(++++) COPING WITH BREAST CANCER

Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book, Fifth Edition. By Susan M. Love, M.D., with Karen Lindsey. Da Capo. $22.

The Pink Ribbon Diet: A Revolutionary New Weight Loss Plan to Lower Your Breast Cancer Risk. By Mary Flynn, R.D., and Nancy Verde Barr. Da Capo. $16.95.

     With all the attention that breast cancer receives in books and the media, you would think it is by far the greatest killer of women, but in fact it is not even in the top five. The exact order of reasons for death depends on how statistics are used: whether referring to all women, women of a certain age, women in the United States or worldwide, and many other factors. But no matter how you look at them, statistics show that cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women as well as men, and that such causes as flu, pneumonia and HIV/AIDS are as deadly to women as breast cancer – or more so. Yet breast cancer has a very strong medical and political constituency drawing attention to it, and its longtime reputation as a disfiguring disease (or a disease treatable only through disfiguring), plus the sexual elements associated with breasts as opposed to, say, hearts or lungs, maintain this form of cancer in the spotlight. And for women who have breast cancer – or simply want to know more about it to help a friend or relative manage it – there has been no better source for the past 20 years than Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book. Now in its fifth edition and packed with new information on diagnosis, treatment and scientific research, the book has grown into a 700-plus-page heavyweight tome (including more than 100 pages of appendices and notes). There is simply an enormous amount of material here, from the latest diagnostic techniques to a wide variety of treatment options to the possibility of recurrence – and how to live with it. From information on normal breast development to discussions of sexuality after a breast-cancer diagnosis, Love – clinical professor of surgery at UCLA and president of a research foundation that bears her name – gives information and advice in forthright, plainspoken language. Much of the material here uses medical and scientific terminology and may therefore be hard for some readers to follow, but the information is so valuable that the effort is worth making. Here women will find out how risk factors are used to evaluate the chance of breast cancer – and where those factors fall short; what forms of detection are now available, what their advantages and disadvantages are, and why early discovery of breast cancer does not always improve survival chances; what sorts of breast cancer exist (there are five different types now acknowledged), and what forms of treatment are best for each kind; and, perhaps most important to women faced with this diagnosis, how to live with breast cancer – including information on helpful vitamins and minerals, postmenopausal hormone therapy, exercise, diet and more. There is even a fascinating section on putting the placebo effect to work by trying treatments that have no scientific basis but have been found to make some women with breast cancer feel better. There is simply no more clear-headed and comprehensive guide to this often devastating disease than Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book, and the new edition is the most information-packed one yet.

     The question of nutrition for breast-cancer patients takes up only a small part of Love’s book, with Love noting that the effects of diet on breast cancer “have been difficult to prove, but there is some evidence that it can help.” Most recommended diets for women with this disease “come as no surprise,” Love writes, being “low in fat, high in fruits and vegetables, [and] low in processed foods, sugar, alcohol, and hormone-treated beef and chicken.” Love does not find this particular subject worthy of in-depth treatment, and that leaves the field open to books such as The Pink Ribbon Diet. Research dietitian Mary Flynn and cookbook author Nancy Verde Barr essentially argue for the so-called Mediterranean diet, which Love also endorses. Flynn and Barr say this diet is better for breast-cancer patients than the low-fat one usually recommended for them, and they argue for it in the context of weight loss and maintenance of appropriate weight throughout life – both to reduce breast-cancer risk and to improve health after a diagnosis. They also say the diet is more enjoyable and affordable than a low-fat one and therefore likely to have higher compliance. These are all “maybe” propositions, and indeed the entire argument for a dietary approach to breast cancer is a rather thin one; hence, the book gets a (+++) rating. In fact, it gets most of that rating from the recipes, which take up more pages than the dietary discussions and contain some very fine suggestions for soups, sandwiches, salads, beans, pasta, poultry, seafood, vegetables and even breakfast and desserts. Each recipe comes with a calorie count and information on starch, vegetable, fat, fruit and dairy content. And some of the ideas really are delicious: dried cranberry and almond muffins, basil pesto with walnuts, crab-stuffed mushroom, shrimp and vegetable fried rice, chocolate biscotti, and many more. Ingredient and equipment lists are clear, directions are well structured (not all the recipes are easy, by any means), and the “good to know” boxes contain interesting and useful information. For example, it is a pleasure to have a cookbook that recommends trying sea salt for its flavor and coarseness while acknowledging that it is basically the same as table salt and that its trace minerals “are insignificant to health.” As an advocacy book for a particular nutritional approach, The Pink Ribbon Diet is not really revolutionary, but as a cooking guide for those who choose to follow this dietary regimen – whether or not they have breast cancer – it offers some delicious dishes.

(+++) SLICES OF REALITY

You’re Old, I’m Old…Get Used to It! By Virginia Ironside. Viking. $25.95.

Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot on and Never Will. By Judith Schalansky. Translated by Christine Lo. Penguin. $28.

Forces of Nature. By Chana Stiefel. Scholastic. $9.99.

Scholastic Almanac 2011: Facts & Stats. Edited by Delja Greve. Scholastic. $13.99.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Special Edition 2011. Edited by Rosie Alexander. Scholastic. $16.99.

     Little bits of the real world, human and natural and interconnected, peek through all of these works, whether a book is designed for adults or for children. But each has an agenda that keeps its worldview narrow while pretending it is expansive. Virginia Ironside, for instance, wants to present “20 Reasons Why Growing Older Is Great” (as the subtitle of her book puts it), but from the start, she creates limits for her 65-year-old self: “The only people who think sixty is young, in my experience, are seventy-year-olds, eighty-year-olds, and ninety-year-olds – in other words, the extremely old and the ancient.” This ought to be tongue in cheek but apparently, in context, is not – which means it is either setting up a series of books that Ironside will write later, or shows her own age prejudice regarding “the ancient” whose years she herself has not yet reached. “People who keep pretending to be young are just pathetic specimens,” writes Ironside. “They are tragic failures, full of vanity, who can’t come to terms with being old.” Perhaps; or perhaps “the lady doth protest too much, methinks” (for those old enough to remember reading Hamlet). In any case, Ironside defiantly proclaims herself old and then sets about explaining why it is good to be boring (“a curse for [listeners] but, no question, a great pleasure for you”); good to be sexual (“if you are one of the people who still enjoy sex despite the fact that these days you sometimes feel you’d like a ladder to help you get up into bed”); good to be coming closer to death (“I’ve already lived far longer than most people were expected to live a hundred years ago”); good to be alone (“you don’t have to suffer the misery of finding that the person you’re living with is suddenly, for reasons of his own, not speaking to you that day”). Again and again, the apparent sincerity of Ironside’s sentiments is undermined by the flip manner in which she expresses them – almost as if she is, at heart, ambivalent about being 65 and continuing to age, her protestations to the contrary. Some elements of her writing certainly ring true, such as her short chapters on old friends and wisdom. And her whimsical style makes for pleasant reading. But as a whole, You’re Old, I’m Old…Get Used to It! is at most a semi-celebration of the age at which Ironside happens to find herself.

