(+++) CALLINGS

Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted. By Justin Martin. Da Capo. $30.

Sex, Mom, & God: How the Bible’s Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics – and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway. By Frank Schaeffer. Da Capo. $26.

     Despite an unfortunate title and a tendency to become somewhat overly fascinated with minutiae, Justin Martin’s Genius of Place is a very considerable biography of one of the great American landscape architects – who, as Martin is at pains to point out, was not just a landscape architect. Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) was an important pre-Civil War journalist, whose five-year trip through the American South (1852-57) helped cement an abolitionist perspective that argued for slavery being not only morally repugnant but also economically inefficient. Best known to most people for his design of New York City’s Central Park, Olmsted actually designed parks and other projects in two dozen states – plus the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. He also designed the grounds of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. – Martin neatly juxtaposes Olmsted’s 1874 plan with a modern aerial shot of the location – and created Boston’s famous Emerald Necklace park system. Olmsted was also a very considerable designer of college campuses, including, at least in part, those of Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley – plus American University, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, the University of Chicago, Trinity College and Yale University, among others. And Olmsted had a dramatic personal life laced with tragedy: he married his brother’s widow; adopted her three sons, his nephews, as his own; had two additional children who survived infancy, but lost others – and ended his days in the asylum at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, whose grounds he had designed. There is more than enough material here for a big biography, and Martin’s, which runs more than 450 pages, fills the bill. It is packed with information gleaned from primary sources, and includes material that helps illuminate Olmsted’s influencers as well as his influences. For example, Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852) is deemed by some to be the father of American landscape architecture, while others give that title to Olmsted; Martin, for his part, explores the ways in which the older man influenced the younger. Indeed, Martin explores pretty much everything he can wrap his mind around, and there are a lot of things: “By 1850, there were 650 magazines in the United States, and countless others had started and quickly folded, all part of a ‘veritable magazine tsunami,’ in the words of John Tebbel and Mary Ellen Zuckerman, coauthors of a history of publishing.” “During his first weeks in Washington, Olmsted…was constantly battling the flies – worse than on his Staten Island farm, he noted. Most nights, he worked past midnight before retiring to his stuffy room at the Willard, where he’d lie down, still in his clothes, tossing and turning, worrying about money.” “For Olmsted’s portrait, [John Singer] Sargent selected a thickly planted spot on the side of the approach road, about a half mile from the mansion. Dogwoods and kalmia were in full blossom – a perfect setting for the great landscape architect.” Martin also pays a great deal of attention to what Olmsted was thinking and being troubled by at various points – and while many of these thoughts are apparently inferred from Olmsted’s writings (Martin’s research really is impressive), some do seem a bit speculative at times. There are many, many ins and outs of Olmsted’s complicated life, and while it would be unreasonable to expect all readers to share Martin’s obvious fascination with his subject, Genius of Place will certainly captivate not only those interested in Olmsted as landscape architect but also people who want to know about early environmentalism and the conservationist movement – and the intricacies of creating open spaces in and near many of the nation’s great cities. About that title, though: Martin clearly takes it from genius loci, a Latin phrase relating to the protective spirit of a particular place – and a phrase that later came to mean a place’s spirit or atmosphere. But the phrase has nothing to do with what we mean when we call someone a genius today. By using it in that way, Martin titles his book with a confusion that belies the care of his narrative.

