(++++) FILTHY ANIMALS

Erroll. By Hannah Shaw. Knopf. $15.99.

Porky and Bess. By Ellen Weiss and Mel Friedman. Illustrated by Marsha Winborn. Random House. $12.99.

Calvin Coconut #3: Dog Heaven. By Graham Salisbury. Illustrated by Jacqueline Rogers. Wendy Lamb Books. $12.99.

     What messes the animals in these books get into! Erroll, of the book Erroll, is a squirrel who not only gets into messes but also gets a boy, Bob, into them as well. Bob finds Erroll in a snack package, and the two soon strike up a conversation – yes, Erroll is a snack-packed talking squirrel. And a messy one. He loves peanut butter, but eats the sandwiches that Bob makes for him so sloppily that Bob needs to give him a bath. Try to give him one, anyway. Erroll runs, jumps and climbs all over, “all the way to the top of Mom’s favorite curtains,” and leaves dirty paw prints everywhere. Mom is not amused – and is taken aback when Erroll introduces himself. She insists that she and Bob take Erroll home to the woods, and they do, and everything ends happily (if messily), until the next morning, in the box of cereal he opens for his breakfast, Bob finds something else that immediately starts making a mess. Kids ages 5-8 will find this silly, absurd and absurdly silly book delightful. Parents may be less than overjoyed at the prospect of their kids searching diligently through packaging for who-knows-what sort of mess maker – but Hannah Shaw’s unfailing good humor in storytelling, and her amusing way with illustrations, should win over everyone in the family.

     Older kids will be won over by Porky and Bess even if they don’t get the pun on the title of Gershwin’s famous opera. This is a Step 4 “Step into Reading” book for grades two and three – roughly ages 7-9 – and its messiness is more a matter of lifestyle than mischief. The unlikely pairing of the title is between best friends Porky (a pig) and Bess (a cat). Porky is the messy one (no big surprise there): he lives alone and tosses stuff every which way in his house, although he does clean up eventually. Bess, who has three kittens, is a neatnik who wants everything to be perfect all the time – she even practices hard so she can do perfect moves on ice skates. But for all their differences of style and approach, the two share a special friendship, which comes to the fore in two things that Porky is doing: baking a cake and writing a poem. No-mess Bess (that isn’t her name, but it could be) helps Porky with his moon cake after the pig discovers that his can of moonlight has nothing in it. Bess helpfully supplies a box of nighttime, and the two friends – working in the dark – make a delicacy that Porky declares is “maybe even better” than moon cake. And Bess’ help with the cake also helps Porky complete the four-line poem that he has been trying to write for Poem-Reading Day: he makes it a poem about how much he likes Bess. The unlikely pairing of these two characters is nicely handled both by authors Ellen Weiss and Mel Friedman and by illustrator Marsha Winborn, who do not harshly judge Porky’s messiness (or Bess’ neatness, for that matter), but who clearly show that very different people (or animals, anyway) can get along just fine.

     But what about dog messes? Real and imagined ones are front and center in Calvin Coconut: Dog Heaven, Graham Salisbury’s third book for ages 7-10 about a boy growing up on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Calvin really, really wants a dog, and most of the book is about the contortions he goes through to try to convince his mother and his 16-year-old babysitter, Stella, to let him have one. A lot of convincing is needed, because there is so much messiness along the way. Mom’s boyfriend, Ledward, tells about a really dirty dog that Calvin’s teacher, Mr. Purdy, once had – it was white and loved mud, so it had to be hosed off all the time. Ledward himself not only has dogs but also has a rather well-trained (but very messy) pig, which rides in the front seat of his jeep (Jacqueline Rogers’ pictures of this and of the dirty dog being hosed off are just two of her perfectly apt illustrations). The book is full of messes: the garbage that Calvin takes out to show how responsible he can be, the “dogs stink” comment that Calvin’s mom makes in explaining why Calvin cannot have one, the messy room that Calvin fears will prove he cannot take care of a dog, and the huge mess at the Humane Society made by the dog that Calvin sees there and immediately decides to adopt…somehow. The “somehow” eventually works out, and even Stella comes around to accepting the dog, Streak – despite the mess the pup makes when Ledward gives her a fish head. So Calvin’s life becomes increasingly complex, which is sometimes a synonym for “messy” but in this case is more like a synonym for “grown up.” Or at least growing up, which Calvin is doing nicely.

(++++) A FINE PRODUCT FINE-TUNED

Norton 360 version 4.0. Windows 7, Vista or XP/SP2. Symantec. $79.99.

     Symantec’s top-of-the-line protective product for home computers and small businesses, Norton 360, has been getting steadily better and steadily easier to use through the years. Last year’s software, version 3.0, had so many features and performed so well that it was hard to see what Symantec could add to a new iteration. The answer turns out to be: not much, but what is added is all good.

     Norton 360 provides more forms of protection than the venerable Norton AntiVirus alone, and also more than Norton Internet Security offers. Specifically, Norton 360 takes the features of Norton Internet Security and adds backup capability plus PC tuneup that works so effectively that Symantec has stopped making new versions of its comprehensive tuneup utility, Norton SystemWorks. Users won’t buy Norton 360 for backup and tuneup purposes, though. They will buy it for its multiplicity of protections against viruses, spyware, rootkits, hackers and all sorts of malware, plus its effective blocking of phishing sites and its protective layer that woks automatically when your computer is connected to a wireless network. The backup and tuneup features make Norton 360 cost $10 more than Norton Internet Security – a bargain if you will use those added features, an unnecessary expense if you will not.

     The best thing about the latest version of Norton 360 was also the best thing about the previous version: it does a lot of very complex tasks, but it does them silently and unobtrusively, in the background, without consuming much computer power and without taking up an unreasonable amount of disc space (the reduction of bloat in Symantec’s Norton line has been a significant accomplishment in recent years). Most users will never see more of the product’s working than its clean, easy-to-understand main screen, which tells you at a glance whether all is in order in four areas: PC Security, Identity Protection, Backup and PC Tuneup. The screen will remind you constantly that you are “at risk” if you do not, for example, set up the product’s backup feature; this is another reason to be sure you really want the backup and tuneup elements of Norton 360 and will use them – otherwise, Norton Internet Security is a better choice. But if you do plan to use all its features, Norton 360 is very cooperative in letting you know immediately whether everything is all right or needs attention.

     Much of what is new in version 4.0 comes from Symantec’s commendable effort in recent years to develop high-security techniques for its enterprise customers – that is, for big business and government – and then make essentially those same features available in small-business and consumer products. Thus, Norton 360 version 4.0 offers better real-time malware detection and anti-phishing features and better warning of the possible dangers and performance impacts of Web downloads. The new version also scans somewhat more quickly than earlier ones and has a somewhat better-performing Startup Manager to reduce boot and cold reboot times. It also makes it easy to retrieve Web backups whenever and wherever you wish.

     Are these enhancements enough to make an upgrade from version 3.0 to version 4.0 worthwhile? In a word, no. They are enhancements rather than substantial new features, and most of the improvements in version 4.0 are incremental rather than quantum leaps. Users satisfied with version 3.0 may prefer to buy an extra year of its protection – Norton 360 provides only a single year of use on one to three PCs when first purchased – and wait to see whether a later version of the software represents a more significant advance than does version 4.0. Users who have not yet tried Norton 360, though, will be more than happy with the new version – if the price is acceptable. And that has become the standard question to ask about Symantec’s excellent utility products. Virtually all the features of Norton 360 are available piecemeal from other sources for free or at much lower cost. There are excellent free antivirus programs, fine free Web storage offerings, and browser build-ins that accomplish many of the protective functions of Norton 360. But they are piecemeal, and do not always work well together – indeed, they can sometimes slow down your computer or even operate at cross-purposes. Norton 360 is a peace-of-mind purchase: it works well and efficiently, all the parts interact capably, and once you install it and do some minimal setup (primarily in its backup utility), you need never look at it again unless you want to check on something specific or change some settings. Like an insurance policy against online disaster, Norton 360 is a comforting product to have – and that will be worth its $80 cost to a great many people and small businesses. People who prefer to tailor their Internet security to their own needs, or who are willing to put up with multiple downloads and regular checks for newer versions of free or inexpensive products, can duplicate most of what Norton 360 offers for less money. And some free or inexpensive products really do work well together, such as CCleaner (which removes duplicative and unneeded files) and Defraggler (which improves system performance), both from Piriform. Furthermore, FileHippo’s UpdateChecker makes it easy to look for newer versions of downloaded software. But how much time do you want to spend running these and similar programs, looking for newer versions, and doing installations? If the answer is “none,” you will find Norton 360 version 4.0 to be a one-stop, elegant protective solution that will be well worth the cost – and will impress you with its smooth operation and overall excellence of functionality.

