(++++) MAKING COLLEGE (ALMOST) AFFORDABLE

Paying for College without Going Broke, 2010 Edition. By Kalman A. Chany with Geoff Martz. Princeton Review/Random House. $20.

      College costs outpace inflation, year after year, and this year have risen substantially even though consumer prices have actually declined. College costs frequently outpace gains in families’ income, and this year many families have no income gains at all. With the recession’s effects still being felt by so many people – including the unemployed – the ever-higher cost of higher education is a bigger burden now than ever. To the rescue (more or less) comes the new edition of Paying for College without Going Broke, the commonsense guide to maximizing aid and minimizing (to the extent possible) the financial stress of sending a child to college – or financing your education yourself, if that is what you need to do.

      It would be naïve in the extreme to say that Kalman Chany’s plainspoken book will actually make college costs bearable for everyone. Not so – which is why it is only “more or less” a rescue. But it would be unfair, not to mention unrealistic, to expect Chany to come up with financing approaches that will work for everyone. In truth, the only guaranteed way to afford college is to start saving a considerable amount of money when a baby is born, factor in the annual inflation in college costs for every year of the child’s life, and continue socking money away until he or she graduates from high school. This is doable in some cases, but not in the vast majority – there simply isn’t that much money available for education-targeted saving in most families’ budgets.

      Essentially, what Chany – an independent counselor on college financial aid since 1982 – does is approach college financing as a kind of chess game. It is not enough to follow the rules – you have to follow them with enough creativity to maximize your chance of obtaining the financing you need. Some aspects of Chany’s recommendations have to do with pre-college education. For example, students should take as many AP courses as possible, prepare carefully for AP exams, and apply to colleges that award course credits for success on those tests. This puts students ahead in terms of requirements for graduation – lowering the cost of getting there. An alternative approach is to attend a community college for two years – at comparatively low cost – and then transfer to a four-year school and graduate from it. This keeps the high-cost element of college to two years instead of four.

      Furthermore, Chany recommends that students apply to colleges whose admissions criteria they exceed. Colleges are more willing to spend money to attract students who will raise the perceived academic value of the school. This means finding out the average SAT or ACT score for each college and applying to ones where the average is well below yours.

      Another element of Chany’s approach is to be realistic about a student’s post-college earnings power in terms of debt taken on during school. That simply means not to load down a student with loans that are likely to be a severe long-term burden because of the pay scale of the career that he or she is likely to choose.

      In addition to these strategic thoughts, Chany offers considerable detail about the process of applying for aid – which is anything but straightforward. Aid is not necessarily limited by current income – and even high-income people should apply in case of a job loss or other economic reversal. Pricey schools are not off-limits for students who have solid academic credentials – in fact, many of them are allocating extra funds precisely because they want to admit more high-achieving students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. And then there are the nuts-and-bolts recommendations, such as knowing deadlines for forms, which vary not only by form but also by college; following forms’ instructions carefully so you do not (for example) leave a line blank or omit a signature; doing a draft of your income tax early so you can meet application deadlines – and being prepared to send in your actual return when it is finished, so the college can compare it with your estimate; applying for aid as early as possible, and definitely before being accepted – by acceptance time, all the aid may have been allocated; planning to maximize education-related tax benefits in addition to obtaining aid; and a great deal more.

      Paying for College without Going Broke is not easy reading, despite its straightforward style – there is just so much territory to cover that it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the process. And it is complex, without a doubt. But college is one of the biggest expenses of a student’s or family’s life, and it is worth investing some time in the financing issues in order to keep the cost as manageable as possible. The $20 that Paying for College without Going Broke costs is repaid many times over by the help and information offered throughout the book.

(++++) NOT YOUR ORDINARY STOCKING STUFFERS

Edward Gorey’s Children 3x5” Notepad. Pomegranate. $4.95.

The Fantod Pack by Edward Gorey. Pomegranate. $9.95.

Edward Gorey Bookmark Set. Pomegranate. $10.95.

Edward Gorey Magnets: The Creature Regarded Them Balefully; Chef Cat. Pomegranate. $3.50 each.

B. Kliban Magnets: Hula Cat; Here, There. Pomegranate. $3.50.

B. Kliban Rowing Cats Bookmark. Pomegranate. $1.95.

     There is nothing cuter and sweeter than the sugar-plums-and-smiles spectacle of families taking down their Christmas stockings and finding all sorts of adorable little goodies in them. If you’d like to do something about that, try these stocking stuffers this year. They’re wonderfully made, artistically designed and just as likely to bring cries of “ugh!” as ones of “wow!” But the recipients will know you meant well. Maybe.

     Really, Christmas is a perfect time to put such traditions as childhood and cartooning in proper perspective, which means to shake things up a little (hey, kids do that all the time, and so do the best cartoonists). Pomegranate has a whole line of innocent-seeming little gift items from some of the best slightly askew cartoonists of the 20^th century, most notably Edward Gorey and B. Kliban. Gorey’s renditions of serious children in a vaguely Victorian or Edwardian age adorn a wonderful little 80-sheet notepad that fits neatly into a stocking and can be used by kids to send thank-you notes to family members – thereby accomplishing the dual goal of being polite and getting rid of the vaguely disturbing 80 sheets as quickly as possible without seeming ungracious. Besides – in all (or at least some) seriousness – the drawings really are attractive in their offbeat way, and there is none of the trademark Gorey mayhem here (although, to be sure, most of his mayhem occurs offstage, as it were).

     For older kids, or adults with a skewed sense of the world – especially anyone interested in classic tarot – Gorey’s The Fantod Pack makes a wonderful little gift that perfectly captures the artist’s unsettling whimsicality. The deck’s 20 cards include Gorey-invented archetypes such as the Yellow Bird and the Limb, and the pack contains a booklet with readings relating to each image – everything being just as cryptic and perhaps even more disturbing than the readings from an ordinary tarot deck. Whether The Fantod Pack was inspired by tarot cards or intended to parody them can be left for the recipient to decide. Either way, it’s in the cards.

     Gorey is in the books, too. Pomegranate makes a wonderful series of bookmarks featuring Gorey’s art and sold for $1.95 each, but if you are looking for something a bit more generous and even more fun than a single bookmark, consider the Edward Gorey Bookmark Set, which contains 10 of them for less than the cost of six individual ones. Five are black-and-white drawings from Gorey’s illustrations for T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, and they are a delight – from Bustopher Jones about to be served an elegant meal to The Old Gumbie Cat starting to conduct “Frivolitätenmusik.” Of the other five bookmarks, two – showing some of Gorey’s drawings of children – are in color, and the remaining three are as elaborate and mysterious as one would expect Gorey to be.

     “Elaborate and mysterious” also describes Gorey’s unsettling and odd drawing called The Creature Regarded Them Balefully, available as a 2x3” refrigerator magnet – large enough to pick out plenty of Gorey’s elaborate detail. The magnet shows the unidentifiable seaweed-like creature at the left, just climbing onto a pier from water that one imagines to be somewhat unhealthful, while three puzzled children – one carrying a bucket – stare at it from the right. At least the kids seem to be puzzled – as so often in his work, Gorey does not show their eyes or facial expressions, leaving it to viewers to figure out just what is going on, and what happens next….

     Gorey did get lighthearted now and then, as in his Chef Cat drawing, another refrigerator magnet that can zip out of your stocking to adorn your very own kitchen. The black-and-white cat in ballet shoes, dancing while holding a long spoon and a bowl of who-knows-what, is strictly for fun. But of course Gorey was not especially known for cats, although he often drew them. B. Kliban, on the other hand, was irremediably feline in inclination, and a refrigerator magnet with one of his cats makes a wonderful contrast with Gorey’s magnet. Hula Cat is one of Kliban’s best-known drawings, showing (in full color) a cat in a grass skirt and lei dancing while also staring at a vaguely butterfly-like flying insect – the contrast between the body motion and eye motion being especially amusing. Here, There is amusing in a different way, and oddly thought-provoking. No cats here – this drawing simply shows a person walking on a well-worn path from a big sign saying “Here” and a smaller, arrow-shaped one saying “There.” That is, the person is walking from “Here” to “There.” But at the other end of the short path, the same two signs appear – and since the path is bare but surrounded by grass, one has to assume that the person has been walking here and there, here and there, for a very long time indeed…..