     Among Olmsted’s many complexities was his relationship to organized religion. Growing up in a “rigid Congregationalist faith,” he became something of an agnostic, writing in 1873, “Do you suppose that it is a much smaller misfortune for a Chinese child to lose its Pagan mother than for an English child to lose its Christian mother? …Do you suppose there is a whit more tenderness toward her child in an English mother than in a Digger Indian mother?” Olmsted’s religious uncertainties are scarcely unique, but they were not the sum and substance of his being – as they seem to be for Frank Schaeffer, whose latest too-amply-subtitled memoir re-explores territory he has gone to before, but from a somewhat different perspective. Schaeffer, raised in a Christian community run by his evangelical parents, attempts in Sex, Mom, & God to reconcile his mother’s firmly foundational beliefs with her willingness to be open, at least to a certain extent, about sexual matters. Schaeffer explains that his mother, Edith, was as certain that she could save people’s souls as she was about what sort of lingerie young women should wear on their wedding night – and keep handy to maintain their husbands’ interest over time. Schaeffer’s book is frequently entertaining, but it is marred throughout by what is either poor writing or poor editing: “My sister said that [babies] all were ‘the same age as everyone else is in Heaven is [sic],” for example, and “…speaking in an [sic] we’re-all-too-smart-to-take-anything-at-face-value progressive code.” Schaeffer seems to think his mother did a wonderful job of mixing unbending theology with a certain level of flexibility on sensual matters. But he himself mixes the issues less well. He writes at some length about the “modern-era ‘submission movement’” that he says he helped Mary Pride found, including an extended and almost incoherent quotation by Roman Catholic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe that ends up by asserting that “contraceptive intercourse within marriage is a graver offense against chastity than is straightforward fornication or adultery.” Schaeffer makes it clear that he finds Anscombe’s reasoning tortured at best, but he nevertheless gives it considerable space, and even quotes from an Anscombe obituary that praises her analysis. Schaeffer has something to say (usually several somethings) about Sarah Palin, Ronald Reagan, Billy Graham, Hugh Hefner and many others; and he has opinions (usually several opinions) on adultery, homophobia, abortion and many other issues. Especially abortion, which he believes (with some justification) to be the central issue in today’s cultural wars, at least in the United States. But his personal position on the issue is murky, even when he states it as clearly as he can: “Today, as I said, I’m pro-choice – but with a caveat that will not please the professional activists dug in on either side. I am pro-choice, but not pro-Roe and -Bolton. In other words I think it’s time to put out the fire at the heart of the American culture wars or at least damp it down. And this fire – for the vast ‘middle’ – is not caused by abortion per se but by the extremes of Roe and Bolton.” In still other words, he is personally pro-choice but against bedrock legal decisions favoring abortion. Certainly there is tremendous ambivalence about abortion, and Schaeffer expresses remorse repeatedly (in this book and elsewhere) for helping “to launch the Evangelical wing of the antiabortion movement,” but it is difficult to pin down just what Schaeffer thinks and just how he got to that point. It is also difficult to be sure he will not be at some other point at some other time, given his frequent condemnation of various people and movements that he takes credit, or blame, for starting or helping to bring to power: “Dad and I contributed to a government-is-the-enemy climate in which eventually Timothy McVeigh found it thinkable to bomb the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.” Schaeffer’s books often read like attempts to make himself out to be not so bad after all – and in the case of Sex, Mom, & God, to indicate that it is possible for someone to be loving, sensual and willing to talk about carnal matters while still being devout and an utterly committed evangelical Christian. “Bible-believing Christians aren’t alone in struggling with their Sinful Bodies,” he asserts. Well, no. But they are in the forefront of those who argue that their bodies are sinful and must somehow be dealt with in that context. Schaeffer never really reconciles the sacred and the secular, for all the entertaining ways in which he tries to do so.

(++++) NEGLECTED BEAUTIES

John Blow: Venus and Adonis; Welcome, ev’ry Guest; Ground in G minor for Two Violins and Continuo; Chloe Found Amyntas Lying All in Tears. Boston Early Music Festival Vocal & Chamber Ensembles conducted by Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs. CPO. $16.99.

Biber: Vesperae longiores ac breviores; Magnificat; Rupert Ignaz Mayr: Domine ad adjuvandum me festina; Sancta Maria, Mater Dei; Leopold I: Ave maris stella; Giovanni Legrenzi: Salve Regina. Yale Schola Cantorum and Yale Collegium Players conducted by Simon Carrington. Carus. $18.99.

Telemann: Concertos for 4 Violas in C and G; Max von Weinzierl: Nachtstück für 4 Violen; York Bowen: Fantasie Quartet for 4 Violas; Bartók: 9 Duos from “44 Duos for Two Violins”; Astor Piazzolla: Four for Tango; Christopher Norton: Steering Wheel Blues. Tertis Viola Ensemble (Konstantin Sellheim, Dirk Niewöhner, Burkhard Sigl and Julio Lopez). Oehms. $16.99.

Ries: Piano Sonatas and Sonatinas, Volume 5—Sonata in A Major, Op. 114; Sonata in A-flat Major, Op. 176; Sonata in B Minor, WoO 11. Susan Kagan, piano. Naxos. $9.99.

Debussy: Orchestral Works, Volume 6—Suite bergamasque; Petite Suite; Printemps; En blanc et noir; Symphony in B minor. Orchestre National de Lyon conducted by Jun Märkl. Naxos. $9.99.