(++++) VIVA VIOLA!

Schubert: Arpeggione Sonata; Liebesbotschaft (Schwanengesang); An den Mond; Dass Sie Hier Gewesen; Wehmut; Nacht und Träume; Die Taubenpost (Schwanengesang); Ich Schleiche Bang und Still Herum (Romanze der Helene); Der Hirt auf dem Felsen. Antoine Tamestit, viola; Sandrine Piau, soprano; Markus Hadulla, piano. Naïve. $16.99.

The Virtuoso Viola. Roger Chase, viola; Michiko Otaki, piano. Naxos. $8.99.

Soviet Russian Viola Music. Igor Fedotov, viola; Gary Hammond, piano; Leonid Vechkhayzer, piano. Naxos. $8.99.

     The viola is the basis, linguistically as well as musically, of the string-instrument family. The word “violin” (“little viola”) derives from it, as do “violoncello,” “bass viol” and the names of such old instruments as the violone (“large viola”), viola da gamba and viola da braccio. But the viola has played second fiddle, so to speak, to the violin – and to most of its other cousins – for hundreds of years, coming more fully into its own only in the 20^th century. Even today, recordings focused on the viola remain a bit exotic, so it is interesting to find three of them released at nearly the same time.

     Everything on Antoine Tamestit’s Schubert CD sings, including the songs with words and the ones he has transformed into songs without them. Tamestit offers warm tone and heartfelt playing throughout a program that is pervaded by melancholy. The 1824 Arpeggione Sonata – written for an obsolete instrument, invented in 1823, that has six strings, is fretted and tuned like a guitar, but is bowed like a cello – is played on cello or viola nowadays, the larger instrument providing more richness but the smaller one more effectively emphasizing this work’s wonderful dancelike rhythms and overall tunefulness. Tamestit – with excellent accompaniment from Markus Hadulla – offers an altogether beautiful reading, warm and lively and winning in every way. And then he does something highly unusual, and not for purists: in six Schubert songs, he plays the melody on viola and eliminates the voice altogether. The viola, like the clarinet, does have much of the range and richness of the human voice, and the songs – all of them sad, to varying degrees – have an emotional and lovely sound here, a songs-without-words beauty to rival Mendelssohn’s. But of course Mendelssohn deliberately wrote his Songs without Words, and these Schubert works were intended to be sung (Naïve even provides the original texts – a nice touch). So Tamestit’s transcription seems a little odd and perhaps even a bit self-indulgent – which does not, however, detract from the beauty of his performance’s sound. Furthermore, this CD does offer some Schubert songs with words, and Sandrine Piau sings them with elegance and emotional conviction. There is also a viola transcription in these songs – Romanze der Helene and Der Hirt auf dem Felsen – since they originally called for clarinet and Tamestit here uses his viola instead. But the range and sound of clarinet and viola are close enough so the substitution sounds quite natural here (as it does, for example, in Brahms’ two Op. 120 sonatas for clarinet or viola and piano). This is a beautiful-sounding CD, experimental in some ways, that effectively showcases the range of the viola and the lovely tones of which, in the right hands, it is capable.

     If Schubert’s music makes it possible to showcase the viola’s rich and beautiful sound, works by other composers have shown it to be an instrument capable of considerable virtuosity. Unsurprisingly, the CD called The Virtuoso Viola celebrates the “display” side of viola playing in nine works, all performed with panache by Roger Chase and Michiko Otaki. Georges Enescu’s Pièce de Concert is a standout in combining beauty with performance prowess. Henry Vieuxtemps’ Elégie focuses on the viola’s burnished tone, to fine effect, while the same composer’s Capriccio for Solo Viola shows off the instrument’s more intense and playful side. Zoltán Kodály’s solo-viola transcription of Bach’s Fantasia Cromatica is technically very impressive and displays the viola in a serious mode. For sheer virtuosity, there is Paganini’s Sonata per la Gran Viola, which is not a sonata but a theme and variations – building to considerable fireworks by the end – and in which “Gran” refers not to the music but to the fact that Paganini wrote the piece for the oversize viola that he preferred to play. Paganini’s work is the longest on this CD, at nearly 15 minutes, but Fritz Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro delivers an equally impressive virtuoso workout in one-third the time. Le Tombeau de Ravel by Arthur Benjamin (1893-1960), which is almost the length of Paganini’s “sonata,” takes the viola through many different technical and emotional levels – to fine effect. Introduction et Danse by Joseph Jongen (1873-1953) is more unidimensional, but is quite impressive on its own level. And the concluding, shortest work here, Scherzo by Chase’s teacher, Bernard Shore (1896-1985), ends the CD with enough intensity to make the viola’s capabilities abundantly clear. It would be stretching to say that there is any great music here, but a great deal of it is very pleasant indeed, and the quality of the music – as well as of the playing – repays repeated listening.

     Soviet Russian Viola Music is a less successful display of what the viola can do – and was called on to do in the 20^th century. All five works here have at least moderately grand pretentions, but they are, by and large, pretentious – and there is a sameness in the approach of several pieces that makes them come across as rather “grey” in sound. In particular, the sonatas for viola and piano by Vladimir Kryukov (1920-1/1933) and Sergey Vasilenko (1923) sound like warmed-over Debussy with a dab of Scriabin. They are intermittently effective but do not sustain interest from start to finish. The sonata by Valerian Bogdanov-Berezovsky was written a generation later (1956) and has considerably more to it, especially in its central theme-and-variations and brief concluding Postludia. Later still are the sonatas by Grigory Frid (1971) and Yulian Krein (1973). Frid’s work is emotionally the deepest on this CD and the most thoroughly interconnected structurally, with all three of its movements based on the same material; the finale, given over almost entirely to solo viola, shows considerable creativity. Krein’s sonata, though, harks back to early-century Impressionism, being colorful but not especially distinctive. This CD gets a (+++) rating: the music is, by and large, simply not very interesting, although Igor Fedotov plays all the pieces with dedication and intensity and is ably backed up by Gary Hammond in the Krein and Bogdanov-Berezovsky works and by Leonid Vechkhayzer in the rest of the program.

(++++) VOCALIZING

Dvořák: Requiem. Lisa Milne, soprano; Karen Cargill, mezzo-soprano; Peter Auty, tenor; Peter Rose, bass; London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir conducted by Neeme Järvi. LPO. $24.99 (2 CDs).

Gerald Finley, Baritone: Great Operatic Arias. London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Edward Gardner. Chandos. $14.99.

Magnus Lindberg: GRAFFITI (2009); Seht die Sonne (2007). Helsinki Chamber Choir and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo. Ondine. $16.99.

     Vocal expressiveness is not synonymous with vocal beauty. Composers may use the voice for communications ranging from the ethereal (much of Bach) to the guttural (Berg’s Wozzeck, to cite one example). In these new recordings, the voices are called upon to play a variety of different roles.