     Geographically, Ironside finds herself on an island – England. But it is nothing like the islands that Judith Schalansky explores verbally (but definitely not in person) in her Atlas of Remote Islands. A fascinating concept marred by uneven execution, this book is written by someone whose birthplace no longer exists, as she points out in her introduction: Schalansky was born in East Germany. The introduction to her book is every bit as fascinating as her pages on individual islands, and indeed is necessary to understand those individual pages, because what Schalansky does not do is give consistent information about the very, very remote islands she discusses. A few names of these islands are familiar: Easter Island, St. Helena, Iwo Jima. But many more are not: Annobón, South Keeling, Tromelin, Atlasov, Raoul, Laurie, Takuu. Where do the names come from? Schalansky sometimes explains, sometimes does not. Why are the islands presented in this particular order? No explanation (the book is arranged by ocean, but within each section, the arrangement is unclear). How did intriguing elements of the islands’ names or histories come to pass? Schalansky does not say – for instance, she mentions how odd it is that Semisopochnoi, “perhaps the westernmost part of the United States,” has a Russian name but is an American territory, but she does not say why; and regarding that “perhaps the westernmost,” she says that “no one wants to know exactly,” which seems unlikely and is also unexplained. Essentially, Atlas of Remote Islands is a series of beautifully illustrated anecdotes (the map of each individual island is very well rendered). For Napuka, she talks about the horrors of the voyage during which Magellan is thought to have discovered the island; for Campbell, about an attempt to view a transit of the planet Venus in 1874; for Trindade, about overexposed photos taken there of what may have been a UFO; for Pitcairn, about Marlon Brando’s performance as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty; for Tikopia, about a longstanding tradition of infanticide created because of the land’s extremely meager resources. This is a book for browsers – for people who like to find unexpected things in print and pick up arcane bits of knowledge. For such people, it is fascinating; but it is not a travelogue, not a history, not a geographical or topological discussion of out-of-the-way places, and it does not have an organized or easily graspable approach to its subject. It simply is – like many of these islands themselves.

     Forces of nature created the islands and continue to shape the Earth, and Forces of Nature intends to interest young readers in some of the more dramatic events that have happened and continue to occur worldwide. Filled with colorful photos and easy-to-digest information – under such headings as “Fab Facts,” “Quake-itude” and “Cell Mates” – the book’s scattershot approach does provide some interesting scientific information. But you have to search for it. “Fog is a stratus cloud that forms in contact with the ground.” Hurricanes “are tropical monsters – the world’s largest and most destructive storms.” “Avalanches of hot ash, lava rocks, and gas [are] called pyroclastic flows.” Forces of Nature offers once-over-lightly treatment of floods, tsunamis, wind, tornadoes, winter storms, earthquakes, plate tectonics, volcanic eruptions – plus, in a format that seems rather capriciously organized, Yellowstone National Park; Earth’s crust, mantle and core; the sun; and Hurricane Katrina. The mixture of general and specific information can make the book confusing to follow, but this is less a read-it-cover-to-cover sort of work than a chance to look at some amazing photos from The Weather Channel and get snippets of information related to them.

     Photos are also the driving force in Scholastic Almanac 2011 and the latest edition of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! These books do not pretend to be anything but oceans of fact and oddity, presented in bright colors and with just enough text to retain a reader’s interest for a few seconds per item. Almanac 2011 includes sections on animals, buildings, games, movies, music, space, sports, technology and much more. You cannot easily find anything specific here, but browsing turns up interesting facts, charts, photos and tables: 10 longest animal life spans; the 2010 children’s book award winners; 22 items that should always be recycled; flags of the world’s countries; the six systems of the human body; the rock cycle. Browsing is the way to go in the Ripley’s volume, too. This series has moved well past the “freak show” approach that it had many years ago, although human oddities are sprinkled throughout the 2011 volume: an Indian man who held his arms above his head for 20 years, a man who has made 1,000 potato portraits, a baby that weighed 92 pounds when six months old. As if the photos (including a number of old black-and-white ones) were not visually dramatic enough, the book includes “look at me” layout elements – such as arrows pointing to pictures, photos of an open-mouthed boy with the words “Mind Boggler!” next to certain items, and various small photos with the words “Leap to It!” next to them to draw attention to items found elsewhere in the book (a sort of in-book “coming attractions” feature). The Ripley’s book is so overdone – from its 3-D cover of a man in extreme body paint to the in-training parakeet at the end – that it is as hard to dislike as to take seriously. It and Almanac 2011 are reference books only in the broadest sense. More precisely, they are slices of a very small part of life, writ large and photographed larger.

(+++) THE LATEST IN TEEN TRAUMAS

Suicide Notes. By Michael Thomas Ford. HarperTeen. $8.99.

Getting the Girl: A Guide to Private Investigation, Surveillance, and Cookery. By Susan Juby. HarperTeen. $8.99.

The Ivy. By Lauren Kunze with Rina Onur. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $16.99.

Ascendant. By Diana Peterfreund. HarperTeen. $17.99.

The Lorien Legacies, Book One: I Am Number Four. By “Pittacus Lore.” Harper. $17.99.

     It sometimes seems as if there are only about half a dozen plots for novels aimed at teenage readers – making even well-written books like this handful fairly predictable, despite the different twists and turns that individual authors bring to them. Suicide Notes and Getting the Girl, for example, are both realistic fiction – which means they are books about self-discovery and coming of age (or to self-awareness) in a modern, recognizable setting. Suicide Notes takes place in a 45-day inpatient hospitalization program, in which 15-year-old Jeff has been placed after trying to kill himself. It is one of those depressing, earnest, oh-so-meaningful books that deal with teen angst and sexuality – Jeff is gay, although it is not until Day 37 that he writes, “I’m gay. I know it sounds stupid. Tons of people are gay, and you’d think it would be no big deal. But I was really hoping I wasn’t, that it was all just a big mix-up and I’d get over it.” Jeff interacts with the hospital psychiatrist, Dr. Katzrupus, whom he always calls Cat Poop, and with other hospitalized teens – especially a boy, Kevin, who is avowedly gay, and a girl, Sadie, with whom Jeff tries to demonstrate that he is really heterosexual. Michael Thomas Ford makes sure every event in the book Means Something, and that Big Issues are dealt with in a Highly Sensitive Way. Although overdramatic and overdone, the book often rings true, as when Jeff comments, “Goddamn it, I don’t know how he does that, but the doc always manages to ask you the one question you really don’t want him to.” The intensity of the story, though, is quite contrived.

     So is the lighter plot of Getting the Girl, which is not as quirky as Susan Juby wants readers to think it is, but does have some pleasantly amusing elements and does go in a few unexpected directions. This book is all about social acceptance in high school – about as unoriginal a teen-book plot as can be imagined. The “charmingly conspiratorial caste system” at the high school has a D-list (D for “defiled”), and Sherman Mack is determined to make sure his crush, Dini Trioli, does not end up on it. Sherman is a nerd and an amateur private investigator, so it is easy to imagine the troubles he finds himself in as he deals with jocks, girls, teachers, sneaking around the school, and all that sort of stuff. The chapter titles help move things along breezily: “Farrah Fawcett Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” “Unpleasant and Unattractive Characters,” “With a Little Help from My (Hot) Friends,” and so on. There is also a giant lacrosse stick called Thor. Most of the way through the book, the school officials finally figure out that “there’s something rotten going on in this school” – well, duh – and eventually, thanks to Sherman putting together a dinner party with just the right guest list, the mystery of who arranges to Defile people is partly solved, leaving room for a final twist and a full solution at the very end of the book. Oh, and Sherman (who prefers to go by Mack Daddy) does get a girl, although (not surprisingly) even that does not go quite the way he had originally hoped.

     Social scenes and ostracism are also the main theme of The Ivy, the big difference from Getting the Girl being that The Ivy takes place at college rather than high school. The college is none other than Harvard, and this how-to-make-it-in-the-big-leagues book (one among many) is all about money, connections, clothes, boyfriends – and only in the most incidental way about education (of course). The central character, Callie Andrews, has to deal with having brains, beauty, great roommates and plenty of determination and drive. Oh, that’s realistic. The book is a somewhat odd collaboration: Lauren Kunze is listed as the author, with a note that Rina Onur “collaborated on developing the story line.” Sounds like a joint script effort for a straight-to-DVD movie, and in fact there are many cinematic touches in The Ivy. Classes exist mainly for making social connections. The library still has a place in the Internet age – for study dates, where classwork is not what is being studied. Getting into the right parties is at least as important as getting the right (perfect) grades. Who knew that Harvard was so superficial and so much like a glorified high school? Onur actually majored in economics there, so maybe The Ivy is her way of giving something back – or getting back at the school. In any case, the book is stuffed full of Callie’s mostly predictable problems with fashionistas, boyfriends and maybe-boyfriends, a secret from her past, social issues in general, cliques and gossip. The occasional bits of advice to “dearest froshlings” from the Advice Columnist of Fifteen Minutes Magazine are the most amusing parts of the book and the only distinction in its style. But readers who get vicarious pleasure from this sort of plot will be happy to find out that – what a surprise! – Callie eventually negotiates all the shoals of Harvard life and comes through a stronger and better-adjusted person (within the book’s context, anyway).