     This sort of “thinking” humor is a Kliban specialty, and is combined with his frequent renditions of cats in a delightful full-color bookmark. Everyone knows that you can’t herd cats. According to this Kliban drawing, they can’t cooperate even when rowing a boat: the six portly felines are looking in six different directions and doing six different things with their oars – including being distracted by two flying fish whizzing though the air above them. But what really makes this drawing pointed is what appears at the far left: a tiny outrigger, much smaller than the cats’, being rowed speedily along by six rats working in apparently perfect unison. And the point is….well, who needs a point? The gift-giving point is that there are some wonderful stocking stuffers out there that may not be all sweetness and light, but for that very reason are likely to endure and provide enjoyment well after the Christmas season. So by all means stuff a stocking a bit strangely this year!

(++++) DRAWING ON CREATIVITY

Jeremy Draws a Monster. By Peter McCarty. Henry Holt. $16.99.

Doodlemaster Rock Star! By Maria S. Barbo. Illustrated by Chuck Gonzales. Feiwel and Friends. $9.99.

Doodlemaster Fashionista! By Maria S. Barbo. Illustrated by Chuck Gonzales. Feiwel and Friends. $9.99.

     A charming hybrid of Harold and the Purple Crayon and Dr. Seuss’s The Glunk That Got Thunk, Peter McCarty’s Jeremy Draws a Monster is the wonderfully drawn and delightfully written story of a boy who “never went outside” and who decides to make something to keep himself company. So he “took out his fancy pen and started to draw,” writes McCarty, showing the plump and neckless little boy with the “3” on his shirt standing on a stool in order to start at the top of his creation. Eventually, Jeremy creates his very own monster, complete with multiple horns, a spiked tail and a “3” on its chest. And this turns out to be a demanding monster, insisting that Jeremy draw it a sandwich – and a toaster – and a record player – and a checkerboard – and a chair – and more and more. Not knowing what else to do (who wants to antagonize a huge, bored monster?), Jeremy complies again and again, eventually drawing the monster a hat so it can go out and leave Jeremy alone once again. But the monster returns late at night, takes over Jeremy’s bed and bedroom, and now Jeremy has to come up with a clever way to get rid of it permanently. He does – and, in the process, emerges from his room at last and finds that he would rather play with other kids than go back to monster-making. The never-stated, soft-pedaled moral of the story is wonderfully delivered, and the illustrations, which use plenty of white space, make the tale a monstrously good one to read.

     Kids who would rather do their own drawing – with a little guidance – can turn to two new books for preteens called Doodlemaster. Of the two, Rock Star! seems intended more for boys, and Fashionista! is definitely for girls. The idea here is guided doodling. One page in Rock Star! shows a wrestling ring and says, “Draw yourself in the ring delivering your signature move,” then asks questions about whom you are wrestling and what your theme song is. One page in a “Mad Scientist” section shows a petri dish and says to draw what is growing in it – and also provides space in which to write about your best and worst creations. A “Creature Feature” section says to “create the most horrible creature imaginable for the next blockbuster movie,” then give it a name and say what is the scariest thing about it. A two-page spread in Fashionista! shows a “regular girl” dressed in standard clothing – and suggests turning copies of her basic shape into such characters as a hipster, bookworm and punk rocker. A page showing a snow globe says to “draw a wintry scene” inside. One called “That’s So Warped!” says to draw your idea of a time machine and then write about the moment you would most like to skip ahead to – and the one you most want to go back to. A lot of the ideas in the books are pretty obvious, and some of the doodling guidance doesn’t really guide, such as a picture of a girl at a steering wheel, plus two tires, to show where to draw “your dream car.” The Doodlemaster books deserve a (+++) rating, though, for providing some interesting drawing ideas and for mixing up the doodling with enough questions to provoke at least a little bit of thoughtfulness. But thumb through the books before buying them to be sure that the art and writing strike you as a comfortable blend.

(++++) CENTURY-SPANNING SYMPHONIES

Villa-Lobos: Complete Symphonies; New York Skyline Melody; Ouverture de l’Homme Tel; Suite pour Cordes; Sinfonietta No. 1. Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR conducted by Carl St. Clair. CPO. $62.99 (7 CDs).

     This release is, despite some oddities, a major event. Oddity No. 1: music with a strong Brazilian flavor performed by a German orchestra led by an American conductor. Oddity No. 2: a peculiar sequence of the music, caused by the fact that this is really a re-release – a repackaging of seven CDs that originally came out separately, one at a time. Oddity No. 3: Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) wrote 12 symphonies, but only 11 are recorded here; yet the set is complete.

     In fact, the oddities are easy enough to explain. No. 1: like his better-known Bachianas brasileiras, Villa-Lobos’ symphonies are far more than “regional” music, and are of high enough quality to deserve performances by top-notch orchestras anywhere – which is exactly what they get here. No. 2: the recordings were made between 1997 and 2000, but the use of the same orchestra and conductor throughout gives the set cohesion despite the rather odd pairings of works on the CDs (Nos. 1 and 11, Nos. 3 and 9, Nos. 4 and 12, etc.). No. 3: one Villa-Lobos symphony – No. 5 – is lost; and this is particularly unfortunate because it was the third part of a triptych relating to World War I.

     So while this may be an imperfect set, it is an excellent and important one, and the best chance listeners are likely to have to consider Villa-Lobos’ symphonic output, since Villa-Lobos symphony cycles are not exactly commonplace in concert halls.

     Villa-Lobos’ symphonies were written between 1916 and 1957, covering a great deal of the musical style of the 20^th century, if not its full chronology. All except No. 10 are in the traditional four movements, although the slow movement is sometimes placed second and sometimes third. No.10, Amerindia ("Sumé Pater Patrium") is a five-part oratorio for tenor (Lothar Odinius in this recording), baritone (Henryk Böhm), bass (Jürgen Linn) and chorus (members of the Staatsopernchor Stuttgart and SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart) as well as orchestra.

     There is a significant stylistic break midway through Villa-Lobos’ symphonies, with the early ones (through the lost No. 5) strongly influenced by the work of Vincent d’Indy – after which there is a 24-year hiatus before the appearance of No. 6, which has a stronger Brazilian flavor than the earlier works. No. 7, which also features folklike elements, begins a series in which Villa-Lobos shows himself more willing to adopt a rhythmically complex style and considerably greater use of dissonance.

     All the earlier symphonies, in addition to No. 10, bear subtitles. No. 1 is “O imprevisto” (“The Unforeseen” or “The Unexpected”); No. 2 is “Ascenção “ (“Ascension”); No. 3, the first of the war trilogy, is “A Guerra” (“War”); No. 4 is “A Vitória” (“Victory”); and the lost No. 5 was “A Paz” (“Peace”). No. 6 was a turning point here in addition to being composed two decades after No. 5: it was originally called “Sobre a linha das montanhas do Brasil” (“On the profiles of the mountains of Brazil”), but the title was dropped. Thereafter, except in No. 10, Villa-Lobos ceased to give his symphonies titles, and they increasingly became pure, non-storytelling music. But, interestingly, they were nearly all occasional pieces, written for specific purposes. Villa-Lobos wrote No. 7 for a competition in Detroit – under the pseudonym “A. Caramuru,” a reference to a nickname that Tupinambá Indians give to someone Portuguese. No. 8 is a real oddity, being dedicated to a music critic, Olin Downes of The New York Times; there is very little Brazilian flavor in it. No. 9 was first performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra and is dedicated to the composer’s second wife, Mindinha. No. 11 was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and No. 12 was finished on Villa-Lobos’ 70^th birthday. As for No. 10, it was written in 1952 for the 400-year anniversary of Sað Paulo and is based on a poem from 1563 called “Beata Virgine” – yet it retains the basic form of a five-movement symphony despite being structured, in terms of text, as an oratorio.

