhapsodies, tone poems and piano music, he is much less noted as a composer for organ. But he created a substantial body of work for the instrument, ranging from religiously themed pieces (for which the organ would be considered appropriate) to entirely secular virtuoso showpieces (not what one would typically expect of organ music). Martin Haselböck’s first volume of Liszt’s organ music combines both types of works, offering five pieces from different times in Liszt’s life – and with very different intentions. The longest work here is the Fantasy and Fugue on the Choral “Ad Nos, Ad Salutarem Undam” from the Opera “Le Prophète” by Meyerbeer, which lasts nearly half an hour and is monumentally conceived in every way. Despite the religious nature of the underlying material, Liszt’s work is wholly secular, and it generated considerable controversy in his own time as a result. The more forward-looking critics and audience members identified this piece, written in 1850, as a bridge to the future of organ music, while conservatives bemoaned the profanation of an instrument designed to enhance religious sentiment. Haselböck’s performance is a grand one, giving the work its full due and allowing it to flow forth with a scope that is truly remarkable. The interplay and conflict between old-school polyphony and the virtuosity of Liszt’s time set up tensions within the work that lean, in the end, more toward the old-fashioned side – but clearly point the way ahead.

     The other works on Haselböck’s recording are altogether more modest. Andante Religioso (1857-9), one of Liszt’s better-known organ pieces, is a transcription of a movement from the Berg Symphony, his first symphonic poem. Ave Maria I (1853-after 1856) is one of four musical versions that Liszt wrote on the Ave Maria text. Introduction to the Legend of Saint Elisabeth (1862-5) was composed in connection with an oratorio inspired by religious frescoes. And the awkwardly titled Otto Nicolai: Church Festival Overture on the Choral “Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott,” Op. 31, for Organ or Pedal Piano (1844-52) is an adaptation of an adaptation, being Liszt’s version of Nicolai’s version of an overture based on the well-known hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” These are impressive works in their own way – although the extent of Liszt’s involvement with a couple of them is not entirely clear (other composers and performers appear to have had a hand in some of the arrangements). In any case, none of these pieces stakes out the sort of new territory for the organ toward which Liszt started to move with his fantasy and fugue drawn from Meyerbeer’s opera. Haselböck’s balanced, intelligent performances show that he understands Liszt’s organ works very well indeed. Hopefully later volumes in this series will continue to show both the new directions in which Liszt moved and the old ways to which he continued to pay homage.

(++++) MONSTERS, MAYBE

How the Nobble Was Finally Found. By C.K. Williams and Stephen Gammell. Harcourt. $18.

Monsters Don’t Eat Broccoli. By Barbara Jean Hicks. Illustrated by Sue Hendra. Knopf. $16.99.

     The Nobble is not a monster – not exactly. It’s not clear what it is, exactly – it is “something, a creature or an animal or a person or, anyway, a something [with] huge eyes and dangly ears and long hair and two lovely wings and little claws on his fingers and a bunch of nice toes.” The Nobble is mighty cute and mighty lonely, having “never been discovered, or bumped into, or met, or found by anybody, anybody at all,” despite having lived “about four thousand three hundred and twenty-three years and three months and fourteen days.” And thereby hangs a tale – specifically, the story of How the Nobble Was Finally Found, which is as quirky as the Nobble himself. C.K. Williams’ sensitive narration and Stephen Gammell’s lovely and thoroughly strange pictures beautifully fit together in this story of the ultimate loner and how everyone, and everything, needs a friend. The narrative is cleverest in explaining just why no one has ever encountered the Nobble. This has to do with the places he hangs out, such as “in the bottom rung of the number eight…and sometimes he went to play in the space between Wednesday and Thursday, and naturally you’d expect that he’d be mostly by himself there, because in that little space there really wasn’t very much to see at all, except way off in the distance a little glow like a radio dial that the Nobble decided was probably something even farther away, between Friday and Saturday, maybe.” Parents may have to explain the glow of a radio dial to children, and there are a few other references here that bear explaining, too, but by and large, the poetic writing carries the story along very well indeed, as the Nobble realizes that he is lonely and sets out to find – well, something. His encounter with a city is beautifully told – big buildings, for example, are “things that went high up into the air like mountains but were all shiny and square.” The Nobble gets scared, first by a cat and then by a little girl, but it is the girl who helps him by directing him to a phone booth (another item that may require some explanation) and showing him that he is not, in fact, all alone in the world. The conventionality of the book’s conclusion, from the standpoint of plot, does not rob it of its essential charm, and the notion that the little girl hears only laughter when she can no longer see the Nobble and his newfound friend is a monstrously good finishing touch.