     A bit of wandering along musical byways can be a delightful experience – and it is one that is easier to have with recordings than at concerts, where much of the musical fare tends to be on the bland side when it is not self-consciously “contemporary.” Early operas (before Handel) are especially difficult to find on stage or even in concert performances, and that is a shame, because some are quite delightful – such as Venus and Adonis by John Blow (1649-1708). This is the very first opera in English, unless you regard it as a masque, as some scholars do. Dating to 1683, it is a mangled retelling of the myth of Venus and the mortal lover she took after Cupid, her son, accidentally pierced her with one of his arrows. Unlike happy-ending emendations of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, which were common in the 17^th century, the main plot alteration in Blow’s opera has more to do with motivation for the final tragedy, in which Adonis dies after being gored by a wild boar he is hunting. The legend has Adonis insisting on the hunt despite Venus’ misgivings; in contrast, Blow’s opera has Adonis claiming himself content with Venus’ love but having the goddess herself say he should hunt, as he is wont to do. In any case, Blow’s music for the story is lovely, and his skilled handling of vocal and orchestral forces is in the same league as that of his great contemporary, Henry Purcell. The final G Minor chorus, “Mourn for their servant,” is particularly affecting, and everything is very well played and sung – in accordance with period style – by the Boston Early Music Festival members (both conductors on this CD, Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, are lutenists as well and are well versed in music of this period). The brief additional pieces on the disc further showcase Blow’s considerable compositional abilities. Soprano Amanda Forsythe sings Welcome, ev’ry Guest, an ode for St. Cecilia’s day, with sureness and beauty; Chloe Found Amyntas Lying All in Tears (sung by tenors Jason McStoots and Zachary Wilder, and bass-baritone Douglas Williams) makes a suitable envoi to the opera, using the poem by John Dryden; and the Ground in G minor showcases Blow’s purely instrumental music to fine effect.

     Sacred rather than secular music of Blow’s time appears on a particularly well-performed CD featuring the Vesperae longiores ac breviores by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704). Biber was an extraordinary violinist and an unusually forward-looking composer, famously employing multitonality in one section of his Battalia. He was also very devout, showcasing his beliefs in some unusual ways (the complex scordatura of his Mystery Sonatas in particular). The Vesperae (1693) are more conventional, as is the Magnificat that also appears on this CD, but they are very effective examples of part writing and of the interweaving of vocal and instrumental lines. The short works by Rupert Ignaz Mayr (1646-1712), Leopold I (1640-1705) and Giovanni Legrenzi (ca. 1620-1690) are even less familiar than Biber’s music, partaking of the same devotional feelings and many of the same musical approaches. Simon Carrington and the Yale performers bring subtlety as well as beautiful sound to all these performances of devotional works.

     Beautiful sound is also the order of the day from the Tertis Viola Ensemble, comprising four members of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and named for famed violist Lionel Tertis (1876-1975). Hearing four violas playing together is a sonic treat, bringing tremendous warmth and beauty to works either written for this grouping or, in most cases, arranged for it. The two Telemann concertos on this CD were written for four violins, but both sound richer and more elegant in these four-viola arrangements – and are played with a historically informed approach that limits vibrato and uses it with care. The ensemble simply plays these works a fifth lower than written, to accommodate the tuning of the viola, so in a sense these are not arrangements at all. But call them what you will, they are lovely and exceptionally well performed. And they contrast interestingly with newer, virtually unknown pieces by Max von Weinzierl (1841-1898) and York Bowen (1884-1961) that were written for an ensemble of four violas. The arrangements of Bartók’s 9 Duos may be more a matter of taste – these very short pieces were published for two violas by the composer’s son, Péter, and sound richer if perhaps less pointed on four instruments. Piazzolla’s Four for Tango is reasonably well known as a work for string quartet, and this piece is a real arrangement, sounding quite different from the better-known version and quite interesting in its own way. And Steering Wheel Blues by Christopher Norton (born 1953) makes a suitably quick (90-second) and enthusiastic encore. This is a very unusual CD containing both rarities and music heard in ways quite different from what listeners will expect. It is a must for viola lovers and will please anyone who loves gorgeous string playing.