     So disparate are Villa-Lobos’ symphonies that it is difficult to see them as “progressing” as do those of, say, Beethoven or Brahms. By and large – certainly after the first five symphonies – Villa-Lobos seems to have set himself a different set of challenges in each one, overcoming them according to his compositional style of the time while often (but not always) returning to the Brazilian folk music to which he was attracted throughout his life. Carl St. Clair and Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR approach each of these works with a fresh perspective and a willingness to explore each one’s individualistic artistry thoroughly. The few short filler items – the most notable being the early Sinfonietta No. 1 (1916) and the even earlier, very Tchaikovskian Suite pour Cordes (1912-3) – are interesting bonuses in a set that establishes Villa-Lobos as a major 20^th-century symphonist with a strong, if highly variable, musical voice.

(+++++) SIMPLY THE BEST

Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years. By Charles M. Schulz. Andrews McMeel. $75.

     The best gift book of the year for comic-strip lovers – the best gift for yourself if you have been even the slightest bit charmed, enchanted, delighted and/or amused by Peanuts anytime since the strip’s debut on October 2, 1950 – Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years is also Andrews McMeel’s best effort to date in capturing comics within a hardcover coffee-table book for reasons that seem to transcend the purely commercial. Yes, there are now similar Andrews McMeel hardcovers of The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes and Dilbert, but they are, more than anything else, collections – sort of like the publisher’s oversize paperback “Treasury” volumes, several notches up in price. Not so Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years, which is a genuine value-added “Treasury” about one of the most treasurable comic strips of all time.

     This book is not a biography of Charles M. (for Monroe) Schulz (1922-2000). It is not a full-fledged study of his art, or even of everything relating to Peanuts – for example, it does not discuss Schulz’s earlier strip, Li’l Folks, which metamorphosed into the far more famous one. Wisely, editors Paige Braddock and Alexis E. Fajardo, and contributors including Pixar Animation’s Pete Docter and Schulz’s widow, Jean, have ceded center stage and the limelight to Sparky – yes, “Sparky,” a nickname that Charles Schulz was given as a child, by his uncle, and that itself comes from a comic strip: Spark Plug was the highly popular racehorse in Billy DeBeck’s Barney Google.

     What Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years is, then, is a decade-by-decade look at Peanuts, including many quotations from Schulz himself about his thoughts, his ideas and his characters – and many, many, many of the strips themselves in this handsome volume’s 534 pages. The introductions to each decade cite the strip’s many hallmarks: Schroeder’s first piano (1951); Charlie Brown’s first kite (1952); Snoopy’s first “happy dance” (1956); Lucy’s first appearance as a psychiatrist (1959) and her first booth (1961); Snoopy’s first time as the World War I Flying Ace (1965); Peppermint Patty’s introduction (1966); the naming of Woodstock (1970); the first appearance of Snoopy’s brother, Spike (1975); and many more elements. “The only way you can stay ahead of your imitators is to search out new territories,” Schulz says in one of the quotations here, and Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years shows the innumerable ways he did just that. But it shows much more – for example, students of comic-strip art can see how much of the strip was made up of characters drawn from the side, a highly unusual approach that makes possible (among other things) the many famous drawings of Snoopy lying atop his doghouse. The wonderful thing about Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years is its cross-generational and cross-expertise appeal: whether you first came to Peanuts decades ago or only through the reprints that many newspapers still run, whether you know nothing about cartooning or a great deal, you will find material in this book to enhance your knowledge, increase your delight and – not at all incidentally – tickle your funnybone.

     For one of the things that Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years makes clearest is how wonderfully, gently, delightfully and consistently funny Peanuts was, day after day and decade after decade. The nature of the humor changed over time – again, the book shows this quite clearly – as the strip emerged from a “kids talking like small adults” mode (a common device when Peanuts started) to one in which the characters inhabit their own self-contained world, in which the humor is driven by interactions among fully defined personalities. Some characters themselves changed notably over the years: Sally went from being sweet and naïve to being far more pointed and a touch cynical. Other characters evolved in different ways: Snoopy’s fantasies became more complex and elaborate, and eventually even involved some of the children; but he had indulged in a rich fantasy life as far back as the 1950s. Charlie Brown evolved very slowly and subtly, remaining the glue that held the strip together (as Walt Kelly once described the role of the title character in his Pogo strip). All these changes emerge in the pages of Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years, along with the essential gentleness and underlying humanity of this strip – two things that never changed and that help explain its extraordinary, worldwide, time-spanning success. Schulz’s rare forays into events of the day, such as a 1997 strip about the excesses of political correctness, stand out for their rarity – and, again, that rarity helps explain the timelessness of Peanuts. Indeed, it is the strips themselves that are the most eloquent argument for the amazing success of this truly great comic strip. The huge helping of Schulz’s work in Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years is not all there is to the book, but it is most of what the book contains – and most of what makes the book such an utterly wonderful experience from start to finish.

     We miss you, Sparky. And we thank you.

(++++) DIVINE AND CONQUER

Tee Time in Berzerkistan: A “Doonesbury” Book. By G.B. Trudeau. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.

     The funny thing about Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury is that it isn’t funny. Witty, sometimes. Wry, frequently. But although it is called a “comic” strip, there is little that is comic about it, except perhaps in the same sense as Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” which is comedic only from a deity’s point of view. Trudeau, of course, is the god of his own little world, which often closely resembles the one in which the rest of us live – but diverges from it whenever Trudeau wants to make a point, which is frequently.

     It is worth noting that Doonesbury is an idea strip, not a character strip, despite the huge number of characters in it. In this way, Trudeau – the preeminent political comic-strip creator of our time – differs significantly from Walt Kelly, whose Pogo was the greatest political strip of its time. Pogo is still delightfully readable today, because so much of it is character-driven and extremely funny, even though its political points have long since faded into obscurity. Doonesbury does not wear as well, because Trudeau selects the characters he will use in a given series of strips based on the point he wants to make in that series – the people are secondary to the argument. This makes Trudeau’s strips highly effective in the short term – and viscerally annoying to those whose ideas differ from his – but it guarantees that collections, such as Tee Time in Berzerkistan, will appeal primarily to Trudeau’s personal legion of dittoheads (and he would hate to be thought of as having followers in the manner that Rush Limbaugh has them, even though he does). The best characters in this collection are the most extreme, notably including Trff Bmzklfrpz, president-for-life of Greater Berzerkistan, a genocidal dictator looking for money from the United States and therefore a perfect choice to be represented by ever-present and ever-cynical Duke and his son, Earl, now set up as lobbyists. Duke lands the dictator for $50,000 a week after refusing to be naked and bleeding when meeting Bmzklfrpz (pronounced “Ptklm,” one of his lackeys explains), and after reacting with indifference to Bmzklfrpz’s announcement that he has taken Duke’s family hostage. Scenes like this work precisely because they are understandable within the world of realpolitik but also go far (or maybe not quite so far) beyond it – in much the same way that some of Scott Adams’ most effective Dilbert strips are ones in which he takes office politics just a bit beyond the pale (using an actual goat as the scapegoat for failed projects, for example).

     But the farther Trudeau gets from big-picture commentary, the less well his strips wear. Multiple strips focused on lobbyists working for John McCain’s presidential campaign are thoroughly boring and quite irrelevant – and make Trudeau’s pro-Democrat political bias abundantly obvious (not that he ever tries to conceal it). A Sunday strip based on an old commercial for a product called “Head On” is equally dated. So are strips in which perpetual student Zonker Harris objects to being asked questions relevant to course content because “Joe Kegger” and other “average people” would not be interested. But on the other hand, Trudeau’s strips relating to the war in Iraq retain staying power and considerable clout, because the characters he portrays could be any people in any war, just trying to get by and suffering wounds both physical and psychological. It’s too bad that Trudeau never brings that same sense of universality to everyday politics.