     Really, The Ivy is fantasy masquerading as reality, but straightforward fantasy is another common offering in books for teenagers. Diana Peterfreund’s Ascendant, for example, is about unicorn hunter Astrid Llewelyn – who, among other things, comes to question whether she should be hunting unicorns or protecting them. Astrid lives in a world in which unicorns are deemed dangerous and virgin girls (but only ones who are descended from Alexander the Great!) are used to entrap them so hunters can destroy them. Peterfreund’s previous book, Rampant, established unicorns as venomous man-eaters with huge fangs, which Astrid learned to hunt at a place in Rome called the Cloisters – a place where she also began a relationship with a boy named Giovanni. In Ascendant, the Cloisters is having financial trouble, Giovanni is leaving Rome, and Astrid is finding herself more interested in becoming a scientist than in upholding her family legacy of unicorn hunting. Given her own chance to leave the Cloisters and use her scientific skills, Astrid happily heads for the French countryside – where she starts to question everything she previously held dear (including her love for Giovanni). The fantasy concept, the learning of an arcane skill and then questioning its value, the changing attitudes toward love – all these are standard in many books for teens. The most interesting elements of Ascendant are in the world in which it is set, for this is not a faux medieval land but one in which science matters as much as magic: there are warriors and mythical beasts but also telephones, trucks and television. Still, Astrid’s development here is one of familiar self-discovery: “I could stand in the moonlight and make an entire pack of venomous monsters bow down before me,” Astrid finds, so what are unicorns really? And what exactly is Astrid? In Ascendant, she is searching not only for her own identity but also for “a unicorn-specific disease,” and her involvement with a baby unicorn becomes a key element in her decision-making and her increasing knowledge about herself and her motivations. Astrid’s saga will continue – the final chapter of Ascendant is called “Wherein Astrid Touches the Truth” – and is sure to keep treading well-traveled paths despite the unusual aspects of its setting.

     The saga of John Smith is just beginning in I Am Number Four, although within this book’s world, his tale has a long story behind it. This too is a fantasy novel, although it masquerades as science fiction by having aliens with special powers at its center. Their powers might as well come from magic, though – the author who uses the pseudonym “Pittacus Lore” is not interested in any scientific (or even pseudo-scientific) explanation of how John (the “number four” of the title) and others from his planet obtain and use their powers. The powers just sort of exist, and aren’t really the point: this is an adventure story first and foremost. The idea is that there are, or were, nine teenage aliens from a race called the Loric hiding on Earth (they are the good guys) after escaping destruction at the hands of the Mogadorians (the bad guys). The Loric teens have been living quietly, unnoticed by human beings; but unfortunately for them, the same planet-wrecking Mogadorians who destroyed Lorien have ways of finding them, and three have been tracked down and killed. So “Lore,” identified as “Lorien’s ruling Elder,” has written I Am Number Four, in which John is sure that he is the next target. He and his guardian, Henri, must keep John alive so he and the other surviving Loric teens can eventually take on the Mogadorians and – by the way – preserve Earth in the process. This is the sort of silly, simple, one-dimensional space-opera plot much beloved by moviemakers – a film of I Am Number Four is already in the works – and certainly there is plenty of excitement in the book, in the scenes of John’s training as well as those involving danger. There are the usual interactions with humans, including John’s romance with a girl named Sarah, which leads to the inevitable Q&A between John and Henri: “‘What happens if we try to have children with humans?’ ‘It’s happened many times before. Usually it results in an exceptional and gifted human. Some of the greatest figures in Earth’s history were actually the product of humans and the Loric, including Buddha, Aristotle, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. Many of the ancient Greek gods, who most people believe were mythological, were actually the children of the humans and Loric. …Aphrodite, Apollo, Hermes, and Zeus were all real, and had one Loric parent.’” So now that that’s settled (and the powers of the Loric duly emphasized), there is time to move toward a confrontation (in the remains of the high school) in which humans prove, unsurprisingly, to have considerable value despite their genetic inferiority. There is nothing the slightest bit surprising in any of this, but adventure-loving teens will enjoy this familiar plot just as teens reading other types of formulaic fiction will enjoy the latest books that bring modest changes to other well-worn storytelling paths.

(++++) BRAHMS BEYOND SYMPHONIES

Brahms: Sonatas Nos. 1-3 for Violin and Piano. Mark Fewer, violin; Peter Longworth, piano. Azica. $16.99.

Brahms: Symphony No. 4; Geistliches Lied, Op. 30; Fest- und Gedenksprüche, Op. 109; Beethoven: Coriolan Overture; G. Gabrieli: Sanctus and Benedictus a 12; Schütz: Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich?; Bach: Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich, BWV 150—Meine Augen sehen stets zu dem Herrn; Meine Tage in den Leiden. Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. SDG. $18.99.

     Most listeners think of Brahms primarily as a symphonist and composer for the piano – with his two piano concertos straddling the line between traditional concerto and symphony. In fact, although Brahms was not a particularly prolific composer, he wrote works in a wide variety of forms, and some of those heard less often are quite as distinguished as his better-known pieces. His three sonatas for violin and piano are examples. Although scarcely unknown to musicians, they are not familiar to most casual listeners, even though they are fine music in themselves and also provide considerable insight into Brahms’ handling of form. Mark Fewer and Peter Longworth give outstanding performances of all three sonatas, each of which is quite different from the others. The first, in G (Op. 78), dates to 1878-79 and is strongly and rather surprisingly focused on the violin – surprisingly because Brahms was a pianist and tended to give the piano priority in much of his chamber music. This is a large-scale sonata, very melodic, which Fewer and Longworth handle with excellent partnership and a strongly unified approach to the material. The less-expansive second sonata, in A (Op. 100), dates to 1886 and balances the performers much more evenly. Here Fewer and Longworth create so natural an ebb and flow that they seem to have intuitive communication with each other – making their handoffs from instrument to instrument sound completely natural, unforced and elegantly proportioned. Especially interesting here is the sonata’s second movement, in which two Andante tranquillo sections contain a strongly accented Scherzo between them. The performers handle the transitions and contrasts to excellent effect. And in the final sonata, in D minor (Op. 108), Fewer and Longworth produce a work infused with both power and lyricism. Written only a year after the second sonata, this four-movement work contrasts strongly with its predecessor and features an especially difficult piano part – which Longworth plays with captivating skill, never downplaying its complexity but never being overwhelmed by it either. This CD provides considerable insight into a side of Brahms with which many listeners are likely to be less than intimately familiar.