     Susan Kagan’s fine exploration of the now little-known piano music of Beethoven’s pupil, friend and biographer, Ferdinand Ries, continues in a fifth volume with two of Ries’ most substantial piano sonatas. Op. 114, which dates to 1823 – while Beethoven was still alive – is warm, cheerful, serene and lyrical, unchallenging to hear although far from easy to perform. It sounds like a throwback to pre-Beethoven sonatas, although it does have more weight than many of those by, say, Haydn. The final rondo, a moto perpetuo requiring a steady hand and clear sense of rhythm (both of which Kagan possesses), is particularly pleasant. Op. 176, written in 1832, is the last of Ries’ 14 piano sonatas, and it has some intriguing formal characteristics, such as metrical shifts between 6/8 and 9/8 in the expressive slow movement. It remains essentially a Classical-era work, though, with its general air of optimism, its typical-for-Ries final rondo, and a third movement (out of four) labeled as a Scherzo and featuring a Haydnesque contrast between major and minor (the latter in the trio). Both these sonatas are more substantial than the early WoO 11, which probably dates to around 1801 – five years before Ries’ two sonatas, Op. 1. This early work’s minor key gives it a somber (although scarcely heavy) feeling, and the third and final movement – not surprisingly, a rondo – shows the influence of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 8, “Pathétique.” The melodic writing is strong here and the sonata is well put together, but it is not highly original – an issue for much of Ries’ music, but certainly no reason for it to have fallen into near-total obscurity.

     The sixth excellent Debussy volume from Jun Märkl and Orchestre National de Lyon contains one genuine and fascinating rarity in additional to several works that are well known, although not necessarily in orchestral guise. The rare piece is Debussy’s sole attempt at a symphony, which dates to 1880, when the composer was 18 – and which has a tie-in to Tchaikovsky, since it was written for the older composer’s patroness, Nadezhda von Meck. Only a single movement was composed, and only for piano duet; Debussy later disclaimed any interest in symphonies. Hearing this rather derivative (although not particularly Tchaikovskian) piece, in an orchestration by Tony Fimmo, is one of those fascinating musical excursions into the land of what might have been. Also on this CD are the Suite bergamasque, originally for piano, in orchestrations by Gustave Cloez (three movements) and André Caplet (one: the ubiquitous Clair de lune); and the Petite Suite, written for two pianos, as orchestrated by Henri Büsser. Listeners who know the piano works will find it interesting to compare them with the orchestrated ones – both suites sound very good indeed in their orchestral guise. Less known in their original form are Printemps, originally for wordless female chorus and orchestra, heard here in a Büsser arrangement without chorus, and En blanc et noir, a two-piano work written during wartime (1915) and here heard as orchestrated by Robin Holloway. All the orchestral arrangements on this CD are quite worthy, and respectful of Debussy’s sonic world. Lovers of this composer’s music will find much to enjoy in this latest well-played and sensitively interpreted disc from the Naxos Debussy series.

(++++) KID COMICS, CONTINUED

Cut! “Baby Blues” Scrapbook 27. By Rick Kirkman & Jerry Scott. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

Babymouse #14: Mad Scientist. By Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm. Random House. $6.99.

Squish No. 1: Super Amoeba. By Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm. Random House. $6.99.

     The consistency of Baby Blues is a wonderful thing. Through more than two dozen “Scrapbook” collections, a pile of larger-size “Treasury” books and a couple of gift-book volumes, artist Rick Kirkman and writer Jerry Scott have kept this family strip fresh, funny and, from time to time, genuinely insightful. All those qualities are on display in Cut! – whose title refers not to anything with a sharp edge but to Zoe’s filming of one of Hammie’s outlandish extreme stunts, which has come to an ignominious end. The stunts may end, but the amusement continues here, as when Wanda reflects every mom’s occasional thoughts as she bemoans her baby daughter’s nap time: “Sigh. I wish Wren would wake up,” and then, just minutes later, finds herself thinking, “Sigh. I wish I had some time to myself.” Talk about being reflective of real life – but amusingly so. Wren is as prominent in this collection as her older siblings, at one point crawling over to Hammie after Zoe writes on her belly, “My brother is a dope,” and at another learning sign language, which Zoe interprets during a meal as indicating that “the chicken is tough, and the applesauce is grainy.” For his part, Hammie has a somewhat different relationship with food, imagining himself (in one especially hilariously drawn Sunday strip) as a superhero who “could turn invisible, fly, and one of my fists was a frozen yogurt dispenser – a frozen yogurt dispenser that also fires lasers!” As for father Darryl, he is at his best, or worst, when he is a punch line, as when Zoe comes into her parents’ bedroom to announce that she is scared because “I had a dream where I woke up in a room with some crazy-haired, squinty-eyed, weird-smelling thing,” and half-asleep Wanda tells her, “That’s not a dream, it’s marriage” (and we see barely awake Darryl at the side of the panel grunting, “Huh?”). Wanda gets some of the best lines in this particular book, as when she can’t stop talking to Darryl in rhyme after “Dr. Seuss overload,” ending this particular strip by saying, “Yes, reading is fine! Do we have any wine?” Parents who don’t laugh out loud at that (it’s funny even if you’re a non-drinker, so lighten up, okay?) may prefer Hammie and Wren wrapped in toilet paper and behaving like mummies, or the babysitter with an agent, or Hammie and Zoe competing in “counter-tattling.” Baby Blues is a strip that repeatedly makes parents feel as if Kirkman and Scott are plugged directly into real families’ lives that just happen to be funnier than one’s own family’s life.