     Trudeau’s style has become so refined that it now differs little from day to day or collection to collection. There is one noteworthy development in Tee Time in Berzerkistan, though: Trudeau makes more references than usual to the fact that this is, after all, a comic strip. So in one “mailbag” strip, Mike Doonesbury – the titular title character, although he in fact plays very little role in the strip these days – digs down through piles of letters to find one from 1981 advising him not to marry J.J., from whom he was eventually divorced with a great deal of angst. And Mike’s daughter, Alex, improbably meets and falls for Toggle, a soldier from B.D.’s old unit who sustained a traumatic brain injury, leading B.D. to wonder, “What are the odds?” – and the omniscient occasional narrator of the strip to intone, above the next panel, “Pretty good, actually. It’s a comic strip.” Trudeau is starting to become not only self-aware but also self-referential. It will be interesting to see whether the result is any sense of new directions for Doonesbury, or if the self-references are just another device to help Trudeau continue making his points.

(+++) PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

The Book of the Maidservant. By Rebecca Barnhouse. Random House. $16.99.

War Games. By Audrey Couloumbis & Akila Couloumbis. Random House. $16.99.

Horse Diaries #3: Koda. By Patricia Hermes. Illustrated by Ruth Sanderson. Random House. $5.99.

Powerless. By Matthew Cody. Knopf. $15.99.

Today I Will: A Year of Quotes, Notes, and Letters to Myself. By Eileen and Jerry Spinelli. Illustrated by Julia Rothman. Knopf. $15.99.

     Books given and received at this time of year can give young readers gateways to yesterday, to alternative versions of today, or even to tomorrow. The Book of the Maidservant, the first novel by medieval historian Rebecca Barnhouse, is a fictionalized retelling of the autobiographical 15^th-century Book of Margery Kempe. Barnhouse’s novel is the tale of a serving girl on an unwanted and difficult pilgrimage. The central character is not Dame Margery but her servant, Johanna, who must accompany Margery and other pilgrims on a long journey to Rome – and, at the end of each day’s forced march, cook and clean and fetch for everyone in the group. This was the way of the world in medieval times: a single-minded focus by the avowedly pious on Jesus and his sufferings, but little if any attention to the sufferings of the lower classes in the everyday world. Barnhouse tells Johanna’s story in modern language, keeping it simple, in accord with what would be expected from a pious but uneducated serving girl: “I miss Cook and Cicilly. I miss my sister.” But there is pathos here beneath the matter-of-fact narrative, as Johanna both accepts and bemoans her fate – and proves to have the inner strength, when she turns out to need it, to find her own way to Rome after her mistress abandons her and the other pilgrims in their group. Eventually Johanna escapes from the overbearing Dame Margery and starts to make a life of her own, although still (of course) within her own class and within the strictures set upon all women of her time. Modern readers ages 10-13 will likely find the historically accurate all-pervasive religious references in The Book of the Maidservant somewhat tedious, but they are true to the age in which the book is set. Johanna’s name, though, is invented: Dame Margery never mentions it in her autobiography – which she did not write but dictated, since she herself was illiterate.

     Also set in the past, but a more recent one, War Games is the story of 12-year-old Petros during World War II. The book is based on coauthor Akila Couloumbis’ boyhood; his wife, Audrey, has written several books that, like this one, are intended for ages 8-12. The tale is of Nazi-occupied Greece – not a venue often found in books about this war – and about the transformation of neighbors to enemies and family games to matters of deadly earnest. The events in the book and the attitudes expressed by the Nazis are not really anything new: “It felt as if the man didn’t see Petros and his family as people but as male goats, not useful for very long.” The setting is unusual, though, and the contrast between the extremely serious business of war and resistance and the lighthearted one of games – which turn out to have their own serious uses – is well done. The language is effective, too: “Papa made several more stops, where the vegetables and eggs were greeted like bread with honey.” But for all its heartfelt emotion, War Games tends a bit too much toward the obvious, even including a symbolic kite that eventually “flew proudly for several days, irritating only those who wore a German uniform.” The book is well-meaning in the extreme but perhaps, in the final analysis, a little too earnest.

     The Horse Diaries books are also intended for ages 8-12, and they are set at various times. The third of these books – each told from a different horse’s point of view – takes place in 1846 and is a story of the pioneers’ journey along the Oregon Trail. Koda, a bay quarter horse, is used to running free with his human friend, Jasmine – until Jasmine and her family become part of a wagon train heading west from Independence, Missouri. These books rely entirely on horses having human feelings and human ways of expressing themselves: “The first thing [Jasmine] showed me was the place where she lived – her house, she called it… And then she showed me a barn and creatures called cows and another creature called a dog.” Later, as the wagon train moves toward the west, “I have to say, I didn’t like it one little bit. Every day was the same. …One night, after many, many days of flat plains, with nothing but waving grass and scorching sun, we crossed into Nebraska…” Koda’s eventual heroism brings the book to its climax in a story that mixes snippets of history with a story that will be of interest mostly to young horse lovers.

     History of a different sort – comic-book style – is the foundation of Matthew Cody’s debut novel, Powerless. Set more or less in the present – let’s say an alternative present – it has an intriguing premise: Noble’s Green, Pennsylvania, is “the safest town on Earth” because it is inhabited by a secret group of six super-powered preteen kids. “There was definitely something a little strange about the kids of Noble’s Green.” Well, yes – sounds like a perfect setup for a book intended, as this one is, for ages 10 and up (but not too far up). In fact, though, the real hero is “powerless” Daniel, who turns out to have abilities that pass the test of time in a way that the superkids’ do not. For as soon as the super-powered young people become teenagers – when they turn 13 – their powers vanish, along with their memory of them. Why? Finding that out turns out to be Daniel’s own special power – one he developed before moving to Noble’s Green and one that does not disappear. Much of the underlying meaning of the book is obvious – true power comes from within, and all that – and some of the writing is cliché-ridden: “Getting beaten up he could handle, but the whole girl thing, it was just too gruesome.” But Cody has a number of intriguing ideas going for him here – maybe even a few too many, with competing super-strong kids, a mysterious comet, an old comic-book series, a hidden cave holding secrets, even something called Witch Fire. And then there is Daniel’s fascination with Sherlock Holmes – whence his detective skill and his connection with elderly Holmes aficionado Herman Plunkett, who drew the comics that hold a clue that points to the Shroud that is part of the mystery…well, you see where this goes. Not exactly where it goes – Cody keeps the twists twisting and the turns turning – but the general direction is pretty clear pretty early on. Cody clearly enjoys comic-book language as well as comic-book setups: “Imagine the following scenario, Daniel. One day, for whatever reason, some of the children of this town start doing incredible things, magical things. Some can fly, some are strong, some are fast. Now imagine that another child realizes that he has a power, too. Only this isn’t a nice, shiny power like his friends’. He can’t fly, he can’t run super-fast; all he can do – is steal other powers. He’s like a leech, this one.” But who is the leech? That is the ultimate mystery, eventually solved through teamwork activated by Daniel’s deductive powers, thus showing that the apparently powerless is not powerless after all. Fans of classic comic-book stories will especially enjoy this alternative-present tale – and will enjoy rather than be bothered by its familiar elements.

     All these journeys to the past and sort-of-present, though, do little to prepare young readers for next year and the years beyond. Those are the times on which prolific authors Eileen and Jerry Spinelli – a wife-and-husband team, like Audrey and Akila Couloumbis – set their sights in Today I Will. The book, with its bound-in ribbon placeholder, looks at first like a diary or journal, but in fact it is the Spinellis who supply A Year of Quotes, Notes, and Letters to Myself. There are quotations and brief comments by the authors for every day of every year – yes, even February 29 for leap years, which of course gets remarks devoted to its unique position in the calendar. Some other days, and not always the expected ones, also get comments devoted specifically to their uniqueness. February 4, for example, is Rosa Parks’ birthday, so the authors include a comment from a Parks biography and some thoughts inspired by her example (“Doing the wrong thing is often easier than doing the right thing”). Most days, though, get quotations and comments that could fit any day. June 16, for instance: “At one time or another everyone is afraid. What counts is how we handle our fear…” Each page opens with a quotation, continues with a discussion, and ends with a promise for a reader to make to himself or herself – August 2: “I am a firefly. There is a light within me. Today I will turn it on and brighten a darkness.” Intended for ages 10 and up, Today I Will has enough sweetness for somewhat younger readers and perhaps too much for young teenagers. The self-promises are often good ones: “Today I will set aside a half hour to extinguish my ego and experience the world without myself at the center” (October 8). But only readers who are already predisposed to this sort of self-awareness (and, to an extent, self-abnegation) will likely want to follow the Spinellis’ ideas throughout the new year.