     The monsters that don’t eat broccoli are also not exactly monsters, although they certainly look like monsters throughout most of Barbara Jean Hicks’ amusingly rhymed story – which features the refrain, “Fum, foe, fie, fee, monsters don’t eat broccoli!” Kids will have a great time watching the monsters – rendered by Sue Hendra with lots of teeth, plenty of scales and near-constant smiles – explain all the things they do eat, including tractors, “tender trailer tidbits,” redwood trees and boulders. It is only at the very end that the “crunchy, munchy trees” turn out to be – what else? – broccoli, and the monsters “chowing down” on them turn out to be a couple of children who are having a great time eating vegetables. This may be a tad unconvincing to kids who are not crazy about the taste of produce – “WOW, are they delicious!” works in Hicks’ narrative but will not necessarily persuade real-world “monsters” that broccoli, carrots and tomatoes are scrumptious. It’s worth a try, though: Monsters Don’t Eat Broccoli is enjoyable in and of itself, and maybe, just maybe, it will convince your homegrown monsters that they should at least try some of that green stuff on their plates.

(++++) PHILOSOPHER KINGS AND ARTISTIC MASTERS

Marcus Aurelius: A Life. By Frank McLynn. Da Capo. $30.

The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern, Second Edition. By Carol Strickland, Ph.D. Andrews McMeel. $22.99.

     If there was one Roman emperor who most closely approximated the Platonic ideal of government by philosophers, it was Marcus Aurelius, who lived from 121 to 180 A.D. and ruled, jointly or alone, from 161 A.D. until his death. Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, written in Greek between 170 and 180 A.D., anticipate much medieval philosophy and continue to speak to readers today. Frank McLynn’s exhaustively researched biography of the emperor, utilizing numerous primary sources (from Meditations itself to Marcus’ correspondence with his rhetoric teacher, Cornelius Fronto, and much more) as well as commentaries on Marcus through the ages, places the emperor’s work firmly in the context of the wars and political events of his time – and makes that very remote era come alive. Running nearly 700 pages, including 150 of appendices and index, Marcus Aurelius: A Life is a book more to be savored than read at a rapid pace – indeed, McLynn’s frequently lengthy sentences, although well constructed, can take some time to unravel: “Although Marcus sometimes pays lip service to the Stoic view that good and evil arise only from the use of reason and from misperceptions and ‘false representations,’ a strong element in his thinking, in flat contradiction to this (and here we can see the Gnostic element in his thinking), is that evil is a ‘partial’ phenomenon, something that exists in Nature, but not in the realm of reason.” Still, when McLynn wants to make a point quickly, he can and does: Meditations “is a curious work, which has been much misunderstood. …The book – if we may call it that – is a series of personal notes taken on a daily basis, which was a common practice in the ancient world, particularly as an aid to spiritual progress or self-improvement.” Although Marcus never intended Meditations to be published, its survival in two copies – one in the Vatican library, the other in a 1558 edition from a now-lost manuscript – brought Marcus to the admiring attention of such diverse figures as Goethe, John Stuart Mill and Frederick the Great. And Meditations was responsible for much of Alexander Pope’s philosophy as expressed in his elegant Essay on Criticism and, even more tellingly, in his Essay on Man, which McLynn aptly quotes: “All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good; And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, One truth is clear: whatever is, is right.” The philosophical underpinnings of Marcus’ thought are woven expertly by McLynn into the narrative of the Parthian and Germanic wars that dominated his reign, and into family issues involving Marcus and his 30-year marriage to Faustina the Younger: “There is much circumstantial evidence that Marcus found his free-spirited, assertive and sometimes abrasive (the modern euphemism would be ‘feisty’) wife a trial.” Certainly McLynn’s exploration is aided by the fact that Marcus was a multifaceted character and was genuinely concerned with being a good ruler, dedicated to duty and service to Rome and its people. Also, there is fascination aplenty in the wars, revolts, and political machinations of his time. And Marcus’ position as the last of what Machiavelli called Rome’s “five good emperors” – his son and successor, Commodus, was arbitrary, capricious and often embroiled in political intrigue – guarantees the biography a certain heft beyond its sheer physical size. Still, these elements alone would not be enough for a successful study of this ruler and Stoic philosopher. It is to McLynn’s considerable credit that he pulls so many strands of Marcus’ life and thinking so effectively together.