     Another side of the composer that most listeners do not know well is his vocal music (except perhaps for the German Requiem). Brahms never wrote an opera, but he did create a number of vocal works, and most of them are totally neglected in concerts and on recordings. John Eliot Gardiner believes that Brahms’ vocal music provides insights into his symphonic style – and that hearing works by Brahms’ predecessors in juxtaposition with his symphonies can also show how Brahms was influenced by, and went beyond, the works of earlier composers. Therefore, at concerts in October 2008 – which were recorded and are now available on CD – Gardiner performed a number of pieces that he felt would shed light on Brahms’ Symphony No. 4, which he programmed at the end of the concert and which appears last on the CD. In some ways, this is an over-intellectual exercise: the Fourth is the Brahms symphony most influenced by Baroque models, especially the works of Bach, but that influence will not be immediately apparent to most people who hear the Bach, Giovanni Gabrieli, and Schütz works recorded here. In other ways, Gardiner’s approach is perhaps over-obvious: there has never been any question of the extent to which Brahms heard the footsteps of Beethoven behind him, and the Coriolan Overture is not directly related to Brahms’ Fourth. As for Brahms’ vocal music, here too the interrelationship of it with the symphony is not immediately apparent – and in fact Fest- und Gedenksprüche was written four years later than the symphony. But in a sense, all of these what-influenced-what discussions are unimportant, because taken simply as a concert (or a 71-minute CD), the Gardiner disc is fascinating. Listeners simply do not hear Brahms in a context like this most of the time, and even if there is no pinpoint accuracy of influence between the symphony and the other works, the disc as a whole creates a very different listening experience from the one that listeners will likely expect. The vocal music is especially well performed and quite beautiful. The instrumental material is less successful, though, primarily because Gardiner is inclined to rush things: the Coriolan Overture is too quick to seem to be marching inexorably toward tragedy, and in Brahms’ Fourth, the coda to the first movement and the main section of the Allegro giocoso simply need more time to breathe. It is truly unfortunate that Gardiner’s really creative approach to creating this concert and CD is not capped by a Brahms Fourth whose excellence would provide the best possible argument for Gardiner’s musicological analysis. The disc nevertheless gets a top rating, because the approach is so creative and gives listeners an opportunity to hear a Brahms symphony in a context in which it very rarely appears.

(+++) GENUINELY OPERATIC, FOR BETTER AND WORSE

Gershwin: Porgy and Bess. Jonathan Lemalu, Isabelle Kabatu, Bibiana Nwobilo, Michael Forest, Rodney Clarke, Angela Renée Simpson, Roberta Alexander, Gregg Baker, Previn Moore, Yannick Germain Balihe, David McShane; Arnold Schoenberg Chor and Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. RCA. $24.98.

     There are really two Porgy and Besses (if that’s even the right plural), and one man is largely responsible for both. No, not George Gershwin, who clearly wanted this to be an opera; not lyricists DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin; not Rouben Mamoulian, stage and Hollywood director and arguably George Gershwin’s most important collaborator in getting Porgy staged in the first place. It was Alexander Smallens, conductor of the première of Porgy, who first established the work as an opera in 1935 – and then, 15 years later and 13 years after George Gershwin’s death, turned it into a musical by removing much of the accompanied recitative and turning the work into a series of individually effective numbers connected by minimal dialogue. Smallens thought his revised version more effective – he called the parts he pulled out “dull [and] draggy.” But for more than three decades – since the first recording of the full operatic version of Porgy was made in 1976 – conductors and other performers have been trying to restore what Gershwin wanted and make Porgy into what the composer intended it to be.

     The problem is that what he wanted it to be isn’t entirely clear. That 1976 recording (by Lorin Maazel) used the original, uncut score and original orchestration. But Gershwin and Mamoulian changed and shortened a number of elements during rehearsals; the full original version was never performed. Conductors and directors have repeatedly tried to come up with a Porgy that is musically and dramatically satisfying, cohesive and effective, and – if not definitive – at least a good approximation of what they believe Gershwin would have wanted performed.

     Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s turn came in 2008 at the styriarte (no capital “s”) Festival in Graz, and it is that performance – recorded live – that is now available on RCA. It is a fascinating reading in many ways. Dramatically cohesive, incorporating some fairly small cuts in a way designed to advance the action without eliminating any of the musical numbers, it moves ahead entirely in the operatic realm. It is a grand, sweeping, personal and pathos-filled performance – and in some ways is deeply flawed.

     The best elements here are the instrumental ones. The Chamber Orchestra of Europe is simply excellent, taking the foreground or background with equal ease and handling Gershwin’s jazz rhythms and frequent dissonances (the latter more pervasive than many people realize) with strength and sensitivity. Some of Harnoncourt’s instrumental touches are simply brilliant: the use of African drums before the Kittiwah Island scene (as Gershwin intended but as is very rarely done – the passages are almost always played on bongos); and the reintroduction of an improvisation-style “symphony of noise” before the opera’s final scene (Gershwin included this Catfish-Row-awakening element at the opera’s first performance, but it soon disappeared).

     The singing, unfortunately, is another matter. The Arnold Schoenberg Chor is entirely too smooth for this music – a refined, elegant sound is precisely not what Porgy calls for, but it is what this excellent chorus delivers, and it simply does not work. The chorus actually sounds as if it belongs in some other opera. As for the soloists – they are of variable quality, the women generally stronger than the men. In particular, Isabelle Kabatu is emotionally convincing as Bess, although she could use more fire; Bibiana Nwobilo is effective as Clara; and Roberta Alexander makes a fine Maria – her dressing-down of Sporting Life (Michael Forest) is one of the best parts of this performance. Forest himself, though, has none of the slippery sliminess that his character demands, and his precise pronunciation of the scat singing in “It ain’t necessarily so” is so misguided as to be funny. Gregg Baker lacks the vocal strength to be a really effective Crown – his challenge to his “Big Frien’” God simply lacks the combination of bluster and peculiar nobility that this scene, at its best, can have. Most disappointing of all is Jonathan Lemalu as Porgy. He gets the character’s emotions right throughout – but not his music. His voice is wobbly, unsteady and all too often off pitch, to the point that it becomes a distraction from the quality of his vocal acting. One unfortunate result is that his end-of-opera determination to go on his hopeless quest to find Bess falls disappointingly flat.

     Another unfortunate element of this production might be called “pronunciation fatigue.” Despite lots of vocal coaching, some opera performers do a poor job of pronouncing the words of languages that are not their native tongues. Not-quite-right German is particularly common – and don’t even think about, say, Czech. This issue actually affects Porgy fairly often, with modern singers – including native English speakers – sometimes having trouble with the Porgy patois. In the Harnoncourt recording, though, this is taken to extremes that interfere with enjoyment of the performance. Porgy sings that he “got no mool.” We get “door” rhyming with “more” instead of “do’” with “mo.’” “Dere” frequently becomes “there,” “bein’” is “being,” and so on. The dropped final consonants are all too often restored, and words such as “yo’” are many times (although not always) rendered as “your.” The result is an opera in which Catfish Row residents speak a far more polished (if not erudite) brand of English than Heyward and the Gershwins ever intended. It sounds as if the performers are verbally slumming – and this really does diminish the quality of their work. Harnoncourt has some unusual and interesting ideas about Porgy, and he presents it very much in the tradition of grand opera – which is a big plus. But the verbal and vocal unevenness of this recording undermine the conductor’s good intentions, and the fine playing of his orchestra, far too much of the time.

(++++) COMICS BEYOND THE ORDINARY

There’s Corpses Everywhere: Yet Another “Liō” Collection. By Mark Tatulli. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

Discover Your Inner Hermit Crab: The Fifteenth “Sherman’s Lagoon” Collection. By Jim Toomey. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

     When you think about it, it is amazing that the old-fashioned gag-a-day comic strip retains such staying power. Many of the most popular strips among older readers – who are the most avid devotees of newspapers – have changed little, in terms of format (and sometimes characters), since as far back as the 1920s. Newspaper editors ignore this fact at their peril, especially now that newspapers themselves seem like something of an endangered species and need to retain all the readers they possibly can. Still, there is room in papers for at least some strips whose cartoonists push the boundaries of the comic-strip medium – and hey, even the boundaries of taste from time to time. Those would be cartoonists such as Mark Tatulli and Jim Toomey.