(+++) NOT ALWAYS WHAT THEY SEEM

Katman. By Kevin C. Pyle. Henry Holt. $12.99.

The Time Travelers’ Handbook. By Lottie Stride. Illustrated by Dusan Pavlic. Feiwel and Friends. $9.99.

The 39 Clues, Book 6: In Too Deep. By Jude Watson. Scholastic. $12.99.

     The adage, “don’t judge a book by its cover,” became a cliché precisely because it was so often true. And it still is. The cover of Kevin C. Pyle’s Katman makes it look like yet another graphic novel filled with superheroic (or supervillainous) types: a gigantic orange catlike being, snarling and reaching toward the reader, looms over a rundown part of town through which a solitary figure is walking. But Katman is more than its cover, and better, and will likely be a disappointment to anyone who buys it expecting traditional graphic-novel fare. It turns out that the title character is the creation of a punk girl named Jess, who defines herself and the headbangers she hangs out with by saying one is sadistic, one is autistic and she is artistic. Katman, the powerful manga shapeshifter, has no place in Jess’s real life – but 15-year-old Kit does, and this story is really about quiet real-world heroism and how it contrasts with the comic-book sort. The real and imaginary worlds are connected through cats, as Kit (whose name is obviously appropriate) finds himself dragged, almost against his will, into the lives of the stray cats that abound in his less-than-well-to-do neighborhood – eventually stealing to get food for some of them, then going to work and being paid in cat food to continue helping them, and still later becoming involved in the life of a prototypical “cat lady” who has little use for people but dotes on the felines that roam at will throughout her house. The story of Kit and Jess is gritty and sometimes unpleasant, with solutions to problems occurring at best in piecemeal fashion – unlike the solutions in superhero comics and many graphic novels. Katman is darker and less pleasant to read than you might expect from the cover – but it also has more depth than you might think it would have.

     The cover of The Time Travelers’ Handbook makes it look as if this is a book about – well, about traveling through time. A young boy clutching an odd-looking instrument is seen in the middle of one of those clichéd “time swirls” that traditionally indicate time travel, while the cover’s margins bear such statements as “Tackle a T. Rex” and “Operate a Guillotine.” In fact, though, this is a book of history disguised as fiction. The subtitle even uses the word “history,” but still does not make it clear just what the book is about: “A Wild, Wacky, and Wooly Adventure through History!” Inside, though, there is plenty of historically accurate information. Each entry starts with the “time travel handset” showing a different date: 700 BC for silk making in ancient China, 1588 for the defeat of the Spanish Armada, 40,000 BC for mammoth hunting, and so on. Then, in two to six pages, Lottie Stride’s text and Dusan Pavlic’s clear and rather old-fashioned illustrations come together to explain where (or rather when) you are and what you need to do. Dangers of the past are described but not dwelled on: the risks faced by London chimney sweeps (1847), what happens during an attack on a medieval castle (1282), even the chance of being hit by rotten produce while acting in one of Shakespeare’s plays (1599). The historical information is presented in once-over-lightly fashion: fighting with the samurai (1287), building a Viking longship (832), making an Egyptian mummy (1550 BC), and much more. And there are projects for 21^st-century kids to try, such as writing in hieroglyphs (based on the way they were written in 1450 BC) and making your own cave paintings (along the lines of those from 17,000 BC). The Time Travelers’ Handbook is not exactly history and not exactly crafts, but a bit of a melding of the two – think of it as a kind of “history lite” with activities.

     And speaking of marches through history: they continue for Amy and Dan Cahill in the sixth volume of The 39 Clues, which centers on a family whose various competing branches seem to be related to just about everyone famous who ever lived. In this case, you can judge the book by its cover, since the layout of all the books in this multimedia series is the same – including six game cards bound into the inside front cover each time. The by-now-familiar plot of The 39 Clues has to do with a race to get information that will make the one who eventually finds and assembles the clues the most powerful person in the world. Fourteen-year-old Amy and 11-year-old Dan travel the world (money is no object here, or not much of one) in their search, tossing out informational tidbits to readers along the way: “Did you know that Australia has more deadly creatures than anywhere else in the world? Look at this snake – it’s called a taipan. Its venom can kill, like, two thousand sheep. Or maybe it was two hundred. Anyway, if you get bit by one of these babies, you have to, like, get airlifted to a hospital for antivenom or else die a horrifying death right there.” The problem with Jude Watson’s writing in Book Six (the books are written by different authors) is that he is lazy. Is it 200 or 2,000? It’s unfair to offer a fact and then muddle it on the basis that an 11-year-old is explaining it. An author can get away with “get bit” instead of “get bitten,” but not with writing “antivenom” when the correct word is “antivenin.” Still, fans of The 39 Clues are unlikely to care about such niceties at this point – and anyone who has stayed with the series (including its online component) until now will have to read this book in order to keep up with the sequence of frights, discoveries and near-misses. This book includes a confrontation between Amy and Dan about their parents’ fate, the young protagonists’ loss of an enemy-turned-ally, and a promise that the next book, The Viper’s Nest, will finally reveal just which branch of the far-flung Cahill clan Amy and Dan belong to. That should be enough to keep fans of The 39 Clues coming back for more – which at this stage of the 10-book series, is the whole point.

(++++) THE SYMPHONIST OF BALTIMORE

Asger Hamerik: Symphonies Nos. 1-7; Requiem. Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra (Nos. 1-6) and Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Choir with Randi Stene, mezzo-soprano (No. 7; Requiem) conducted by Thomas Dausgaard. Dacapo. $49.99 (4 SACDs).

     He was born in Frederiksberg, Denmark, near Copenhagen, as Asger Hammerich. He started using Hamerik, the less German-sounding version of his name, as part of Denmark’s nationalistic upsurge after the Second Schleswig War (also called the Danish-Prussian War) of 1864. He was the best-known Danish composer of his time after Niels W. Gade, and traveled even more extensively than Gade did. But where Asger Hamerik (1843-1923) really flourished was in the United States – specifically in Baltimore, Maryland, where he was head of the Peabody Institute of Music from 1871 to 1898. In that remarkable 27-year period, which firmly established the Peabody as a preeminent force in American musical education, Hamerik created all seven of his symphonies as well as the Requiem that was his own favorite work. (Baltimore was important to the genesis of the Requiem: Hamerik was not Catholic but was a close friend of the city’s Cardinal Gibbons.)

     Little known today outside Denmark – and not especially well known even there – Hamerik is one Romantic-era composer whose small output (about 40 opus numbers) is well worth reconsideration. He studied with Berlioz and was heavily influenced by him; he also studied with Gade, and adopted some of that composer’s Sturm und Drang and lyricism; and he studied as well with composer J.P.E. Hartmann and conductor Hans von Bülow, the latter becoming a lifelong friend. All these influences and more permeate Hamerik’s seven numbered symphonies (an early one in C minor, written before No. 1, is lost) – from a first work that sounds a great deal like Gade to later ones that occupy some of the sonic and harmonic territory of Bruckner and Mahler, although without their length (none of Hamerik’s symphonies lasts more than three-quarters of an hour).