     The greatest sustained beauty is to be found in Dvořák’s infrequently performed Requiem, which is a more personal expression of sentiments than is usual in a mass for the dead. The 19^th century saw Requiems from the ultra-grandiose (Berlioz) to the ultra-operatic (Verdi), and Dvořák’s makes no attempt to scale those heights. What he does is subtler and was surely more meaningful to the composer himself, given his unwavering religious faith. Using the traditional Requiem text as a jumping-off point rather than a given, he creates an unusually structured work in two parts. The first runs from “Requiem aeternam” through the “Lacrimosa,” and is permeated by a sorrowful three-note motif first heard at the work’s opening. The second part includes the “Offertorium,” “Sanctus” and “Agnus Dei” – but before the final part, Dvořák interpolates a “Pie Jesu” section with words from the final text of the “Dies Irae” portion. The result is a work that is intimate and strongly heartfelt and that comes across, when well performed, as a personal plea – not just an institutional one – for mercy and peace after death. It is the emotionalism of the appeal that comes through most strongly in the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance, with soloists and chorus leaning into the music with fervor and bringing forth not only the beauty of the composer’s scoring but also the intensity with which he clearly felt the words as he chose to present them. This live recording from February 2009 was the LPO’s first performance of this Requiem, and conductor Neeme Järvi clearly wanted there to be a series of emotional high points throughout its hour and a half. The LPO’s sound is, in truth, not ideally suited to music of such warmth and fluidity – the orchestra boasts clarity, even astringency, rather than the broader tone of some Central European ensembles. But in this recording, everyone seems determined to rise to the heights that the subject matter demands, and the result is a very moving experience that makes one wonder why this work is not performed more frequently.

     The pieces sung by baritone Gerald Finley for a new “Opera in English” CD from Chandos are performed all the time, and very well, too. And that is a problem for this well-sung, well-recorded disc. The reason is that English translation of opera is perhaps justifiable in the context of making it possible for an audience to follow the story, and the interplay of characters, without knowing a work’s original language. But on a 13-track CD of some of opera’s greatest hits – with only three pieces originally written in English – the translations are much harder to accept. It takes the pleasure out of Mozart’s Là ci darem la mano to render it as “There will my arms enfold you” (librettist Lorenzo da Ponte was writing about hands, not arms, in any case). Bizet’s Toreador, en garde – which uses a phrase that never needs translation – is just plain silly as “Toreador, be ready.” And it is hard to keep from giggling inappropriately when an aria from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg comes out as “Do not disdain our Masters thus.” Finley has a pleasant voice – not especially brilliant, not exceptionally strong, but well modulated, sensitive to the nuances of different composers’ styles, and powerful enough to handle Puccini, Tchaikovsky and Verdi as well as Mark-Anthony Turnage, John Adams and the (unfortunately inevitable) “Some Enchanted Evening” from South Pacific. So this CD will be a treat for Finley fans, and on that basis gets a (+++) rating. But hearing arias from Euryanthe and Linda di Chamounix in English is, at best, an acquired taste.

     Magnus Lindberg’s music is an acquired taste, too, one that many listeners will be less than eager to acquire. The Finnish composer (born 1958) has an eclectic but always very modern style, often turning to electronic and computer-based manipulation of sound to achieve the effects he wants. In GRAFFITI – the title is all in capitals – Lindberg wanted to create his first work for chorus and orchestra, and came up with a clever way to do so. He chose as text some bits of graffiti found on the walls of houses of ancient Pompeii, which was destroyed in 79 A.D. by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. And he set the words – in rather scattershot fashion and in largely modal choral writing – against chromatic instrumental parts. The result is complex and is interesting rather than gripping, and will not by any means be to all tastes – even though it is in fact somewhat simpler and more accessible than much other Lindberg music. GRAFFITI is paired with a performance of Seht die Sonne, whose title harks back to the first words of the final section of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder (even though Lindberg’s work is purely instrumental). This is earlier but more difficult Lindberg, dense and filled with sounds that can be difficult to grasp in a single hearing. There is something symphonic in scale about the work – Lindberg himself has said that Aura, written in 1994 in memory of Witold Lutosławski, could be seen as his first symphony and Seht die Sonne as his second. But Seht die Sonne has none of the traditional sequences or building blocks of a symphony, and is best heard as a complex orchestral tone poem of indeterminate subject. This Lindberg CD, which is very well performed by the Helsinki Chamber Choir and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo, gets a (+++) rating for its effectiveness in putting across the composer’s strongly delineated musical approach. But many listeners will not find the music itself particularly approachable.

(++++) ECO-LOGIC

The Smash! Smash! Truck. By Aidan Potts. David Fickling Books. $16.99.

Here Comes the Garbage Barge! By Jonah Winter. Illustrated by Red Nose Studio. Schwartz & Wade. $17.99.

     Here are two great ways to show kids ages 4-8 about the pluses of recycling and the minuses of failing to reuse as much as possible. Yes, the books are overly simplified, avoiding the tough questions that have adults constantly debating what to do about all the trash the world creates; but as introductions to some of the basics, both books are well written and visually very effective. The Smash! Smash! Truck is told largely from the perspective of glass jars and bottles that are being recycled – some of them fearing being smashed to bits, others enjoying the experience because they know it will bring them back in a new, equally useful form. Aidan Potts (who calls himself Professor Potts in his science books) makes the accurate but infrequently articulated point that since the Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago, “very little has been added and almost nothing taken away.” That is, the entire planet exists in a state of recycling at the atomic level: the surface crust recycles very slowly, the sun causes water to change form and move, “plants grow by using atoms from the air and ground,” and as for living creatures, all “are made by recycling the Earth’s atoms.” And that leads to a comment by one bottle that is being broken up for reuse: “Be nice to glass – you don’t know who it has been.” This is a very clever way to show kids that they are part of the recycling process even when they do not actively do anything about it. And that is just one aspect of this book – because Potts makes the point that “we can make atoms useless for a very long time” by putting trash in plastic bags and having it end up in dumps, where glass “will take hundreds of thousands of years to smash up.” So smashing it deliberately, then reusing it, makes perfect sense. And it does make sense – the recycling of glass, which has been going on for a long, long time, is one of the easiest and most economically justifiable forms of reuse of materials, and is widely embraced by companies that use glass for packaging and communities everywhere that do any form of recycling at all. Potts’ clever illustrations, which often include the word “smash,” are a visual feast, clearly underlining his message, which he eventually states outright: “Old glass is all you need to make new glass. Recycling means we don’t need to dig up any new materials.” That may be a slight overstatement, but no matter – the point is made effectively as well as entertainingly. The difficulty, of course, is what Potts does not say in the book: other forms of recycling are far less efficient and far more expensive than the recycling of glass, which is why they are not embraced as universally as glass recycling is. But as an introduction to what recycling can do and why it is important, The Smash! Smash! Truck is smashingly convincing.