     Tatulli is perfectly capable of creating a fairly traditional, fairly amusing strip: Heart of the City, about an energetic little girl growing up in Philadelphia. But where Tatulli really hit his stride was in developing the genuinely odd Liō, whose very title is peculiar (what exactly does that line over the “o” mean, and how exactly is the name pronounced?). Liō can be read on many levels: is it the adventures of a boy living in a world that only he experiences (akin to Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes?), or is Liō simply a “weird kid” (he watches the Weird Kid TV network), or does the strip exist in some peculiar area between a real (or real-ish) world and one that would do Lewis Carroll proud? One of the great things about Liō is that Tatulli refuses to answer these questions. Sometimes Liō is simply a nerdy kid, an outsider tormented by bullies – one strip in the new collection shows him sighing as he totes up the current score: Bullies 32, Nerds 2 – but he does often have creative ways of evening things up (the kid who steals his lunch gets a bag containing dynamite, which Liō is set to blow up in the last panel). Sometimes Liō deals with typical childhood problems, such as his infatuation with Eva Rose, who does not return his feelings and constantly gets the better of him (and who has her own oddities, such as use of a switchblade that makes the sound “chick” whenever she opens it). But most of the time, Liō interacts with some very peculiar creatures indeed, from a cat named Cecil that is fond of blowing things up, to a series of zombies and aliens and other supernatural creatures with whom Liō has a very special relationship (for instance, giving Dracula a gag birthday gift of tanning sessions). Liō also gets involved frequently with characters from other comic strips and cartoons, solving one extended “mystery” sequence by finding out that Mark Trail is a cross-dresser, turning Pinocchio into a habitat for termites, and being attacked by felines from four other strips (including the long-gone Bloom County) while opening a can of cat food. The title of the latest Tatulli collection pays homage to the famous Watterson line at the end of the run of Calvin and Hobbes, “There’s magic everywhere,” and the book’s cover (closely modeled on a Watterson original) shows Liō and his pet cephalopod digging up a stuffed Hobbes and a skull that looks suspiciously like Calvin’s. Several elements in the new Liō book specifically involve Watterson’s characters, including a sequence in which Liō brings Calvin back from the dead, Calvin escapes, and Liō eventually captures him and Hobbes within the pages of a collection of Watterson’s works (although Calvin, as Spaceman Spiff, has the last laugh). Clearly, Tatulli’s humor in Liō is out of the ordinary and off the wall – and while the strip is definitely, emphatically, not to all tastes (its absence of dialogue, one of its defining characteristics, takes it outside the cartooning mainstream all by itself), it is fascinating, experimental, odd and about as different from traditional newspaper comics as it is possible to get.

     Sherman’s Lagoon is a more recognizable entry in the comic-strip universe: an ensemble strip with character-driven comedy. Yet Toomey is scarcely mainstream. He deliberately features unappealing characters: sharks, a nasty hermit crab, an ugly and smelly “bottom dweller,” and so on. But he manages to make them both amusing and more attractive than they have any right to be. Even though “hairless beach apes” (humans) are consumed with regularity in the strip (usually not visibly, although legs occasionally stick out of a shark’s mouth), Toomey’s underwater denizens repeatedly confront issues that concern land dwellers, from global warming to the progress of technology. Discover Your Inner Hermit Crab includes “road trips” (well, underwater trips) from Kapupu Lagoon in the South Pacific, where the characters live, to Assateague Island and the North Pole; the discovery of what may be a lost Shakespeare play (which may explain the unfortunate introduction to the book, which takes itself far, far too seriously); a fish-shaped Trojan Horse containing aggressive shrimp; and a couple of sequences in which characters are turned into humans by Kahuna, a stone head in Easter Island mode that resides in the lagoon. There is even a newspaper-vs.-Web Sunday strip – Toomey is certainly well aware of the commercial forces at war out there. Sherman’s Lagoon does have a weakness, though: poor editing. Actually, in a sequence in which Hawthorne the crab creates his own comic strip, Sherman the shark comments that is it “unbelievable…that this stuff is edited at all,” and sometimes it is hard to imagine that anyone checks Toomey’s strips before they are published. Discover Your Inner Hermit Crab includes misspellings (“comradery,” “theorum”); grammatical messes (“of some scientist says it’s so”); erroneous words (“why I shouldn’t each both of you”); omitted words (“a book solid enough bonk him,” “I just fed it Bob”); and extraneous words (“letting it to come to me”). Toomey’s plotting and sense of humor are good enough so he can almost get away with this sort of sloppiness, but really – isn’t anyone reading these strips before they go out to the world? One hopes so – because when they do go out to readers at large, they are far enough off the beaten track to provoke plenty of smiles, more than a few laughs, and sometimes even a surprising insight or two.

(++++) WATER: TOO LITTLE, ENOUGH, TOO MUCH

Dirtball Pete. By Eileen Brennan. Random House. $15.99.

Dust Devil. By Anne Isaacs. Illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky. Schwartz & Wade. $17.99.

The Cold Water Witch. By Yannick Murphy. Illustrations by Tom Lintern. Tricycle Press/Random House. $16.99.

Water, Weed, and Wait. By Edith Hope Fine and Angela Demos Halpin. Illustrated by Colleen Madden. Tricycle Press/Random House. $15.99.

A Place Where Hurricanes Happen. By Renée Watson. Illustrated by Shadra Strickland. Random House. $17.99.

     Ah, the wonders of water – or the lack of it. Eileen Brennan’s Dirtball Pete certainly needs a good cleaning: he is a constant mess, and stinky, too. But one day he has to get clean, because he needs to do a school presentation dressed as one of the 50 states (Pennsylvania). Scrubbed and polished by his mother and dressed in a suit and tie, Pete – whose head is larger than the rest of his body – looks great, but he still smells pretty ripe. Reason: his pet ferret, which he is trying to take to school. So – keep the ferret at home. But then the dog, Jack, runs over to see Pete, complete with muddy paws. And on the way to school, Pete lies down in the car, on top of his leaf collection. And even though his mom gives him “one final tidying,” Dirtball Pete becomes a complete mess, anyway – because his Pennsylvania speech blows away, and he has to chase it through a sprinkler, under bushes, into a trash can…. Well, the soggy and stained Dirtball Pete looks “like a scraggly weed in a vase of flowers” by the time he joins the other kids. But then Dirtball Pete, clopping and squishing to the front of the stage, delivers his speech “with the loudest and clearest voice of all,” and everyone in the audience realizes how special he is under all that dirt. Great story – but make sure the kids don’t use it as an excuse to avoid baths for, say, a month or two.

     Another great story – one that kids can’t imitate – is Dust Devil, which picks up after the end of Anne Isaacs’ and Paul O. Zelinsky’s Swamp Angel, a tall tale about a tall gal who, in the tradition of the American Wild West, is the wildest wildcat in Tennessee. Eventually she outgrows the whole state and moves to Big Sky country, where a dust storm whose “wind tore across Montana faster than a baby ripping a newspaper” wrecks pretty much everything, “tossing buckets, goats, and pitchforks in every direction.” But Angel rides that storm for two days and two nights until, finally, it begins to rain – and as the dust washes away, Angel finds a giant horse in the middle of the dust cloud, rides him to calmness, and names him Dust Devil. And all that dust and water and wind and such is just the prelude to an adventure that also includes the evil Backward Bart (“half rattlesnake, half badger, and half mad hornet”) and his mosquito-riding gang (they have big mosquitoes in Montana). Well, with Bart talking backward – and Angel having to do the same to make him understand her – there’s a big battle that Angel eventually wins with biscuits, and the whole thing explains Montana features such as the Sawtooth Range and the state’s geysers. And a big Yippee (or, as Bart says it, “Pee-yip”) to all the dust and rain and lightning and the rest of it.