     Hamerik gave his symphonies singularly pleasant titles that, by and large, accurately reflect their moods – and that are reminiscent of the symphonic titles of Sweden’s Hans Berwald. In fact, each composer wrote a “Symphonie Sérieuse” in G minor (Berwald’s No. 1 of 1843, Hamerik’s No. 5 of 1889-91). Hamerik called No. 1 “Symphonie Poétique,” No. 2 “Symphonie Tragique,” No. 3 “Symphonie Lyrique,” No. 4 “Symphonie Majestueuse,” No. 6 (for strings only) “Symphonie Spirituelle,” and No. 7 “Choral Symphony” (it includes a solo mezzo-soprano as well as the chorus). His Requiem, written between Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4, calls for a contralto solo – but Randi Stene manages this part as well as that in Symphony No. 7 quite admirably under Thomas Dausgaard’s baton.

     Dausgaard, a fine and fluent conductor, is a strong advocate for Hamerik’s music, which he paces very well and from which he extracts all the emotion that the composer included – without adding anything extraneous. Hamerik’s first six symphonies all follow the classical four-movement model (the slow movement placed sometimes second, sometimes third). No. 7 is a three-movement work whose text was written by Hamerik and his wife, Margaret, daughter of a Tennessee landowner; it was originally called “Life, Death and Immortality,” and the words have a strong spiritual cast without being directly religious.

     Every work in Dacapo’s four-SACD Hamerik cycle is worth hearing – even the weakest symphony, No. 1 (in which the strings are so dominant in presenting and developing themes that the rest of the orchestra takes on a subsidiary role), has a magically transformative moment as the main section of the finale gives way to the coda. The symphonies are uniformly well scored, and Hamerik clearly knew how to get the sound he wanted from an orchestra. No. 4, the most outgoing of the works and the most popular during Hamerik’s lifetime, is a particularly fine example of a skilled composer taking rather unpromising thematic material and building a strikingly effective work around it. No. 5 has an especially affecting and emotionally satisfying slow movement. Several of the symphonies make substantial use of an idée fixe, about which Hamerik learned from Berlioz. The solo and choral forces in both No. 7 and the Requiem are very skillfully deployed. There is always a sense here of music with something to communicate – with the composer using an economy of means and strength of orchestration to do so.

     So why has Hamerik’s music fallen into obscurity? That too is clear from listening to this excellent set. Hamerik was more an absorber than an innovator. Although his music does have a unique sound, it is essentially mainstream European Romantic music with a touch of Nordic flair: for all his years in the United States, Hamerik never attempted to use American tunes or rhythms, as Dvořák did during his much shorter stay in the New World. What Hamerik learned from his mentors, especially from Berlioz, is clear enough so that Hamerik’s own work sounds a bit old-fashioned. There is surely nothing wrong with the frequent use of an idée fixe as a structural device, but Berlioz did so in 1830 and Hamerik was still doing so – admittedly in a somewhat different way – into the 1890s. Also, some of the well-wrought touches of Hamerik’s Requiem, such as the brass fanfares announcing Judgment Day, tie directly to the Berlioz Requiem of 1837 – 50 years before Hamerik’s. So even though Hamerik developed his musical ideas differently from the way the composers who influenced him developed theirs, Hamerik’s pieces seem more like modest extensions of what came before than like genuinely new works of art.

     Yet for all that, this Baltimore-based Nordic symphonist does not deserve his obscurity. Musicians may carp about Hamerik’s borrowings and the similarities of his music to that of other composers, but listeners coming to Hamerik’s music without preconditions or specific expectations will find in these symphonies and this Requiem a great deal of highly involving music, well performed and emotionally satisfying – and worth hearing repeatedly, not being consigned to oblivion.

(++++) BATTLE OF THE CUTIES

Why Dogs Are Better Than Cats. By Bradley Trevor Greive. Photographs by Rachael Hale. Andrews McMeel. $19.99.

Pure Cute. By Beverly West and Jason Bergund. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

     If you are looking for a perfect gift book for a dog lover – or a contentious cat lover – or someone who loves both dogs and cats, albeit for different reasons – or someone who enjoys Bradley Trevor Greive’s small-size books, in which animal photos are coupled with strangely apt observations on the human condition – or someone who likes to pick fights (gently, though) over trivia – or someone who enjoys silly reasoning that appears, on its face, to be perfectly logical – you really ought to take a look at Why Dogs Are Better Than Cats. Between Greive’s tongue-in-cheek narration and Rachael Hale’s excellent photography, this handsome, oversize hardcover volume is just the thing for pet lovers – and is just provocative enough to start some good-natured (well, hopefully good-natured) holiday arguments. The thing about Greive is that he manages to give backhanded compliments with a certain amount of elegance, acting as if the whole dogs-vs.-cats subject is one of tremendous importance even while making it clear that, you know, it’s not. So he delivers chapter titles such as “Dogs Are Social, Cats Are Sociopaths,” and “Cats Are Not without Their Charms,” in the latter of which he comments, “Despite their fabled curiosity, cars are completely uninterested in the needs of others and, so long as their basic desires are met, are content to keep their own company and pursue their own pleasures. As such, they are not really a pet according to any reasonable definition – they are more akin to a kinetic sculpture with sadistic tendencies.” Of course, to get the full effect of the writing, you have to see it adjacent to Hale’s wonderful photo of a dark gray cat sitting atop a pedestal and looking straight out of the page. “Cats operate as largely independent life-forms within the climate controlled ecosystem of your home,” Greive writes in a chapter called “The Downside of Dogs.” But dogs “can be needy and when left alone too long, they may become anxious and fret.” Besides, “even a happy dog makes more mess than an unhappy cat.” On the other hand, Greive points out, “caring for a dog is not a hobby or a part-time responsibility – it’s a real relationship.” And having made this serious comment – which is really the heart of the book – he then footnotes it to make sure everyone keeps things light: “This is somewhat true of cats, as well. The relationship may be weirdly one-sided and kind of embarrassing but you still have to turn up.” (The footnotes are uniformly delightful. Of how many books is it possible to say that?) The delightful photos take the sting out of the few words that do sting (“Cats don’t know what we want, and they don’t care”). Hale captures all the expressions that make dogs precious to “dog people,” all the beauty and aloofness and intensity that endear cats to “cat people,” and throws in a couple of elephant, pig, turtle and ostrich pictures for good measure (in a chapter about all the animals that did not turn out to be man’s best friend). Why Dogs Are Better Than Cats is really a marvelous book, allowing readers (or lucky gift recipients) to focus for a while on an age-old “which is better?” question that has no importance whatsoever and is, for that very reason, worth contemplating for a while.

     Much more in line with Greive’s usual small-size gift books – although not involving him at all – is Pure Cute by the wife-and-husband team of Beverly West and Jason Bergund. This is a stocking stuffer, plain and simple, with photos of adorable baby animals accompanied by indulgent (if rather treacly) prose. This is really a picture book above all: a tiny, super-fluffy puppy held upright in a hand that is almost as large as the puppy itself; a sleeping kitten; a thoughtful-looking koala; two baby bunnies snacking on a leaf, one eating from one side and the other from the other side; five identical ducklings, all in a row; side-by-side guinea pigs; and so on. Sometimes the words go directly with the photos – the guinea-pig page is opposite one that says, “Two is cuter than one.” At other times, the photos inspire a slightly wry comment: opposite a picture of a dog looking hopefully at treats that are inside a tightly covered container are the words, “Indulge yourself. Cute has no calories.” And sometimes there are observations that would be nothing special without the photos: “Life is much cuter when you’ve got friends” goes with a really sweet picture of three kittens lying next to and on top of an obviously very tolerant dog. Pure Cute makes no claim to profundity and is not the sort of book you are likely to pick up again and again (unlike Why Dogs Are Better Than Cats, which is worth a second and third look). Indeed, Pure Cute is purely…well, cute. That may not be much, but it’s certainly something – indeed, something worth having, and not only in a gift-giving season traditionally devoted more to excess than to the benign power of cuteness.

(++++) FROM ASTONISHMENT TO ZELAZNY

The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny: Volume 1—Threshold; Volume 2—Power & Light; Volume 3—This Mortal Mountain; Volume 4—Last Exit to Babylon. Edited by David G. Grubbs, Christopher S. Kovacs and Ann Crimmins. NESFA Press. $29 each.