     A far thinner book, Carol Strickland’s The Annotated Mona Lisa knits together even more elements – of which one small one is the Capitoline Hill statue of Marcus Aurelius, dating to 165 A.D. The title of Strickland’s book is a misnomer, implying a narrower focus than this ambitious work actually has. The subtitle, A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern, makes the work’s scope much clearer. In short but information-packed chapters filled with illustrations, intelligent captions, historical data, brief biographies and analyses of paintings, sculptures and architecture, Strickland starts with cave paintings and Stonehenge, moves through Greece and Rome to “the reign of religion” in the Middle Ages, then marches inexorably (and very informatively) through Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, 19^th century and more recent art and artists. Although inevitably somewhat superficial – it runs only 206 pages – The Annotated Mona Lisa is extraordinarily packed with information and some interesting opinions. For example, Strickland pronounces Artemesia Gentileschi (1593-1653) “the first feminist painter” and Caravaggio (1571-1610) “the first Bohemian artist.” The sheer volume of material sometimes leads to errors – in Caravaggio’s specific case, Strickland says he died at age 37 rather than 38 – but in general, the book is accurate, intelligent and well argued. Many of its most useful sections are to be found in boxed and tabular layout. The “Romanticism” box, for example, is a once-over-lightly view of the field’s values (“intuition, emotion, imagination”), inspiration, tone, color, subjects, genres, artistic technique (“quick brushstrokes, strong light-and-shade contrasts”) and composition (“use of diagonal”). The tables comparing various artists of the same time period are even more impressive, such as “How to Tell Them Apart” about Manet, Monet, Renoir and Degas – giving, for each, his subjects, colors, style and advice. Strickland’s wide-ranging interests go far beyond traditional definitions of art, encompassing photography (and its relationship to painting), architecture and more. And she does a wonderful job explaining the various “isms” of art: fauvism, impressionism, abstract expressionism, cubism, modernism, etc. Her opinions of specific artists, sprinkled throughout the text, are pithy and pointed: “The opposite of [Robert] Rauschenberg’s passionate, Jack Daniels-swilling welcome of chaos is the cool calculation of Jasper Johns.” And her forays into humor are welcome in a field that tends to take itself very seriously, as when she calls minimalism “the cool school.” The Annotated Mona Lisa is a wonderful introduction to the art world – and beyond – for anyone who wants a better understanding of the meanings behind all those paintings and sculptures in museums, not to mention all those tourist-attraction buildings that sprinkle cities worldwide.

(+++) SPECTRAL DOINGS

The Book of Ghosts. By Michael Hague and Devon Hague. HarperCollins. $19.99.

Magic Tree House #42: A Good Night for Ghosts. By Mary Pope Osborne. Random House. $11.99.

Magic Tree House Research Guide #20: Ghosts. By Mary Pope Osborne and Natalie Pope Boyce. Random House. $4.99.

     The fictional hauntings in these books are intended to entertain readers ages 6-11, which means they are rather on the mild side – much milder, in fact, than the authors’ names in The Book of Ghosts would seem to indicate: Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce et al. Michael Hague and his son, Devon, have toned down the fearsomeness of some classic horror stories to make them accessible to a younger audience – an approach that works moderately well with tales containing an element of humor (“The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost” by H.G. Wells) but far less well in ones dependent for their effects on the authors’ style (Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Lovecraft’s “The Statement of Randolph Carter,” neither of which is actually a ghost story). Adults who know W.W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw,” Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” or Oscar Wilde’s “The Canterville Ghost” may worry that these retellings will give younger children nightmares, but that is unlikely. The more atmospheric elements of the stories have been stripped from them, and the book’s illustrations – while accurate enough in terms of the tales’ events – are scarcely designed to heighten any frights inherent in the writing. The Hagues do a good job of simplifying the stories while retaining their basic narrative elements, but it is precisely from the atmospheric portions of tales such as Louisa May Alcott’s “The Mummy’s Curse,” Bierce’s “A Diagnosis of Death” and Saki’s “Laura” that readers get a frisson of surprise or terror. None of these nine adaptations provides that, and apparently none of them is intended to. The result is a book more of adventure tales than of ghost stories; even the ones that are about ghosts have little of the unearthly about them here.