     Water is quieter – frozen, in fact – in The Cold Water Witch, a modern fairy tale in which the title character tries to entice (or, if necessary, force) a little girl to take her place as ruler of a distant, frozen land. Yannick Murphy twists fairy-tale themes around, having the witch defeated by a method similar to the one used by Gretel to get rid of her witch – but, here, without a fatal outcome, as in fact the witch turns out to be an unhappy creature who was herself enticed into her current state by the previous Cold Water Witch, who came to her on the coldest night of the year. With appropriate fairy-tale-like illustrations by Tom Lintern complementing the story, Murphy has the witch’s iciness actually melt as she thinks of her own loneliness, until eventually there are two little girls keeping each other company throughout the cold, cold night, both making believe “they were at a white sandy beach…under an imaginary summer sun.” The result is a wonderful feeling of transition from frigidity to warmth.

     Warmth is helpful in Water, Weed, and Wait, too, as the kids at Pepper Lane Elementary School learn how to start a garden, and even grumpy old Mr. Barkley – who happens to be a fine gardener – ends up pitching in. There is plenty of solid real-life information here, from the need for water “but not too much water” to the book’s title, which describes exactly what the students need to do. There is even information on worm poop: “Plants love it. Pests hate it,” explains one character. It is a little hard to imagine kids being quite so enthusiastic at the sight of radishes, but the fun of planting, watering and growing a garden certainly comes through clearly here. And the big smiles on all the faces at the end of the story – when everyone is dressed in a garden-related costume – certainly convey the joy of helping things grow. Two pages of information on how to create your own school garden, with a checklist and a set of online resources, make the book useful as well as enjoyable.

     Of course, gardens are not the only things that suffer from too much water. So do people – even whole cities – which is the story related in A Place Where Hurricanes Happen. The place is New Orleans; the hurricane, Katrina. The story is told in a series of first-person narratives by children affected by the big storm five years ago: Adrienne, Keesha, Michael and Tommy. They talk about boarding up their houses, sitting in traffic to get out of town, watching the city flood (Michael’s family does not leave and is eventually moved to a shelter), and dealing with the loss of homes and possessions – and the eventual return to the city and the slow start of the process of rebuilding. The book seems to be written more as self-affirmation for Hurricane Katrina survivors than to give kids in general a strong sense of the storm and its aftermath. It is very well-meaning and respectful – it has the feeling of a tribute – but sometimes seems almost too glib about the survival instinct, as when the friends hang a picture and flowers on a tree so “if any of our neighbors ever come back or if they can see us from Heaven, they will know that we didn’t forget about them.” A Place Where Hurricanes Happen deserves a (+++) rating as a heartfelt remembrance, but families who were not personally affected by Katrina may find it a bit difficult to make a strong connection with the tale as it is told here.

(++++) MULTIPLE MESSES

Babyberry Pie. By Heather Vogel Frederick. Illustrated by Amy Schwartz. Harcourt. $16.99.

Sneezenesia. By Deb Lucke. Clarion. $16.99.

Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist: Book Three—The Wyverns’ Treasure. By R.L. LaFevers. Illustrated by Kelly Murphy. Houghton Mifflin. $16.

     Messing things up is a lot more fun in books than in real life. Cleanup is a lot easier, too – in fact, it can be absolutely adorable, as it is in Babyberry Pie. Heather Vogel Frederick’s book starts with a nighttime bath that baby and parents (lovingly and warmly portrayed in illustrations by Amy Schwartz) thoroughly enjoy. But while being toweled dry, the little “babyberry” runs off and heads straight for the pie cooling on the windowsill, becoming a “little sillyberry, messyberry one” as he dumps pie all over himself and all over the floor (in books, this is cute). So the indulgent parents, always smiling, give him another bath and play sugar games as they powder him – as if he has sugar on his bellybutton, fingertips, everywhere. Then they make a “pie crust” of quilts and pillows in the crib: “It’s time to tuck the baby in/ For babyberry pie!/ Pop him in the pie crust./ Pull the covers tight.” Sleepy baby, sleepy moon watching from overhead, and a tender ending make this a lovely bedtime story – although presumably the parents need to get back to the kitchen to clean everything up before they too can settle down for the night.

     The mess in Deb Lucke’s Sneezenesia occurs in a supermarket and in the brain of a boy who – like once-famous comic-strip character Little Sammy Sneeze – is a truly prodigious sneezer. But unlike Sammy, this boy, Zack, does not blow apart his surroundings with his huge (and very amusingly drawn) sneezes. Instead, he blows out all his own knowledge. He sneezes away his name, and then the memory of his mother, who is in the store but whose appearance he no longer remembers. Then he starts sneezing away the history he has learned in school – pilgrims and presidents – and then he sneezes out a whole passel of dinosaurs, which “made a Jurassic mess all over the floor.” And he sneezes out his favorite baseball team, and Christmas, and “a puff of dust, a rubber band, and a few stray facts that had slipped between the lobes of his brain.” There is nothing left: Lucke shows everything scattered around the aisle in the store, and the boy’s collapsed brain looking “like a tire with no pressure inside.” But then the boy sniffs, and that creates suction, and everything starts zooming back inside (the picture of elongated people, numbers, letters, dinosaurs and such heading back into the boy’s gigantic nostrils is hilarious). The suction actually pulls the boy’s mother to him from the deli line, and she bends down to wipe his nose – unfortunately removing just one memory that had not quite gotten back inside in time. Readers find out what it is by turning to the inside back cover; but it certainly seems to be something that Zack will rediscover soon – unless, of course, another monumental sneeze blows everything messily out again.

     There are messes of several types in the third book of R.L. LaFevers’ Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist series. The entire house is a mess when Nate and Aunt Phil return to it after their basilisk adventure in the previous book. The place has been ransacked. The family’s lawyers’ office in London also proves to be a mess – boarded up and solidly locked. Nate’s house in Upton Downs, where he and Aunt Phil go to try to trace the person who is likely responsible for their problems, is a mess as well: someone – maybe the same someone -- has been there, too. And while trying to decide what to do, Nate and Aunt Phil are confronted by a mess of a different sort: the possibility that wyverns (dragons of a certain type) will break their long-held covenant with humans and rampage through England. Nate and Aunt Phil – along with Nate’s gremlin, Greasle, whom Nate considers a friend and helper but whom Aunt Phil does not trust at all – must head for a place called Beddgelert, to find out what is upsetting the wyverns and to make things right. Not surprisingly at all, it turns out that the difficulty with the wyverns involves the culprit for whom Nate and Aunt Phil have been looking: Obediah Fludd, descendant of the family’s “black sheep,” Octavius, and an all-around bad guy and troublemaker. Unfortunately for the series, what happens when Aunt Phil and Nate confront Obediah results in a (+++) rating for the book rather than a higher one, because the usually sensible and intelligent Aunt Phil acts like a complete ninny, failing to acknowledge the suspicious things Obediah is doing, taking his obviously false statements at face value, and ending up putting herself and Nate in grave danger. True, Nate himself is not fooled (nor is Greasle); and true, Aunt Phil’s sudden attack of naïveté sets up situations in which Nate can (as in the first two books) prove himself a budding beastologist with a fine career ahead of him protecting allegedly mythological creatures. But from the moment Nate and Aunt Phil find Obediah to the book’s end – by which time Obediah has, of course, escaped – the plot creaks more than in the earlier books (although Kelly Murphy’s illustrations fit in as nicely as ever). A ride on one of the wyverns after reaffirmation of the covenant between them and humans gives Nate a natural high (so to speak) and results in him looking forward to his next adventure. Fans of this series will enjoy anticipating the next book, too, despite the less-than-adept handling of some elements in this one.

(+++) EASY READERS, SEASONAL AND ANYTIME

Duck & Goose: It’s Time for Christmas! By Tad Hills. Schwartz & Wade. $6.99.

Tonight You Are My Baby: Mary’s Christmas Gift. By Jeannine Q. Norris. Illustrated by Tim Ladwig. HarperFestival. $7.99.

Little Bear and the Marco Polo. By Else Holmelund Minarik. Pictures by Dorothy Doubleday. Harper. $3.99.