     Roger Zelazny would have been one of the Grand Old Men of the SF genre if he had lived long enough: he died of colorectal cancer at age 58 in 1995. Old he may not have been, but grand he most certainly was. Although best known for The Chronicles of Amber (10 novels and a batch of short stories), Zelazny was in fact a very wide-ranging and deep-thinking writer with a specific philosophical and authorial bent. Myth was his specialty: he mined numerous mythic traditions (Greco-Roman, Norse, Hindu, Native American and others) for stories filled with gods or people becoming gods – a sort of casual supernaturalism that is uniquely his. Other elements of his work were less unusual – the frequent conflict between sons and (usually absent) fathers or father figures, for example – but Zelazny always gave his own twist even to these more-familiar themes.

     Zelazny was showered with all the awards typically given to outstanding SF writers, including six Hugos and three Nebulas (he was nominated for these pinnacle-of-the-genre awards a total of 28 times). And now he is receiving a posthumous award: a set of all his short fiction, being published in handsome hardcover volumes by NESFA Press, a small but scrappy outfit whose collections of SF are inevitably well-made and very classy. The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny will eventually run to six volumes – he wrote a lot of short pieces – and will take up something in the neighborhood of 3,500 pages. The first four volumes are now available, and they are an absolute must-have for Zelazny fans, superb gifts for readers who know Zelazny only casually, and a revelation for those who (for whatever reason) know him not at all.

     In fact, the phrase Collected Stories is something of a misnomer for this massive undertaking, because the set also includes poems, some nonfiction, and occasional comments by Zelazny about his writings. The editors have thoughtfully included publication and award-related information on the title page of each item, and there are many notes to explain Zelazny’s numerous allusions and, in some cases, his vocabulary. All this is exemplary; less so is the organization of the books, which are only vaguely chronological and not clearly organized along any particular principle. This has the advantage of making any single volume a wonderful standalone gift (to one’s self if not to others), but the disadvantage of making it impossible to follow Zelazny’s stylistic development. Not that Zelazny himself made that easy: the exact provenance of his short works is not always easy to determine, and in many ways his style remained remarkably consistent from his earlier works of the mid-1960s until his death (one odd exception: Zelazny was a longtime pipe and cigarette smoker, but stopped smoking in the 1980s – at which point his characters, many of whom had been heavy smokers in his earlier works, also quit).

     Indeed, it is Zelazny’s consistent quality and consistent style that are among his hallmarks. Mixing bits of ancient myths with deliberate anachronisms, poetic sensibilities with hard-boiled dialogue, Zelazny created a series of mythic worlds of his own, using science-fiction settings primarily as backdrops for works that were essentially fantasy. The four Collected Stories volumes include tributes to this and other elements of Zelazny the writer and Zelazny the man from such fellow authors as Robert Silverberg, Walter Jon Williams, Neil Gaiman and Joe Haldeman. But more importantly, they contain a wonderful mixture of material that invites serendipity. The justly famous “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” is the first entry in Volume 1, which also includes “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth” – and previously uncollected items such as “Circe Has Her Problems” and “Moonless in Byzantium.” Volume 2 includes, for example, “Death and the Executioner,” which became part of the novel Lord of Light, and “Auto-Da-Fé” – and four mid-1960s stories never before published at all. Volume 3 has “Here There Be Dragons” and “Angel, Dark Angel,” plus “Add Infinite Item” and “Tomorrow Stuff” and other previously uncollected or unpublished works. Volume 4 contains all three novellas from My Name Is Legion, several short works from various series, and previously uncollected essays such as “The Balance Between Art and Commerce” and “Amber and the Amberites.” Taken together, these four volumes – never mind the two yet to come – give readers tremendous insight into Zelazny’s worlds, thought patterns, interests, mythmaking and stylistic approach. More importantly, whether they are taken together or separately, they give a huge amount of sheer reading pleasure, brought to you by one of the most interesting stylists and most unusual thinkers that the SF field has yet produced.

(+++) TALES OF OLD AND OF TODAY

The Random House Book of Bible Stories. Retold by Mary Pope Osborne and Natalie Pope Boyce. Illustrated by Michael Welply. Random House. $24.99.

Scholastic Book of World Records 2010. By Jenifer Corr Morse. Scholastic. $10.99.

     Timeless Bible tales, sanitized for young readers, can make a fine seasonal gift for families that want to emphasize the religious elements of the winter holiday season (elements that stretch back to long before Christ). The Random House Book of Bible Stories is a sort of “greatest hits” summation of well-known Old and New Testament tales, most of them being exactly the ones parents will expect to find: “Adam and Eve,” “Cain and Abel,” “Noah and the Ark,” “Jacob and Esau,” “Moses and the Burning Bush,” “The Birth of Jesus,” “The Sermon on the Mount,” and so on. Inconveniently crass elements of the Bible are, as usual, left out: “The Destruction of Sodom,” for instance, excludes Lot’s offer of his virgin daughters to the unruly crowd if the people will spare his guests. Michael Welply’s illustrations are exactly what families will anticipate: an Egyptian flailing at frogs brought on as a plague (although the amphibians, truth to tell, look quite inoffensive); Moses in a Hollywood-style pose as he parts the Red Sea; Jesus always looking humble and holy; and so forth. Mary Pope Osborne and Natalie Pope Boyce, who are sisters, tell the stories in simple modern language: “A woman named Hannah was happily married to a good man. But both of them were very sorrowful about one thing – they had never had a child.” There is no blood here and nothing overtly descriptive of suffering, not even in the tale of David and Goliath or of Jesus’ crucifixion. Intended for ages 8-10, The Random House Book of Bible Stories seems rather tame for preteens, unless it is their very first exposure to the Bible and its stories. The book may make a good gift for younger children – perhaps ages 4-6 – if parents will read it to and with them and explain some of what is here glossed over or left out. It will be parents, after all, who will be their kids’ best religious teachers.

     On the other hand, kids themselves will quickly gravitate to Scholastic Book of World Records 2010, which has the sort of high-impact modern book design that is intended to grab young readers immediately. But if Bible stories, even when indifferently told, have tremendous staying power, the information in Scholastic Book of World Records 2010 is far more transient. True, some of the records listed here will likely stand indefinitely: the giant spider crab will remain the world’s largest crustacean, the whale shark the biggest fish, and the Komodo dragon the world’s largest lizard. But even the records that are subject to change do not seem interesting enough to bring young readers back to the book again and again. As of the publication of this volume, the NBA player with the highest salary is Kevin Garnett; the country with the most cell-phone accounts is Italy; the world’s largest restaurant is Damascus Gate in Syria; the world’s tallest apartment building is Q1 in Australia. These are interesting tidbits of information, presented with striking photos of the record holders and with graphics comparing the top five finishers in each category: the world’s fastest plane, for example, is the X-43A, followed by the X-15, Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, MiG-25R Foxbat-B, and X-2. A short paragraph gives details about each record holder: the world’s busiest subway system, for example, is Tokyo’s, which carries 3.1 billion passengers a year to 282 stations, using more than 2,500 cars; the system opened in 1927; and so on. All this is interesting but scarcely compelling – a statement that describes Scholastic Book of World Records 2010 as a whole. There is something pleasant about paging through a book of records instead of searching for the same information on the Internet; and the presentation of Scholastic’s annual volume is certainly striking enough to motivate some young readers to check it out. But this is not really a reference book, and it cannot be as up to date as a Web search; so although it makes a nice gift item, it is one that is unlikely to see much use after any initial enthusiasm for its format and presentation wears off.

(+++) DRAMAS OF THE PAST

They Dared Return: The True Story of Jewish Spies Behind the Lines in Nazi Germany. By Patrick K. O’Donnell. Da Capo. $26.

The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness. By Harlow Giles Unger. Da Capo. $26.