     At the other end of the spectrum of disposal is the true story that forms the basis of Here Comes the Garbage Barge! Back in 1987, a barge laden with 3,168 tons of trash from the town of Islip, near New York City, was towed for dumping to North Carolina – which refused to accept it. And thus began an odyssey that eventually took the barge – and the tugboat Break of Dawn, which was pulling it – 6,000 miles around the United States and beyond, to New Orleans and Mexico and Belize and Texas and Florida, before it eventually returned to New York, where a judge ordered the trash burned in a Brooklyn incinerator and the residue given back to Islip for landfill burial. There are all sorts of social and political complications of this story, none of which Jonah Winter mentions. Instead, his whole focus – appropriately for the age group for which he is writing – is on the barge itself, the tugboat pulling it, and tugboat captain “Cap’m Duffy St. Pierre, a crusty old sailor.” The story becomes Cap’m Duffy’s above all, as he seeks a place to discharge his ever-smellier cargo, periodically reporting back to his boss about the latest location that refuses to allow him and the barge to dock. What makes this book exceptional is only in part the story itself. Red Nose Studio has created amazing illustrations for it, made largely out of – yes – trash. In fact, if you remove the book jacket, there is a whole story inside the jacket itself about just how the models and pictures were created. But don’t read that until you have finished the story if you want to preserve the sheer wonder of the book’s appearance. The heaped-high garbage barge itself changes its look as the tale goes on and the stuff starts to stink more and more. Cap’m Duffy looks sometimes determined, sometimes angry, sometimes downright fed up (as when he is shown with a clothespin on his nose to block out the garbage’s smell). The other characters are wonderfully modeled, too, from the soldiers in Belize (one with a toucan atop his helmet), to the crown-wearing mayor of New Orleans, to the angry senior citizens floating in the water off Florida’s beaches, to the Statue of Liberty that is holding its nose as the garbage barge moves by. The moral of the story, given on the inside back cover, is obvious: “Don’t make so much garbage!” But, of course, how to do that is the difficult issue that the book dodges. Here Comes the Garbage Barge! could well serve as the basis for having the first of a series of complicated reuse-and-recycling talks with a child who has just been fascinated by this tale and captivated by its marvelous illustrations.

(++++) ONE EPIC TREK, TWO SMALL SEARCHES

Bone Handbook. By Jeff Smith. Graphix/Scholastic. $9.99.

Are You My Mother? By P.D. Eastman. Random House. $8.99.

Have You Seen My Dinosaur? By Jon Surgal. Illustrated by Joe Mathieu. Random House. $8.99.

     One of the greatest journeys ever told in comic-book (or graphic-novel) style is that of the Bone cousins – Fone Bone, Smiley Bone and Phoney Bone – through The Valley and into a huge war between the forces of good and evil. The nine-volume Bone series in Scholastic editions is outstanding – it looks even better with Steve Hamaker’s coloring than in Jeff Smith’s original, black-and-white, comic-book version – and Scholastic recently added a prequel focusing on young Rose, who was known in the main sequence as Gran’ma Ben. And now there is a handbook giving the back story of the entire Bone tale, with brief profiles of the major (and many minor) characters, short synopses of the primary nine-book story, interviews with both Smith and Hamaker, and background material at which the Bone saga itself only hints. There is also a bonus story set within the Bone universe – a slight tale, but an amusing one. This is not a book for newcomers to Bone, since it will spoil the reading of the main story by revealing a great deal of what happens and why. But it is an excellent companion volume for those who have read Bone, who love it, and who have wondered what influenced Smith in writing it and what happened before the main story began – how the stage was set for the earthshaking events that Bone chronicles. It is certainly interesting to know that Smith started drawing characters similar to the Bone cousins when he was 10 years old; that the appearance of Thorn, who will eventually inherit the throne at the end of the saga, is based on that of Smith’s wife and was the hardest character for Smith to draw; and that Smith’s fascination with Herman Melville not only determined Fone Bone’s love of Moby-Dick but also led to the name Bartleby for the baby Rat Creature who plays an important role in the story. These tidbits of information may be trivia, but to those fascinated by Bone and wanting to know as much as possible about the epic’s creator and the events and characters within the story, Bone Handbook will be a delight. And it even includes some Bone-related recipes, such as the “blank sandwich” (two pieces of bread, crusts cut off, within nothing between the slices).

     The journeys in two new Random House Beginner Books – the ones with the familiar logo of Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat – are not as wide-ranging as that of Bone, but kids ages 5-8 will nevertheless find plenty to enjoy here. Are You My Mother? is a classic – the new edition marks its 50^th year – and is as charming as ever. It is simply the story of a baby bird whose mother leaves the nest to find food just before the baby hatches – so the baby, after breaking out of the egg, does not know what its mother looks like. The result is a story of amusing mistakes, as the baby bird asks a kitten, a hen, a dog and other animals whether they are his mother, and of course finds out that none of them fills the bill. The bird eventually meets a “snort” – a huge steam shovel – which picks him up and puts him back in the nest, where of course his mother finds him, safe and sound. P.D. Eastman’s easy-to-read prose and simple but expressive drawings are as enjoyable for the kids of 2010 as they were for the children of 1960, when the book first appeared.

     Have You Seen My Dinosaur? is brand new, but is cut from much the same cloth as Eastman’s book. Jon Surgal’s rhyming story about a little boy looking for his missing pet dinosaur is very well complemented by Joe Mathieu’s suitably silly illustrations. The visual joke here is that the dinosaur keeps appearing where readers see him, but just out of view of the boy and all the people he asks for help: his mother, a fisherman, the police, a zookeeper, and others. The story is sheer fun, as when the zookeeper tries to think of animals that the boy can find at the zoo: “Now let me see. What have we got?/ A lynx. Some minks. An ocelot./ Plus two gnu. A kinkajou./ Camels with one hump or two./ A big black bear from Baden-Baden./ A Scottish beastie from Culloden.” And all the animals are dancing in a chorus line – along with the dinosaur, bigger than any of them, but not seen by boy or zookeeper: “But no, we have no dinosaur./ There aren’t any, anymore.” But the boy knows that he has a dinosaur, and eventually comes up with someone to ask who, he is sure, has seen the missing dino. He’s right, too – and kids will enjoy being pulled into this story of a quest that never quite ends the way the boy would like it to, but remains an enjoyable exploration from start to finish.

(++++) TO BUILD, TO PLAY

The Solar Car Book. By the editors of Klutz. Klutz. $21.95.

The Only Coloring, Puzzle, Game, Dot-to-Dot Activity Book You’ll Ever Need. By the editors of Klutz. Klutz. $14.95.

     “Satan finds some mischief still/ For idle hands to do,” wrote Isaac Watts in the 18^th century. “We’ve got a better idea,” Klutz editors might reply in the 21^st. Kids with time on their hands can easily spend it in crafts projects or “directed doodling” (not that Klutz actually calls it that) – or in many other activities designed to prevent those idle hands and the minds controlling them from slipping into boredom or, worse, television. For kids ages eight and above, The Solar Car Book provides a wonderful and surprisingly simple project that parents can turn into a discussion of ecologically responsible ways to get around in the world (if they can find a way to do that without taking all the fun out of things). There are only a few parts needed to build this little light-powered vehicle, and as usual in Klutz books, all those parts are included. The car’s body is cardboard, bound right into the book – just take it out, attach the wheels, axles, wires and solar cell, and you’ve got a working model. In fact, Klutz challenges kids who “hate step-by-step instructions” just to look at a front-of-book photo and put the car together from it. But then, of course (and as usual for Klutz), the book gives step-by-step instructions, which make the assembly very clear and easy (there are even holes punched in all the places in the car body through which items need to be inserted). In fact, the instructions are so simple that this would be a mighty thin book if that were all it included. But that is not the Klutz way. There are also pages about solar power, how solar cars work vs. how regular ones with internal-combustion engines work, ways in which solar power is used in real-world vehicles (including airplanes), and how to make the solar car operate indoors (answer: attach a battery; instructions included, of course). Kids who build the car and read the book will not only have a neat little plaything (which doesn’t move terribly quickly, though – be forewarned) but also have a better understanding of energy in general, “green” energy, and the positive elements and natural limitations of using the sun to make things move.

     What kids will understand after going through The Only Coloring, Puzzle, Game, Dot-to-Dot Activity Book You’ll Ever Need is – well, to be honest, not much. This is a book for younger children (ages four and up), and it is designed purely for fun, not for any instructional purpose. But that won’t limit its value to families on rainy days, during car trips or at other “what do I do now?” times. Spiral bound so it easily opens flat or can be folded back on itself, the book features fold-in pages, connect-the-dots puzzles, construction projects such as cootie catchers, punch-through pages that create goosebumps and mosquito bites, an age-guessing puzzle, cutouts that turn buttons into “button noses,” and lots of other silly and simple (and simply silly) activities. The whole book is in black-and-white, which means there are opportunities to color absolutely everything with the five included twist-up crayons – including the page that says, “Don’t color this page” (you’re supposed to do something else first, then color it). There is nothing profound here at all, but there is lots of fun to be had. And if the fun in this book and The Solar Car Book seems vaguely familiar – well, you must be an adult with a good memory, or with kids who are widely spaced in age. Both these books are new editions of ones with the same titles that were issued by Klutz early in this decade. The new versions are redesigned and repackaged but are essentially the same as the earlier ones. That means that if you already had a child who enjoyed either of these books and now have another child in the right age range, you can be almost sure that he or she will have a great time with these reissues. And there’s nothing devilish, or idle, about that.