Wonder Woman: I Am Wonder Woman. By Erin K. Stein. Illustrations by Rick Farley. Harper. $3.99.

Spider-Man: Spider-Man’s Big City Showdown. By Joe F. Merkel & John Sazaklis. Illustrated by Andie Tong. HarperFestival. $3.99.

Flat Stanley’s Worldwide Adventures #5: The Amazing Mexican Secret. By Josh Greenhut. Pictures by Macky Pamintuan. Harper. $4.99.

The Berenstain Bears’ Computer Trouble. By Jan & Mike Berenstain. HarperFestival. $10.99.

Zen Ghosts. By Jon J. Muth. Scholastic. $17.99.

     Any holiday provides a fine reason for reading to young children, or encouraging them to read for themselves. For example, the secular and sacred sides of Christmas are nicely handled in two new board books. Tad Hills’ delightful Duck and Goose have a snowy adventure in which Duck repeatedly tells Goose what sorts of things it is not time for – sledding, throwing snowballs, or making a snowgoose (an especially cute picture). No, Duck finally explains – it is time for Christmas. And the two friends, watched by two other little birds, work together to decorate a tree. This is a delightful book for anyone. In contrast, Tonight You Are My Baby is strictly for Christian families. It imagines Mary repeatedly saying, “Tomorrow you will be King, but tonight you are my baby,” and shows her swaddling and cuddling the infant Jesus while marveling at the angels’ trumpets, the Star of Bethlehem and the approach of the wise men. Pretty pictures and straightforward text are used to emphasize the Christian belief that the birth of Jesus was, above all, a time of Love incarnate.

     Of course, holidays are not the only “hook” to draw children into books. Familiar characters help, too. In the I Can Read! multi-stage series for young readers, Else Holmelund Minarik’s Little Bear appears in a Stage 1 book (“for eager new readers”) in which he learns about the days in which Grandfather was a sea captain – and gets to see Grandfather’s boat, the Marco Polo, which is now in drydock. Little Bear dreams of seafaring himself someday, but Grandfather reminds him that “there’s no place like home.” Slightly more advanced text characterizes the Stage 2 book (“for developing readers”), I Am Wonder Woman, which tells a simplified version of the story of the origin of the comic-book Amazon princess with the bullet-repelling bracelets and invisible airplane. And then, outside the I Can Read! sequence but also focusing on a comic-book hero, there is Spider-Man’s Big City Showdown, where slam-bang action scenes dominate and the text is used mostly as connective tissue to explain why Spider-Man and a bad guy called Carnage are laying waste to much of the city.

     Families looking for familiar but much less violent characters can easily find them, too. Jeff Brown’s creation, Flat Stanley, is now showing up in various guises in books written by others. The Amazing Mexican Secret, the latest in a series of adventures set in countries outside the United States, has Stanley used as a bullfighter’s cape and mistaken for a piñata. There is also an evil chef, determined to ferret out a secret ingredient by following Stanley to a woman known only as La Abuela; and the book offers some Spanish phrases in the narrative and some facts about Mexico at the end. Back in the U.S., or at least in Bear Country, the latest up-to-date problem-solving book featuring the Berenstain Bears is about computers – and the title, Computer Trouble, does not refer to data loss or a system crash but to family trouble, with everyone spending more time with machines than Papa Bear considers quite right. “We are spending so much time on computers that we don’t even have time to say hello to each other these days,” says Papa; and this being the Berenstain universe, everyone agrees to cooperate to deal with Internet safety issues and to limit Web use to one hour per day. In fact, when Papa tells Sister and Brother that they need to “get back outside and play like [sic] you used to,” they do not argue or protest at all – “it sounded like fun.” As in all the Berenstain Bears books, the tone here is on the preachy side and the problems are more realistically presented than the solutions, which are just too neat and simple to work for most real-world families. Still, fans of the Berenstains will find this book a good addition to their bookshelves, and even if the answers it suggests are oversimplified, they can at least become the basis for discussion.

     Every once in a while, a book with a known character and a holiday tie-in transcends both, and that is the case with Zen Ghosts, which nominally relates to Halloween and which features Stillwater the giant panda, who has previously appeared in Zen Shorts and Zen Ties. But the heart of this book is neither Halloween nor Stillwater, who in this case is a conduit for a very old ghost (or out-of-body) story. Jon J. Muth brings his usual narrative sensitivity and lovely drawing style to this (++++) book, in which even the kids’ Halloween costumes take on a tinge of magic (the wordless two-page spread showing all sorts of trick-or-treaters, apparently including a real witch and real ghost that go unnoticed amid all the costumed kids and parents, is a particular pleasure). As for the story that Stillwater tells to Michael, Karl and Addy, it is an 800-year-old tale of a boy and girl who are in love, but who are to be separated because the girl’s family circumstances require that she marry someone else – and of how the girl runs away to be with her true love and live happily with him. But she also remains with her family, and it is only many years later that “the two Senjos…merged and became one.” Zen Ghosts itself poses questions of duality – is there one Stillwater in the book or two? – for those who wish to contemplate them. But both on its surface and beneath it, the book has quiet beauty and enduring charm, no matter what the season.

(+++) REAL-LIFE SORROWS AND JOYS

Please Stop Laughing at Me… By Jodee Blanco. Adams Media. $12.95.

Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3: The Secret Formulas for Duplicating Your Favorite Restaurant Dishes at Home. By Todd Wilbur. Plume. $16.

     Although it is subtitled “One Woman’s Inspirational Story,” Jodee Blanco’s Please Stop Laughing at Me… (the ellipsis is part of the title) does not quite come across as the “humble attempt to inspire tolerance, understanding, and acceptance” that Blanco tells readers it is. The book is the story of a girl – now a woman – desperately seeking acceptance on others’ terms, unable to figure out who she is and where, if anywhere, she fits in. Reading Blanco’s own words, and reading between them, shows some of her inner conflict. Raised by Catholic parents who “instilled in me a strong sense of right and wrong,” she says only a few lines later that her parents “encouraged me to act independently, and to have a mind of my own.” She never notices that there is any conflict between being raised with strong values from a rigid religion while being simultaneously encouraged to be independent. Thus, she was especially happy when studying in Catholic grammar school, where everything was neatly arranged and laid out, and where she could be told by her mother to “say a prayer asking God to give [poor people] strength and opportunity.” Blanco’s background is not the primary focus of her book, but it is highly relevant to what is the focus, which is bullying. Outside her cloistered grammar-school life, in which she was taught by nuns, Blanco – at age 12 – first tries desperately to fit in with preteens who are far more sexually aware than she. That leads to Blanco calling her mom when things get too intense at a party – and that leads to Blanco being ostracized, then spit on, then physically beaten. Blanco soon finds herself totally isolated: “If I went to my teachers, my classmates would get into trouble, and it would make things worse. I couldn’t go to my parents for help because they would drag me to the psychiatrist’s office. It was bad enough that I was being treated like a freak by my peers. I sure didn’t want a shrink labeling me as one.” Things get better with a move to “rural suburbia,” then worse when her parents urge her just to be herself: “I had learned that you couldn’t be ‘gifted’ and liked at the same time.” Blanco’s story is one of unending misinterpretation – mostly by Blanco herself, although by others as well – with consequences that flow distressingly but not surprisingly from failures to understand and negotiate social dynamics. But as personal and unique as the story is, it has resonance as well. At one point, involved in playing a prank on a teacher, Blanco writes that the instructor’s words were “tinged with the sadness of one whose illusions have been completely shattered.” The same may be said, repeatedly, of Blanco’s own words. She holds back from class participation, knowing her grade will not be as good as it can be, “but not being the butt of everyone’s jokes is well worth the tradeoff.” She tries to fit in with “the cool crowd” and repeatedly fails. Spiraling down farther and farther, she cuts herself in a rage, falls into clinical depression, and – in an instance of extreme bad luck that has her questioning why God is doing this to her – develops a condition in which her breasts, as they grow, are seriously mismatched in size, eventually requiring surgery at the Mayo Clinic. Blanco gets through everything, including high school, gets into the college of her choice (NYU), embarks on a successful career, and – at the end of the book – has a triumphant reunion meeting with many of the now-older and much-changed bullies whose scorn she once endured. It is a long, long slog to get to the uplifting ending (although the book, at 284 pages, is not especially lengthy); and the intensely personal nature of the narrative somewhat limits its applicability to other instances of bullying – an issue that Blanco, now an anti-bullying activist, tries to handle with a list of resources and information on her “day-long anti-bullying program” at the end. Bullying (or “peer abuse,” as Blanco also calls it) is a real issue in schools, but Blanco’s book will only incidentally help families trying to handle it. Because the book is a memoir, it will be of interest mostly to others who have experienced their own peer-abuse horror stories and who want the reassurance that if Blanco could get through her own private purgatory, then they can survive their hellish experiences as well.