     Nor is there anything very frightening or threatening in Magic Tree House #42: A Good Night for Ghosts, which finds brother Jack and sister Annie on a “Merlin Mission” to New Orleans on All Saints’ Day in 1915. The missions in recent Magic Tree House books have tended to be rather thin as this long-running series swings between mythical and real-world locations. The idea this time is to find Louis Armstrong and help him bring his musical gift to the world so that millions of people will be happier. This is not much of a story, and the use of ghosts does not turn it into much more. The ghosts show up toward the end to encourage young Louis, known as Dipper, to pursue a musical career instead of doing the many odd jobs that Jack and Annie find him doing (and with which they help him). There is a little social consciousness here, and a little politics – Dipper talks about enforced separation of whites and blacks, and Jack and Annie promise him that one day a black man will become president of the United States – but by and large, the book is a typical Magic Tree House adventure, with minimal scariness and a foregone conclusion. Fans of the series will, of course, enjoy it.

     They will likely enjoy the latest Magic Tree House Research Guide as well. Here, Mary Pope Osborne and her sister, Natalie Pope Bryce, offer a variety of stories of ghosts that people really have seen, or believe they have seen. There are tales from North Carolina, from Washington, D.C., from England and from other places, including a description of ghost folklore in India, China, Japan and Mexico. Photos of supposedly haunted places are mixed with stories of sightings and drawings of what the ghosts are supposed to look like. There is even a brief look at professional ghost hunters. Like the other books in the Magic Tree House Research Guide series, this one is only tenuously connected to the adventure story to which it is ostensibly linked. But young readers interested in the general subject matter may find this a good starting point for further research – perhaps at some of the locations or using some of the books and Web sites listed at the end of the book.

(+++) OLD-FASHIONED FUN

The Nursery Rhyme Book. Compiled by Helen Cumberbatch. Illustrated by Anne Anderson and Lisa Jackson. Scholastic. $9.99.

The Games Book. By Huw Davies. Illustrated by Lisa Jackson. Scholastic. $9.99.

When the Leaf Blew In. By Steve Metzger. Illustrated by Kellie Lewis. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $5.99.

     The Nursery Rhyme Book and The Games Book, two hardcovers with an old-fashioned appearance, are designed to help families “remember the rhymes of yesterday” and learn “how to play the games of yesterday,” according to their respective subtitles. Old-style layout and illustrations reminiscent of those in books from the past complete the visual picture. The question is: to what sorts of families will the books appeal? The books are designed to inspire nostalgia in parents, helping them connect their children to memories of the parents’ own childhoods and even to earlier times. How well the books work will depend heavily on modern family dynamics. The Nursery Rhyme Book includes quite a number of rhymes that remain familiar today: “Humpty Dumpty,” “Rain, Rain, Go Away,” “Little Bo-Peep,” “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,” and so on. It also offers some rhymes that are still well-known to British children (both this book and The Games Book were originally published last year in England): “Christmas Is Coming,” “Lucy Locket,” “Aiken Drum,” “Ladybird, Ladybird” (known as “Ladybug, Ladybug” in the United States), and others. And then there are some verses that have indeed fallen from popularity in recent times, such as “The Big Ship Sails on the Ally-Ally-Oh,” “Little Polly Flinders,” “Three Children Sliding,” “Heigh-Ho, the Carrion Crow” and “Who Killed Cock Robin?” Parents who find the mixture pleasing – thumb through the book before buying! – will find its pseudo-old-fashioned charm attractive; others may simply not be interested in passing many of these old rhymes along.

     The Games Book will provoke similar interest, or lack of it. Here too there are games that remain quite familiar, such as “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” “Simon Says,” “Tag,” “Hide-and-Seek” and “Pat-a-Cake.” But there are also some with which modern families are unlikely to be familiar: “Fizz Buzz” (a counting game where “fizz” substitutes for numbers divisible by three and “buzz” for ones divisible by seven); “Adder’s Nest” (an attempt to pull one player onto a central object, such as a manhole cover); “Wink Murder” (a game of potential victims, detectives and a make-believe killer); “Crusts and Crumbs” (a two-team tag game); and “Queenie” (a find-who-is-hiding-the-ball game). Many of these games require a fairly large number of cooperative players, and quite a few need a good deal of outdoor space and plenty of adult supervision. Again, this is a book to look through before purchase – parents will know whether their children and their kids’ friends will find these games enjoyably participatory or, in our video-game age, hopelessly slow-paced and out of date.