(+++) WHAT’S TO ENVY?

The Envy Chronicles, Book 2: Embrace the Night Eternal. By Joss Ware. Avon. $7.99.

The Envy Chronicles, Book 3: Abandon the Night. By Joss Ware. Avon. $7.99.

     Joss Ware gets big points for consistency. Beyond the Night, the first book in a series now being called The Envy Chronicles, was a post-apocalyptic zombie romance (that’s a romance including zombies, not involving zombies) featuring a man who developed strange paranormal powers during a 50-year suspension of time (and of belief) in a cave while the world collapsed. Much of the book focused on how he and a woman with her own horrible past would overcome their memories and the destruction of the world around them to find sensual and emotional relief with each other – which they eventually did.

     The second book in the series, Embrace the Night Eternal, is about another man who was in that cave, who developed different paranormal powers and who – in the new, post-apocalyptic world – encounters a different woman; and the two seek to overcome their memories and the destruction of the world around them to find sensual and emotional relief with each other. Which they eventually do.

     The third book, Abandon the Night, is about a third man who was in the cave, and about a third woman, and – by now, you get the idea. But you may wonder what “Envy” is all about. Given the usual meaning of the word, it is an unfortunate choice for a romance-series title; but the usual meaning is not what matters here. “Envy” is “NV” and used to be “LV.” That is, it is what people of the post-apocalypse call New Vegas, which used to be Las Vegas. The remains of this city – now conveniently close to the Pacific Ocean, California having disappeared beneath the waves – are the centerpiece of civilization in Ware’s world. This is one of several elements in these books that indicate the author may not intend them to be taken entirely seriously.

     The overt plotting, though, is serious (if formulaic) enough. The first book was filled with mysteries, not only about the individual characters’ survival and the world in which they must now live, but also about the gangas (as zombies are called here), the Strangers (apparent immortals who may or may not be aliens), and the partly known, partly unknown powers of the men who were trapped in that cave. The first book’s primary male “romantic lead” was Dr. Elliott Drake, who has the power to heal with his hands – but only if he takes the disease or injury into himself and suffers any consequences (including death), or passes the condition along to someone (or something) else. Jade (who chooses her name to try to obliterate memories of her previous one, Diana Kapiza) is the woman in this couple. She is a strong character and important provider of services to Envy, but is fighting horrid memories of captivity with a bounty hunter and the Immortals, who are in essence the fount of all evil (they appear to have been responsible for destroying the world). The couples of books two and three were actually introduced in the first book, but they were not front and center; so Ware makes them the core of the followup novels. Thus, Embrace the Night Eternal focuses on Simon Japp, whose violent past eventually comes back to haunt him even post-apocalyptically (and despite his determination to use his newfound paranormal powers for good); and on Sage Corrigan, a computer expert (a few computers have survived) whose knowledge is key to fighting back against the Strangers. Thrown together in a situation that requires them to pose as man and wife (the Apocalypse somehow not having significantly changed the importance of institutional marriage, at least for the good guys), Simon and Sage eventually and not surprisingly find themselves inevitably attracted to each other, and Simon’s paranormal power turns out to come in handy for highly personal matters as well as for battle.

     In Abandon the Night, the two primary people in focus are Quent (full name: Quentin Brummell Fielding III), who learned in the first book that his hated father was likely the driving force behind whatever the Immortals did to the world, and who is now determined to kill him; and Zoë Kapoor, who coupled avidly with Quent in the first book but develops a relationship with him only when it turns out they are both strongly driven in their post-apocalyptic lives by the desire for revenge (gangas killed Zoë’s family). Ware does a good job of making both her male and female characters independent and reasonably intelligent: Quent’s driven, intense determination plays nicely with Zoë’s expertise in archery and near fearlessness in destroying as many gangas as she can. These books being romances, though, the characters’ self-reliance goes only so far – to the point where they find they desperately need each other in order to “complete” themselves.

     At one point in their pretend-married adventure, when Simon and Sage need to be in bed together, Sage is more interested in him than he seems to be in her, and an amusingly awkward scene results, during which Sage “wasn’t sure whether to giggle or to roll her eyes.” Readers may end up with somewhat similar reactions. Ware keeps making it clear that this is serious stuff, end-of-the-world and near-end-of-humanity stuff, that she is writing. But amusing elements keep creeping in, unostentatiously enough so it is not quite certain whether Ware intends these books to be taken wholly seriously or not – or, to put it another way, whether she is being clever or is just style-challenged. One example from the first book: Elliott contemplating paranormal powers by thinking of the Pixar film, The Incredibles. And one from the second: “Her upper lip had a small freckle right on it, right at the fullest part, and every time he noticed it, the bottom dropped out of his stomach.” Ware’s books are easy reading, in any case, and the characters, while scarcely deep, are interesting enough to make readers care about what happens to them. The books’ plots are rather overstuffed, and some plot points are just plain silly (for example, Sage is a virgin until she and Simon get serious, and her virginity is not detected even when she is medically examined in a community focused on repopulating the planet as quickly as possible). But the destroyed-world background is effectively presented, and the mixture of adventure and romance is generally pretty well balanced. There is little to envy in Ware’s writing style, but The Envy Chronicles has the elements needed to become an enviable popular success.

(++++) POTBOILER POWER

Sullivan: Ivanhoe. Neal Davies, Stephen Gadd, James Rutherford, Peter Wedd, Peter Rose, Toby Spence, Matthew Brook, Leigh Melrose, Andrew Staples, Janice Watson, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Geraldine McGreevy; Adrian Partington Singers and BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by David Lloyd-Jones. Chandos. $44.99 (3 CDs).

     The biggest surprise revealed in this recording of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s Ivanhoe is that it is not at all a bad opera. Fusty, stodgy and overstuffed it is, and unceasingly earnest in a way that is ultimately unconvincing. But it is very well made, with fine vocal writing and sensitive and at times excellent orchestration; and it attains, from time to time, a genuine sense of grandeur and spectacle, if scarcely of profundity.

     But then, Ivanhoe is a sort of command performance, and its source is one of the 19^th century’s more famous potboiler novels, by Sir Walter Scott. Scott wrote two dozen historical novels, essentially inventing a form that survives today. His works were over-plotted and made little attempt at characterization, essentially throwing numerous cardboard figures onto a vast canvas and having them enact scenes out of the past – a style that also, unfortunately, survives today. In the absence of strength of character, an opera librettist – Sullivan’s was Julian Sturgis (1848-1904) – needs to create an ensemble piece, and that is just what Ivanhoe is. The libretto is serviceable, and Sturgis appears to have been far more pliable in working with Sullivan than was the notoriously prickly W.S. Gilbert. The result is a work in which the music clearly dominates the words, with Sullivan adding more character to the characters than they would otherwise possess.

     It was none other than Queen Victoria who inspired Sullivan’s Ivanhoe. She knighted Sullivan in 1883, during the run of Iolanthe, specifically singling out his serious music – not his comic operas with Gilbert – as the reason for the honor (Gilbert was eventually knighted in the somewhat less straitlaced Edwardian era, after Victoria’s death). Sullivan tried to fulfill what he perceived as his duty to create true English national opera by doing Ivanhoe, which he dedicated to his queen. And certainly the opera is thoroughly English – perhaps more “early English,” as a character in Patience would have put it, but English through and through. This, despite the fact that in the time period of Scott’s novel and Sullivan’s opera, all the nobility spoke French (Richard the Lionheart spoke little English and lived in the south of France).