     For memories that are far, far more pleasant – ones worth reliving without their being at the service of any cause other than culinary enjoyment – readers can now treat themselves to the third Top Secret Restaurant Recipes book by restaurant “reverse engineering” guru Todd Wilbur. It needs to be noted at once that these are not gourmet dishes from Michelin-rated restaurants. Everything here is more down-home than upscale, with Wilbur cloning foods from Applebee’s, Bonefish Grill, California Pizza Kitchen, Cheesecake Factory, Chili’s, Famous Dave’s, Hard Rock Café, Hooters, Olive Garden, P.F. Chang’s, Pizza Hut, Ruby Tuesday’s and similar establishments. Indeed, most of the food comes from midpriced restaurant chains that have suffered significant losses of business during the extended recession, as families have cut back on dining out. Wilbur’s book is equally likely to extend those cutbacks (because families can make similar foods at home) or reverse them (because his recipes are by no means always simple, and may give people a new appreciation of what goes into making some of their favorite restaurant foods). Using a series of food diagrams that resemble architectural blueprints, and a chatty commentary that mixes a trifle lumpily with the very matter-of-fact recipe instructions themselves, Wilbur tosses in some restaurant secrets that may leave readers a bit nonplussed about what they like to eat. For instance, in the recipe for IHOP Banana Macadamia Nut Pancakes, he notes, “the country’s largest flapjack house flavors the pancakes with imitation banana flavoring and a yellow food coloring, since real mashed bananas will eventually oxidize and turn a prepared batter brown.” Too much information? Well, Wilbur’s recipe uses real mashed bananas, “since we are going to use this batter right away.” But it also includes items that not everyone will necessarily have right at hand: light corn syrup, butter flavoring, imitation rum flavoring and buttermilk. In fact, it is surprising how complex the apparently simple chain-restaurant breakfasts can be. Writing about Denny’s Pancake Puppies, Wilbur says, “Initially I thought I could use an instant blueberry pancake mix to clone the new flavor, such as the mix made by Krusteaz. But those ‘blueberries’ in there aren’t even real blueberries – they’re blueberry-flavored bits. Blech!” Give Wilbur credit for not mincing words (although he does just fine at mincing, say, garlic or onions when a recipe needs them). The recipes here are arranged alphabetically by restaurant, which can make it a bit difficult to assemble a meal from several places’ specialties. You have to go through the whole table of contents to locate, say, Margaritaville’s Incommunicado Cocktail, Outback Steakhouse’s Bleu Cheese Pecan Chopped Salad, T.G.I. Friday’s Dragonfire Chicken, Joe’s Stone Crab’s Grilled Tomatoes, and Spago’s Pumpkin Cheesecake. Of course, the search can be part of the fun – and most readers will probably not try to create a whole meal from these recipes, since so many dishes’ requirements are so different. One unfortunate omission from the book is calorie, fat and salt data – in many areas, the restaurants themselves now have to display this information prominently, and it would be nice if Wilbur had done so for his clone dishes. Of course, it could be argued that people who frequent the sorts of restaurants whose foods are featured in the Top Secret Restaurant Recipes series are not especially concerned about nutrition, being focused more straightforwardly on taste. Certainly Wilbur makes a strong effort to get the tastes of these dishes right – and that alone may be enough of an enticement to persuade chain-restaurant fans who also enjoy cooking on their own to try out some of these dishes and see just how well they compare with the originals.

(++++) SOUNDING GOOD

Mendelssohn: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2; Rondo brilliant. Martin Helmchen, piano; Royal Flemish Philharmonic conducted by Philippe Herreweghe. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

Handel: Water Music; Overture to “Rodrigo.” Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble conducted by Marc Minkowski. Naïve. $16.99.

     Sometimes what can make familiar music sound really good is simply making it sound really good. That is, when works are already well known to most listeners, when performers can offer interpretative refinement but nothing overwhelmingly new, what can make a recording stand out is simply the way it sounds. It is easy to assume that this would especially be true in the case of SACDs, whose sound is by and large noticeably superior to that of CDs – particularly when played on equipment designed to handle it. But in fact the clarity of SACDs is secondary, for sonic purposes, to the nuances of the performances they capture. And in the case of PentaTone’s new release of the Mendelssohn Piano Concertos, the reading by Martin Helmchen and Philippe Herreweghe is a particularly nuanced one that therefore benefits exceptionally well from the excellence of the recording. In the ebullient Concerto No. 1, the flow between soloist and conductor is simply delightful, especially so in the finale, which bubbles along with warmth, enthusiasm and a fine sense of lyricism to complement the virtuosity. There is genuine partnership here between piano and orchestra – and also in Concerto No. 2, whose mysterious opening builds highly effectively in the orchestra before the soloist picks up and elaborates it. Helmchen and Herreweghe bring delicacy bordering on that of a Mozart concerto to this concerto’s second movement, and the finale is simply bursting with rhythmic vitality. The Rondo brilliant, which fills out the disc, receives a surprisingly thoughtful performance – that is, it certainly gets all the showmanship that this piece usually commands, but in the slower and gentler passages, pianist and conductor bring out the delicacy of a work that often seems to lack that characteristic. None of the attentiveness to detail, though, prevents Helmchen and Herreweghe from concluding the piece with an exemplary flourish – a fitting capstone to an altogether wonderful-sounding recording.

     The sound is excellent as well in Marc Minkowski’s new Handel recording with Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble, but for somewhat different reasons. This is not an SACD, but it is nevertheless an especially clear-sounding and well-balanced disc, and that is directly attributable to Minkowski’s extremely careful attention to detail and willingness to deviate from established performance practice when he believes he has found a more effective way to present parts of the Water Music. Thus, Handel’s double-dotting tends to be accentuated almost to the point of overstatement, and slow sections are generally followed by fast ones that are so quick as to seem like dance tunes. This is not what Handel intended – this was, after all, incidental music for barge cruises on the Thames, and was supposed to be eminently listenable while remaining in the background and not distracting the royal party. But the music sounds simply marvelous this way. At times, it is understandable to wonder whether the horns can possibly keep up with the tempos on which Minkowski insists, but they always do, and quite well, too. True, a few of the more stately sections of the music seem a trifle rushed at Minkowski’s pace; but the juxtaposition of the unusually speedy dances with the exceptionally well-paced slower ones produces an ebb and flow that is a delight to hear. And individual movements carry genuine surprises, such as the raucous Minuet of the suite in F, the nearly Mendelssohnian scurrying of the Rigaudon of the suite in G, and the exceptionally stately Lentement of the suite in D. The Water Music is nicely complemented by the overture to Rodrigo, Handel’s first Italian opera. This overture is actually an eight-movement suite in its own right, and its less-familiar music sounds just as good in Minkowski’s performance as does the well-known Water Music – which is to say that the CD as a whole sounds simply splendid.