     Lives formed by war do not always move easily into peace – assuming they even survive the conflict. They Dared Return is the nonfictional side of a story woefully but typically overdramatized by Quentin Tarantino in the film Inglourious Basterds. Patrick O’Donnell’s book is the World War II tale of five Jews who, having reached safety in the United States, joined the Office of Strategic Services (precursor of the CIA) and returned to Nazi-occupied Europe to ferret out information that could help end the war with an Allied victory. On one level, O’Donnell’s book is like many other previously untold tales of that war, filled with narrow escapes, captures, astonishing acts of “greatest generation” heroism, and intricate retellings of events that were all in a day’s work for everyday heroes of the time – but seem in retrospect to be instances of astonishing bravery. On another level, They Dared Return is about what really matters to people, in time of war and afterwards – for, astonishingly, all five OSS volunteers profiled here survived the war. But how they survived it was very different, as O’Donnell points out after their story is told. One, Alfred Rosenthal, “sadly couldn’t put the war behind him and passed away during the 1950s.” But another, the book’s primary focus, Frederick Mayer, is still alive at age 89 and “still chops wood every day, mows the lawn, and serves food to the poor every week.” His is the kind of quiet heroism that revives a reader’s faith that there is something good in humanity – even as O’Donnell’s stories of Nazi torture and atrocities make one wonder. The actual events of the book will come as no surprise to anyone who has read the many, many volumes of heroism under fire in World War II: “Staying in the uniform of a German officer for the next three weeks, Mayer began talking to different people in Innsbruck, establishing contacts among the nascent anti-Nazi resistance in the area.” Mayer told one Nazi official, after Hitler’s death, “‘I will make you and your staff my prisoners and guarantee your lives. …I had no authority to take anyone prisoner or guarantee their safety, I just thought it was a good idea,’ Meyer modestly recalled sixty-three years later.” It is ultimately this postwar modesty that stays with the reader as much as the hair-raising events, narrow escapes and constant dangers of the war itself. Yes, They Dared Return is just another in a long line of real-life World War II adventures; but it is also a story of survival in peace, when all one faces is time and the inexorable march of mortality.

     It was a much earlier war – the American Revolution – that was formative for the nation’s fifth president, James Monroe (1758-1831). Born into colonial America, Monroe fought in the Revolution (he needed three months to recuperate from a wound) and afterwards rose to become Secretary of State and Secretary of War under James Madison – helping lead the young country through the War of 1812. Monroe served two terms as President (1817-1825) and led the United States into its first sustained period of peace, thanks in part to the Monroe Doctrine (1823). Harlow Giles Unger correctly points out that Monroe brought peace by establishing or strengthening the country’s ability to make war: he built a strong army and significantly expanded the navy. He also rescued the nation from economic calamity, partly through a government spending program that sounds, in retrospect, remarkably modern: Monroe convinced Congress to establish a national bank that let the federal government borrow money to build an extensive transportation network (of roads and canals). His plans were so successful that Monroe did something that is not modern at all: he convinced Congress to abolish all internal taxes. Unger argues in The Last Founding Father that the praise lavished on Presidents Adams and Jefferson is misplaced, with Adams’ decision to go to war against France and Jefferson’s embargo on international trade standing as disastrous decisions that nearly ruined a fledgling nation militarily and economically. Monroe, in Unger’s view, was the restorer of peace and prosperity and the establisher of a period of expansion in which the United States truly solidified itself as a nation and a power to be reckoned with. In this narrative, Monroe becomes president only in the last 80 pages; the first 260-plus show him developing to the point from which his lasting accomplishments (which included the acquisition of Florida) would be launched. The result is that Monroe emerges as more than “just” a president: he comes across as a multifaceted human being. Unger’s writing style can be a bit stolid: “By the end of June, the American embargo had combined with an embargo by Napoleon on British goods in Europe to bring British industrial production and foreign trade to a near halt.” But there are many quotations here from Monroe himself, as well as from other figures of the period, and they go a long way toward making both Monroe and this period of United States history come alive.

(++++) YOUTHFUL FERVOR FOR BRUCKNER

Bruckner: Symphony No. 7. Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. ATMA Classique. $16.99 (SACD).

Bruckner: Symphony No. 8. Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. ATMA Classique. $16.99 (2 CDs).

Bruckner: Symphony No. 9. Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. ATMA Classique. $16.99 (SACD).

     Bruckner did not seriously start composing symphonies until he was in his 40s (although the “study symphony” sometimes called No. 00 dates to 1863, when he was 39). His works, especially the later ones, are long, heavy and can be ponderous; they are also uniquely structured with thematic groups, developed in forms that differ significantly from those of other symphonies of Bruckner’s time, and filled with pauses that Bruckner likely heard as changes of the “registration” of the orchestra – akin to the pauses that are inevitable when playing the organ, an instrument on which Bruckner had considerable skill. For all these reasons and others, Bruckner’s symphonies have long been thought of as the province of mature conductors, who have lived with and through music long enough to fit Bruckner into an overall context while still exploring the unique elements of his symphonic style. It is therefore a shock, and a mighty pleasant one, to hear Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s versions of Bruckner’s last three symphonies – because here is a young conductor (born in 1975) who refuses to believe there is any reason not to conduct Bruckner with intensity, youthfulness and even a certain impulsiveness.

     The results are highly impressive. For one thing, Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal is not a traditional 100-piece (that is, Bruckner-size) orchestra: it has only about 60 players, the exact number depending on each work’s individual requirements. Thus, this orchestra brings a level of clarity to Bruckner – an audibility of inner voices and of individual sections within what is usually a grand swell of sound – that is both unusual and revelatory. The brass section occasionally falls a bit short of the fullness needed for truly effective Bruckner, but everyone in the orchestra plays gamely throughout. Nézet-Séguin has been the orchestra’s music director since 2000 and clearly knows just how much he can demand of the players – and they deliver for him with such enthusiasm that the comparative thinness in some of the grand climaxes is more than compensated for in softer sections that bring forth Bruckner’s considerable but rarely emphasized debt to Schubert. Nézet-Séguin’s Bruckner flows, not through excessive tempos – his are generally middle-of-the-road for this music – but through a focused rhythmic quality that keeps individual sections moving along smartly until Bruckner purposely stops, inserts one of his famous full-orchestra rests, and resumes in a different mood.

     The ATMA releases are, to be sure, a bit puzzling. Nos. 7 and 9 are single discs, both released in SACD format. No. 8, the most recent performance, is a two-CD (not SACD) set – the second CD containing the finale of No. 8 plus a “bonus” of the slow movement of No. 7 from the earlier recording. Also, No. 7 is a live recording; the other two symphonies were recorded in the studio. Actually, considering how different the provenance of these discs is, there is a remarkable consistency to their sound, to the sound of the orchestra and to Nézet-Séguin’s interpretations – testimony to this conductor having genuinely thought about Bruckner’s music before mounting the podium to lead it.

     Since these performances are most effective when taken as a whole, it is unfair to single out particular elements for their quality. No. 7, in particular, comes through as a fully unified work that gives no sense of meandering but moves inexorably from movement to movement. In No. 8, it is worth highlighting Nézet-Séguin’s way with the very difficult Adagio, a 30-minute movement that can easily become soporific if the conductor does not pay attention to its underlying structure and keep it moving ahead even when its pace is glacial. Nézet-Séguin’s careful attention to details of orchestration pays particular rewards here. In No. 9, the pizzicati of the Scherzo are unusually clear (although there are some unnecessary accelerandos), and the extended Adagio – another 30-minute movement – climbs episodically but fervently from one height to the next, so that it is genuinely dismaying when it ends questioningly, as if to prepare for the finale that Bruckner never finished. In all, these three performances show Nézet-Séguin to be a conductor to reckon with: he has thoroughly considered Buckner’s music and its meaning; and he brings to it a maturity that, clichéd though the phrase may be, is beyond his years. A complete Bruckner cycle from Nézet-Séguin would likely be a most interesting one, especially since the earlier symphonies are even more strongly Schubertian than the last three and would give Nézet-Séguin additional opportunities to bring out Bruckner’s considerable lyrical flow. Already, Nézet-Séguin has established himself as a Brucknerian to watch – and to hear with pleasure.