     What Sullivan did with Sturgis’ version of Scott’s novel was to create a work with three acts, each containing three scenes, hitting many of the high points of the original work. This is a very manly opera (to use a near-obsolete term), filled with posing and boasting and battles grand and small – it is set, after all, in the 12^th century. Low male voices predominate, and there are only three female characters, the result being a serious if rather pretentious sound in much of the vocal music. Yet Sullivan often manages better characterization in music than Scott did in words. King Richard (Neil Davies) is too good to be true, but the nobleness of his music is impressive, and the rough good humor with which he confronts (and, of course, bests) Friar Tuck (Matthew Brook) is a high point, if not exactly a lightening of the mood. The bad guys – Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert (James Rutherford) and Maurice de Bracy (Peter Wedd – a tenor!) – strut and stamp about and are unidimensionally evil, but Rutherford manages some effective lines and de Bracy seems genuinely surprised when King Richard pardons him. Less impressive is Ivanhoe himself (Toby Spence): he spends much of the opera wounded and weak, and never becomes a very interesting character (although this is true in Scott’s novel as well). Also unimpressive – one of the few irritating flaws in this production – are the multiple pronunciations of de Bracy’s name, which is sometimes “BRAY-cee,” sometimes “BRAH-cee,” and once even “Brassy.”

     The women, interestingly enough, have more personality than the men. Janice Watson as Lady Rowena is appropriately evanescent and seems, in her delicacy, a good match for Ivanhoe: they are just about equally colorless, although her “O moon” aria bespeaks some (well-buried) passion. Rebecca the Jewess (Geraldine McGreevy) threatens to take over every scene she is in: she is the one character with fire, intensity, self-awareness and a willingness to confront those who think themselves her betters (including de Bracy and Prince John [Stephen Gadd], who in a nice piece of casting also sings the role of the Grand Master of the Templars). Actually, to be fair, Rebecca is not the only woman with fire: Ulrica (Catherine Wyn-Rogers) uses it to burn down Torquilstone Castle – and, in a fine touch in both libretto and score, her words are written in something approximating Old English cadence, and the music reflects them.

     Familiarity with Ivanhoe the novel will be a big help in listening to Ivanhoe the opera, for those seeking the music’s full effect. Whether the added investment of time and effort is worthwhile is a matter of opinion. Sullivan’s work is scattered, a series of episodes rather than a story with a strong arc; and the “ensemble” nature of the opera allows listeners only intermittent identification with individual characters before it is time to move on to someone and something else. Certainly the singers and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, under the extremely able guidance of David Lloyd-Jones, give the music their all, and it is unlikely there will be a better Ivanhoe anytime soon. It is also unlikely that there needs to be one. This is not an endearing opera: unlike Sullivan’s collaborations with Gilbert, Ivanhoe never transcends the time in which it was written, and at its most effective remains rather pale. It is not at all a bad opera, but it would be overly charitable to call it a really good one.

(++++) SHORT, SWEET AND CUTE

Lisa McCue’s Fuzzytails ABC: A Foldout Alphabet Book. Random House. $8.99.

Lisa McCue’s Fuzzytails 123: A Touch-and-Feel Counting Book. Random House. $8.99.

Little Duck Says Quack! Photographs by Phoebe Dunn. Story by Judy Dunn. Random House. $8.99.

Little Puppy Says Woof! Photographs by Phoebe Dunn. Story by Judy Dunn. Random House. $8.99.

     It is the form of presentation more than the content that will attract young children to these books. The two Lisa McCue’s Fuzzytails volumes, for ages 2-5, have content that is ordinary on the face of if: the alphabet and the numbers 1-10 (someday, someone will do a counting book with the numbers -1 to 9; but it would need illustrations by Edward Gorey or Gahan Wilson). In the ABC book, McCue’s Fuzzytails Animal Friends hop, skip, dance, bound and gallop among the letters, with McCue providing suitably alliterative prose: “Iggy the iguana idly inches down his I.” “Our Ollie Octopus is oozing in and out of O.” “Tom Turtle totes a tall green T.” The large-size letters appear in bright colors, each supported by a cavorting animal friend; page backgrounds are otherwise white, so kids stay focused only on the animals and the alphabet. What makes this book special is that it is perforated at front and back, with each page connected to every other one. Detaching the pages at the perforations turns the whole book (minus its covers) into an alphabet wall hanging, with the letters and text (that is, the book’s contents) on one side and the animals and letters without text beaming brightly from the other. Making the book into a wall decoration is a clever way for parents to reinforce its learning message.

     There is a different sort of cleverness in McCue’s 123 book. Here, each page has something special for kids to see or touch – again, with the aim of reinforcing the counting lesson and making it fun. Among the “three bumpy gators,” for example, one has slightly rough, scaly-looking skin to feel. One of the “four merry winter mice” has soft white fur; the number 8 is bright and shining among eight penguins that slip and slide on the ice; and so on. As with the alphabet book, this counting volume is simple, attractive and just different enough to keep young children interested.

     The interest in two books from what Random House calls “The Phoebe Dunn Collection” lies mainly in the photos – plus some sounds, courtesy of big buttons that kids ages 4-6 will enjoy pushing. Dunn (1925-1990) was best known for her “Little Animals” books (The Little Pig, The Little Rabbit, The Little Lamb, and so on); her photos remain charming in these new, abridged board-book editions of The Little Duck (1976) and The Little Puppy (1984). The text by Judy Dunn, Phoebe’s Dunn’s daughter, is straightforward and pleasant. Little Duck shows the duckling hatching and growing up on a farm (there is a particularly nice photo of the duck sitting happily on the family dog); eventually the duck grows to full size and meets a female duck with which to swim. Little Puppy shows a boy named Tim adopting a dog he names Charlie and going through all the basics of life with a puppy: a visit to the vet, some mischief, swimming in the lake, playing in leaves and more. The puppy’s bark, heard when the button is pushed, is weaker and less impressive than the duck’s quack, but in both books, the sounds are just an added attraction to what are essentially simple and gentle stories of everyday life.

(++++) QUESTS FOR ALL AGES

That’s Life, Samara Brooks. By Daniel Ehrenhaft. Delacorte Press. $15.99.

The Rain Wilds Chronicles, Volume One: Dragon Keeper. By Robin Hobb. Eos. $26.99.