     When the Leaf Blew In is not an attempt to reinvigorate old-style entertainment, nor is it an old book (it was originally published in 2006 and is now available in paperback). But it does make use of a variation on an old form called cumulative rhyme. Most parents know this technique, even if they do not know what it is called – it is the form in which every line connects back to previous ones, as in “The House That Jack Built,” “The Twelve Days of Christmas” of “For Want of a Nail” (the last of these being one of the poems in The Nursery Rhyme Book). Steve Metzger’s text in When the Leaf Blew In does not rhyme, but the underlying idea is the same: a leaf blows into the barn, so the cow sneezes; the cow’s sneeze causes a spider to land on an owl; that causes the owl to swoop out of the barn; that leads the pig to dive into the mud; and so on. The cause-and-effect cycle, amusingly illustrated by Kellie Lewis, eventually leads right back to the beginning, as we find out why the leaf blew into the barn in the first place – and the whole cycle presumably starts all over again. This is a gently amusing story, featuring animals with pleasantly human expressions and reactions – there is nothing consequential here, but the book is easy to read, and young children will enjoy looking at the pictures.

(++++) MAKING THE FAMILIAR NEW AGAIN

Mozart: Overtures to “La Clemenza di Tito” (plus Marcia), “The Marriage of Figaro” (plus Marcia), “The Magic Flute” (plus Marsch der Priester), “The Abduction from the Seraglio,” “Die Schauspieldirektor,” “Idomeneo” (plus Marcia, Passepied, and Pas seul de Monsieur Legrand, Largo [ballet]), “Mitridate, Rè di Ponto” (plus Marcia), “Don Giovanni,” “Les Petits Riens,” “Bastien und Bastienne,” “Così Fan Tutte.” Norwegian National Opera Orchestra conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini. Naïve. $16.99.

Handel: Water Music, Suites 1-3; Telemann: Water Music (“Hamburg Ebb and Flow”). Zefiro conducted by Alfredo Bernardini. Ambroisie. $12.99.

     There is little music on these CDs with which classical-music lovers will be unfamiliar. But the brightness and verve of the performances combine with a cleverly chosen program (on the Mozart CD) and excellent original-instrument playing (on the CD of Handel and Telemann) to make these well-known works sound fresh and thoroughly enjoyable.

     Rinaldo Alessandrini is better known for authentic performances of Baroque music than for Mozart, but he turns out to be as skillful a conductor of Mozart overtures as he is of Bach and his contemporaries. This is a highly personal CD: the overtures are not in chronological or any other particular order; music from operas is mixed with the overture to the ballet Les Petits Riens; overtures to several (but not all) operas are followed by additional music from them; and La Clemenza di Tito both opens the CD (with its Overture) and closes it (with its Marcia). If this were not music by Mozart, it would likely seem a hodgepodge; but Mozart’s musical flow, and the lovely playing that Alessandrini extracts from the Norwegian National Opera Orchestra, make the CD a pure joy from start to finish. The tripartite overture to Mitridate, Rè di Ponto and the short overture to Bastien und Bastienne (using a theme on which Beethoven would later expand significantly in the “Eroica” symphony) are perhaps the least-known pieces here, but even the highly familiar ones – The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così Fan Tutte and others – are played with such bounce and freshness that the music simply washes over a listener in waves of pure pleasure. This is not a CD designed to “prove” anything through specialized performance practices or rediscovery of little-known music – it is simply a collection of wonderful works, arranged to give the conductor enjoyment and, as a result, providing plenty of pleasure to listeners as well.

     The pleasures of Zefiro’s excellently played Water Music CD are of a different sort. To be sure, this CD’s arrangement is also a touch on the quirky side: Telemann’s music appears between Handel’s Suite in F (whose movements are rearranged from their usual sequence) and before Handel’s Suites in D and G (whose movements are commingled). But the main things that Alfredo Bernardini and Zefiro bring to the music are impeccably tasteful playing, a thorough understanding of the tempi and ornamentation of Handel’s and Telemann’s time, and a bright sound that accords perfectly with music that was intended to be played outdoors. Zefiro, by design, emphasizes wind instruments (as is clear from its name: Zephyr was the god of the gentle West Wind), and that focus is particularly apt for this double helping of water music, in which winds predominate and are designed (by both composers) to reflect life al fresco. Handel’s more-familiar music is less directly linked to the “water” theme – it was written to be played during trips upon the water rather than to sound like water itself. Telemann’s work is closer to program music, its dances sometimes depicting mythological gods associated with water and other times representing harbor life along the Elbe, in the city of Hamburg. These are loving and lovely performances of beautiful music – and the dual photos of Zefiro, one with members in concert dress and the other with them in bathing suits, are a wonderful and very amusing bonus.