     The quest tale dates to time immemorial, or at the very least to the time of Gilgamesh, which was nearly 5,000 years ago. The question for modern writers is how to make this sort of long-form, even leisurely story attractive to readers at a time of instantaneous communication and super-fast travel. A notable answer in books for younger readers – such as That’s Life, Samara Brooks – is to make the quest highly personal, a journey to find out who you are as well as to get yourself (or someone else) from Point A to Point B. There is a dose of this approach in all quest stories, not excluding Gilgamesh itself. But making the personalization the main focus, rather than something of larger scope, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Quest tales also tend to take themselves very, very seriously – they are historically about grand things – but to make them more appealing today, especially for younger readers, a good dose of humor helps. Daniel Ehrenhaft mixes the ingredients in just about the right proportions in a story that starts when Samara Brooks sets up a casino in the school cafeteria and progresses through a search for aliens on Earth – such as, say, Samara herself. To say this is a highly unlikely series of events is understating the case, but Ehrenhaft’s book works (albeit not totally believably) by making Samara and her friends both likable and real. More than that: Ehrenhaft makes Samara intelligent, and her brains are a key component of the plot. When dealing blackjack, Samara casually notes that class president Lily Frederick, to whom she is giving the cards, “statistically…had a less-than-seventeen percent chance of winning.” Busted for gambling, Samara decides to prove scientifically that she is not a bad person, by showing how closely her DNA matches Lily’s. Yet Samara is not only smart but also a con artist: “A complex con had taken shape, and there was no slowing the momentum. It was a con that revolved around math and science” – and specifically around the school’s 30-year-old but still quite serviceable electron microscope. Well, things get rapidly odder in Samara’s quest to prove herself a good person, and along the way, Ehrenhaft brings in the Socratic method, the odd alien-related theories of Erich von Däniken, and lots of other material that does not usually appear in a middle-grade novel. Samara comes up with some decidedly odd findings, which lead her to track down former electron-microscope owner Dr. Archibald Chance, which brings up a discussion of a fundamentalist preacher who calls himself Dr. Willis, which turns into a talk about how “we examined a strand of my hair, to see what my DNA looks like, and there was this funny eye-shaped thingy in it.” And that gets into competing theories of intelligent design, alien life forms, the “universal mind,” and more. This is an unusually intellectual novel for its age group, and lest that seem a turnoff, it is also an unusually clever one, filled with twists and turns that readers will not see coming. And the book’s multiple perspectives – some chapters told by Samara, some by Lily, some by UFO-obsessed Nathan Brooks – also keep things interesting. So do such subheadings as “Wasted Truffles” and “A Hero, a Moron, or Both.” Eventually, Samara does find herself – and learn that she is not at all the person she has always thought herself to be. That’s Life, Samara Brooks is very much a quest for our time – and one that manages to be both thoughtful and entertaining.

     Many adult readers, though, seem to prefer quests of a more old-fashioned type, at least in genre fantasy books such as Dragon Keeper. Robin Hobb’s book is well written, but makes no attempt whatsoever to break out of any Tolkienian conventions of the lengthy (474-page), sprawling quest story. In fact, Hobb does not even break out of her prior world here, returning to the basic setting of her Liveship Traders and Tawny Man trilogies for a kind of postscript to the tale of the dragon Tintaglia, with whose help the Traders held off the invasion of the Chalcedeans. Tintaglia’s reward was a promise that the Traders would help Tintaglia try to restore her species through a migration up the Rain Wild River. But this attempt has misfired, with newly hatched dragons often dying or, at most, surviving in earthbound form – easy prey for humans who seek their flesh for its supposed healing powers. Hence the quest at the heart of Dragon Keeper: the dragons want to move farther up the river to their ancient, ill-remembered homeland of Kelsingra, so the Traders bring together the typical-in-fantasy motley group of young people to escort the dragons and ensure their safe arrival. The two women at the center of the story, each on a quest of her own, are 16-year-old forest girl Thymara and dragon expert Alise. It is their personalities, their knowledge of dragons and their sense of self that will be tested the most in this journey. Thymara is deformed and, by the usual standards of Traders, should not have been allowed to live, as her mother told her father at one point after a years-earlier encounter with a Trader: “He saw her claws, Jerup, black and curved like a toad’s. She is only eleven, and already she is scaled like a woman of thirty. He saw the webbing of her toes. He knew she had been marked from birth and it offended him that you had – kept her.” But of course, Thymara, when challenged on “the Rain Wild folly,” as one character calls it, turns out to be more than she appears to be. So does Alise, previously trapped in a loveless marriage but coming into her own after spending years studying dragons. Dragon Keeper is a solid (+++) book, nicely paced and filled with enough adventure and interpersonal drama to satisfy genre fans and make them look forward to the next novel in this series. As a quest, it is unexceptional; as a story, it neither breaks nor bends modern genre conventions. But for those very reasons, it will be attractive to adult fans of old-fashioned heroic/magical fantasy.

(+++) TASTY TIDBITS

Chocolate or Vanilla? Quick Quizzes for BFFs. By Lizzie Mack. Scholastic. $5.99.

Sweet or Spicy? More Quick Quizzes for BFFs. By Lizzie Mack. Scholastic. $5.99.

Bites: Scary Stories to Sink Your Teeth Into. Edited by Lois Metzger. Scholastic. $4.99.

     Middle schoolers who don’t take any of these three paperbacks too seriously can have a lot of fun with them. Lizzie Mack’s two books pose a series of pop quizzes to be given out to BFFs to evaluate their personalities and compare them with your own. There are four copies of each quiz, but only two copies of the one “For You and Your Best Friend Only” or “For BFFs’ Eyes Only” at the end of each book. There are two or three options for most questions, plus a few in fill-in-the-blank form. In Chocolate or Vanilla? – for example – a food quiz asks “eat in or take out,” “pizza or mac and cheese,” and whether you would rather eat “50 lbs of french fries or 50 lbs of potato chips.” A personality quiz asks “quiet or loud,” “splash through the puddles or walk carefully around them,” and whether you would prefer to “go bungee jumping or knit a sweater.” Among this book’s fill-in questions are which movies or books have made you cry; what your pet peeve is; which celebrity is “an all-time hottie”; and – on a somewhat more serious note – how many kids of your own you eventually want to have. In Sweet or Spicy? are such either/or questions as “kitten or puppy,” “penguin or polar bear” and “Komodo dragon or killer whale” (those three in a section called “Girl’s Best Friend”); and there are such “gross-out” questions as whether you would rather lie down in “snail slime or bird droppings” and whether you would prefer “strong body odor or scabs on your face.” There are some slightly more meaningful questions scattered through these two books – about school, growing up, family, even “the best qualities of a friend.” But by and large, the books are intended as light and lively amusements for girls to share with each other – something to giggle over, not something intended to make or break lifelong friendships.

     Bites is to be read, not filled out, and is aimed at both boys and girls; but it too handles potentially serious – or even horrific – subjects with a mostly lighter touch. The seven stories here are about the usual array of supernatural creatures: vampires, ghosts, werewolves. But the treatments are quite different. One story – “I, Blooder” by Peter Lerangis – reads like the first draft of an outline for a novel or screenplay, going all over the place and being filled with dead ends (so to speak) and potential plot points that never go anywhere. Kevin Emerson’s “The Coffin Deliveries” cannot quite decide whether it wants to be a funny vampire story or a scary one, finally opting for amusing – but not too amusing. On the other hand, “Ghost Dog” by Ellen Wittlinger has a genuine twist that is scary even if you see it coming. And “Perpetual Pest,” by Neal Shusterman and Terry Black, has some scary moments of the “ewww” kind. The other stories are “Going Old School in the Age of Obama,” a mildly amusing vampire tale by Christopher Paul Curtis; “Anasazi Breakdown,” an obvious but slightly chilling ghost/metamorphosis story by Douglas Rees; and “Where Wolves Never Wander,” Joshua Gee’s slight twist to the werewolf genre. None of these stories takes long to read and none will likely stay long with readers after they finish it. But for a short nibble of fear, or at least mild scariness, at least some young readers will enjoy sinking their teeth into Bites.

(++++) PIANISM PLUS PUZZLES

Idil Biret Archive Edition, Volume 2: Chopin—Mazurkas Op. 17, No. 4 and Op. 56, No.1; Scriabin—Piano Sonata No. 10; Prokofiev—Piano Sonatas Nos. 2 and 7. Idil Biret, piano. IBA. $8.99.

Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel: Piano Music. Heather Schmidt, piano. Naxos. $8.99.

     Excellent performances of some fairly well-known music and much that is virtually unknown are offered here in recordings that, despite the distinction of the playing and the highly interesting repertoire, raise some questions that they leave unanswered. The second volume in the Idil Biret Archive Edition, taken from 1970s recordings made for the short-lived label Finnadar, was recorded in what was at the time an unusual way: Biret played through all the works and they were recorded immediately onto a master disc that was then used to produce vinyl discs for distribution. This was, in effect, using a studio to create the atmosphere of a live recording, since nothing could be added to or subtracted from the performance; and it was considered quite an accomplishment at a time when studio recordings were made on tape, which could then be edited (physically, not electronically) so any miscues or elements that were not quite as the performer wanted them could be changed. But this occurred at the expense of quality: in analog recordings, it meant “going down a generation,” thus losing some of the presence of the audio. In the digital era, none of this is relevant; and at a time when live recording is commonplace and done with a quality as high as that of studio performances, the whole situation smacks of ancient history after only three decades. Still, the circumstances of the recording are an interesting footnote to some outstanding performances. Biret clearly had strong feelings about the validity and interest of the works played here, and equally strong views on how to interpret them. Thus, she not only gives a fine rendition of Chopin’s Mazurka, Op. 17, No.4, which is a well-regarded work, but also delivers a highly convincing performance of Op. 56, No. 1, which is usually considered weaker. In the Scriabin, she shows herself highly aware both of the composer’s coloristic effects and of his debt to Romanticism – and her performance flows beautifully throughout. In the two Prokofiev sonatas, in contrast, Biret is all angularity and bite, treating every movement (four in Sonata No. 2, three in Sonata No. 7) as an individual work to be shaped and delivered within its own context. The sonatas do not lose cohesion because of this approach – instead, they become multifaceted. It is obvious that Biret, a cerebral pianist (sometimes too much so), carefully thought through her approach to these works before attacking them for this recording. And her intensity does at times feel like an attack – not on the music but on its complexities. But there is a puzzle here: whence the recording of Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7? It was not on the Finnadar disc from which the rest of this CD was taken, or indeed on any Finnadar record, and the IBA release does not make it clear just when the recording took place or under what circumstances it was originally made available.

     You might expect the puzzle in Heather Schmidt’s new CD of music by Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel to involve the question of why so much fine music – some of it pleasant, some of it strong and genuinely interesting – is so little known. But that is not an issue, really, for Felix Mendelssohn’s older sister (1805-1947) was known to have musical talent nearly at the level of her brother’s, but was entirely shaped by her family (including, to some extent, by Felix himself) into the expected 19^th-century-female role of housewife. She performed only once in public and had no chance to publish any of her works until the year before her death – an event that precipitated Felix’s own death just a few months later. What Schmidt’s outstanding playing on this CD shows is that Fanny’s music was at the very least finely honed in “salon” mode, and at most was comparable to Felix’s (he sometimes passed off a work of hers as his own) – and moved in some potentially interesting directions that Fanny never had the chance to follow far. The puzzle in this CD, and it is an unfortunate one, is why the works on the disc are presented in this chosen order. Really, there is no order to them, and for a composer as under-represented in concerts and recordings as Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, a chronological (or at least musically logical) CD sequence would seem to be de rigueur. What listeners actually get, unless they care to take the time to do a major rearrangement of the CD’s tracks, is Allegro molto in C minor (1846), Notturno in G minor (1838), Sonata in C minor (1824), Lied in E-flat major (1846), Sonata in G minor (1843), Adagio in E-flat major (1840-3), Andante con moto in E major (1846), Sonata o Capriccio (1824), Allegro molto agitato in D minor (1823), and Schluss (1823). This jumping about the decades does Fanny’s music a disservice, because she clearly progressed significantly between 1823 (when she was just 18) and 1846 – the later works show greater passion, clearer structure and more carefully modulated emotion. The Sonata in G minor is a high point, and shows how far Fanny might have gone if her talent had been encouraged. It is both lyrical and dramatic, requiring strong technique as well as emotional understanding – an impressive work by any standards. Other standouts here are the intense Allegro molto in C minor, the lovely Notturno in G minor and the wistful Lied in E-flat major – but in fact, every piece that Schmidt plays has something of interest in it. If the arrangement of the CD is at best puzzling, the power and quality of the music are not. It is long past time for more of Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel’s approximately 500 works to be heard.

(++++) AS ROMANTIC AS YOU CAN GET

Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake. Russian National Orchestra conducted by Mikhail Pletnev. Ondine. $21.99 (2 CDs).

Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2. London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. LPO. $17.99 (2 CDs).

     Nowadays it takes a certain amount of courage to record the heart of the Romantic repertoire. Yes, this is music that audiences love, and yes, there will always be people interested in buying recordings of the gorgeously sweeping works of the Romantic era – sometimes in a second, third or fourth performance, if ones they already own have started to pall. Nevertheless, recording the Romantic canon is more difficult than programming it in concert, where it can be used to draw audiences in and help support an orchestra – and sometimes, depending on how well a concert program is put together, can encourage attendees to open their minds and ears to less-familiar works. In a recording, though, the question inevitably arises: why? What does yet another version of a Tchaikovsky ballet or two Brahms symphonies have to offer that justifies the time and expense of releasing the umpteenth recorded version? Happily, the answer in the case of Mikhail Pletnev’s Swan Lake is apparent from the gorgeously played, unusually intense opening: outstanding orchestral sound, tremendous warmth, genuine understanding of the score, and a truly wonderful melding of Tchaikovsky’s strictly balletic (and thus often repetitious) elements with his symphonic and operatic ones. The composer took several parts of Swan Lake from earlier, discarded or unsuccessful works, notably the operas The Voyevoda and Undine, and it is in part these sections’ provenance that lends Swan Lake its gloomy cast and strong underlying emotionalism (although, from a strictly musical standpoint, this first of the composer’s ballets is less thoroughly symphonic in structure than his next one, Sleeping Beauty). In any case, Pletnev – whose Russian National Orchestra continues to be a marvel of precise and sensitive playing, especially in the Russian repertoire – makes of the ballet a huge two-and-a-half-hour arc of love, mystery, enchantment, doom and dubious triumph. In some ways, this exemplary performance is better than a staging of the ballet itself, because the stage work’s design creates a rather static first and third act, confining most of the action to the second and fourth. In Pletnev’s recording, there is beauty, sweep and drama throughout. So thoroughly do Pletnev and the orchestra emphasize the forward-moving unity of Swan Lake that it is difficult to choose any particular sections as outstanding. For example, the pas d’action in the second act, in which Prince Siegfried and swan maiden Odette fall in love, is gorgeously played, from the introduction on harp through the violin and cello solos; but the third act’s much lighter Hungarian, Spanish, Neapolitan and Polish dances are, in their own way, equally delightful, and serve to lighten the mood of what is essentially a dark, dark score. Pletnev and his orchestra have thoroughly plumbed the depths of Swan Lake and made this complete recording one that listeners are likely to want to own even if they already possess other fine renditions of the ballet.

     The “why?” of Brahms’ first and second symphonies on LPO is a harder question to answer musically, although there is a pretty good business justification for the release on the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s own label. These are live performances from May and September 2008, and the cost of recording and releasing them – without needing to bring in the orchestra and conductor for additional rehearsals and studio time – is not significant, compared with the possibility of bringing in added revenue from performances that would otherwise disappear into the musical ether. They are fine performances, too, but they are not really outstanding, and there is little in either of them to make a listener think of this two-CD set as a must-have; the release therefore gets a (+++) rating. Vladimir Jurowski has some good ideas – he takes the repeats in both symphonies’ first movements, for example – but there is nothing revelatory in these interpretations. Symphony No. 2 is the better of the two. The first movement is not as expansive and warm as it could be, but the other three are finely honed, clearly delineated and very well played. The finale, its main section taken at a speedier-than-usual tempo, is thoroughly joyous and a delight to hear, although it does feel a trifle rushed at times. As for Symphony No. 1, it comes across as somewhat lacking in grandeur. The first movement, even with the repeat, does not seem impressively large, and the second is rather ordinary. And Jurowski does not seem to know quite what to do with the finale: the broad introductory section does not build particularly effectively, and some wholly uncalled-for rubato at the very end undermines the strength of the material leading up to the coda. These are certainly worthy performances, and the orchestra plays very well indeed – the brass section in the finale of the second symphony is particularly good. But listeners who already have any of the many fine recordings of these Romantic-era staples have little reason to add this two-CD set to their collections.