(++++) MEANING AND THE VIOLIN

Niels Wilhelm Gade: Violin Concerto in D minor; Peter Erasmus Lange-Müller: Violin Concerto in C major; Rued Langgaard: Violin Concerto. Christina Åstrand, violin; Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by John Storgårds. Dacapo. $16.99.

Prokofiev: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 2; Violin Sonata No. 1. Lydia Mordkovitch, violin; Gerhard Oppitz, piano; Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Neeme Järvi. Chandos. $11.99.

     The violin concerto and the Romantic era are inextricably linked, but surprisingly, many composers of the time came up with only a single example: think of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Dvořák. Add to that list the Danish composers Gade, Lange-Müller and Langgaard: each composed just one work in this form. None of these pieces is well known outside Denmark; indeed, they are not particularly well known there. Having all three together on one CD presents an unusual opportunity to hear some less-known violin concertos representing a time in which composers strove to extract emotional meaning from their works – but apparently found, in many cases, that they could do so only once in an orchestral piece with the violin at its center. Gade (1817-1890) wrote his concerto late in life, in 1880, and sent it as a Christmas gift to famed violinist Joseph Joachim – for whom Schumann, Brahms, Bruch and Dvořák had composed concertos. Joachim did not always play the works written for him, but he did give the first performance of Gade’s concerto – which, despite this auspicious start, never quite caught on. Christina Åstrand’s lovely playing actually shows why: the work begins strongly, with a beautiful and grand-scale opening theme, but thereafter it tends to meander, and the final rondo, although pleasant enough, is musically rather weak. Interestingly, it was Gade’s son, Axel Gade, who gave the first performance (in 1904) of the concerto by Lange-Müller (1850-1926), a composer best known (to the extent that he is known at all) for his vocal music. Lange-Müller wrote the concerto in 1902, filling it with long lines and soaring, dancelike themes, including (in the second movement) the sounds of Norwegian folk music. One oddity of this interesting but not-quite-compelling work is that the first movement has a place for an optional cadenza (Axel Gade and others played one; Åstrand does not). Another is that the work as a whole seems more a fantasia with violin than a concerto for it – perhaps the lack of virtuoso fireworks has kept it out of most violinists’ repertoire. As for the concerto by Langgaard (1893-1952), it was written much later – in 1943-4 – but is essentially Romantic in approach, as was Langgaard’s music in general. However, it seems even less of a concerto than does Lange-Müller’s: Langgaard’s one-movement work lasts less than 10 minutes and gives a concertante piano (played by Ville Hautala in this recording) as much prominence as the violin. Langgaard’s piece feels more like expanded chamber music than a traditional violin concerto – although it does have a certain charm that Åstrand and the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra under John Storgårds bring out effectively.

     The re-release of Lydia Mordkovitch’s recording of Prokofiev’s two violin concertos pulls listeners back into traditional three-movement concerto form, although Prokofiev’s works (from 1917 and 1935, respectively) have less of the Romantic era about them than do those by Gade, Lange-Müller and Langgaard. Mordkovitch’s recordings date to 1988 and have stood up very well. She neatly balances the lyricism of the first concerto with its episodes of considerable virtuosity. Prokofiev placed a sardonic scherzo rather than a slow movement at the center of this concerto, and Mordkovitch handles it skillfully, then allowing the lyricism of the first movement to re-emerge effectively in the work’s finale. In the second concerto, which reverts to the traditional form of a slow middle movement, Mordkovitch again focuses on the work’s lyrical side – which is dominant through much of the piece – but also handles the strong accents and frequent rhythmic shifts of the finale to fine effect. And she is ably backed up by the Scottish National Orchestra under Neeme Järvi. Interestingly, the third work on this CD, the Violin Sonata No. 1, is longer than either of the concertos. Prokofiev started composing this work in 1938 but did not finish it until 1946 (by which time the sonata designated as No. 2 had already been performed). This sonata is quite a serious piece, with little of the occasional puckishness of the violin concertos. Its four movements are of nearly equal length but of contrasting character. Mordkovitch and pianist Gerhard Oppitz recorded the sonata together in 1984, and even after 25 years, their nuanced, closely intertwined reading is highly effective – and capped with a splendidly realized finale whose complex rhythms flow beautifully from both instruments.