     There’s nothing realistic, or intended as realistic, about the Babymouse series, but it too has its own sense of charming consistency – although not at quite as high a level. The sister-and-brother team of Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm manages, with the 14^th Babymouse entry, to create a spinoff series called Squish, featuring an amoeba (created by Babymouse and fond of cupcakes) whose baseball cap makes it obvious that his adventures are shamelessly pitched at boys (while Babymouse’s are and have always been more girl-oriented). Both these books get (+++) ratings: Mad Scientist is a little too focused on creating Squish and, as a result, has a less intricate and amusing plot than some other Babymouse books, while the first Squish entry (which features green tint rather than the pink of the Babymouse series) is a touch too silly and formulaic, with little to distinguish Squish as a central character. Babymouse, after all, has her daydreams and her messy whiskers – in Mad Scientist, the daydreams include several involving cupcakes and one with a “Star Trek” basis, while the whiskers become the subject of a humiliating scientific experiment by Babymouse’s enemy, Felicia Furrypaws. Squish, aside from his cap, has only the standardized dad (an amoeba wearing a tie), a mooching buddy named Pod, and a scatterbrained friend named Peggy – plus bad guy Lynwood, who isn’t much of a counterweight to Squish’s goodness (he tends to disgorge what he ingests). Even the narrator, a ubiquitous force in the Babymouse books, hasn’t quite found his groove in the Squish series. Still, there are enough amusing elements in Mad Scientist to keep existing Babymouse fans happy, and Super Amoeba has sufficient potential to indicate that, even without legs, Squish may yet hit his stride.

(++++) DEEDS DOGS DO

Charlie the Ranch Dog. By Ree Drummond. Illustrated by Diane deGroat. Harper. $16.99.

Racing in the Rain: My Life as a Dog. By Garth Stein. Harper. $6.99.

Dude: Fun with Dude and Betty. By Lisa Pliscou. Illustrated by Tom Dunne. Harper. $14.99.

     Canine adventures happen in all sorts of settings, and are written for readers at many levels. Charlie the Ranch Dog, the first children’s book by cookbook and memoir author Ree Drummond, is a slight and amusing story for kids ages 4-8, with illustrations in the recognizable style of Diane deGroat, best known for her books about Gilbert the possum. Charlie narrates this book without realizing that he is telling tales on himself while thinking he is describing what life is like for the working dogs on a ranch. Charlie, you see, is a bit of a boaster, and he doesn’t really do all that much work – a lot more is done by his best friend, Suzie, a younger dog who is considerably spryer. Charlie mostly likes to take naps, while Suzie enthusiastically runs, digs and jumps (for Charlie, “the old legs just don’t work that way”). Charlie talks about everyday ranch life – keeping the cow out of the yard, chasing critters away from the porch steps, helping at the vegetable garden, going along for the cattle roundup and fence repairs, and more. He doesn’t actually do much of what he discusses, though. Indeed, the accurate descriptions, abetted by deGroat’s pleasant pictures, are also a tale of the misadventures that Charlie, who lacks self-awareness, has all day. He claims to be “known for my expert fishing skills,” for example, but he is the one who ends up in the water with a frog on his head, while Suzie looks on with amusement. Charlie does have something to contribute, though, and earns his keep when he finds himself alone at home as some wayward cows wander into the garden. Pleasantly enough, the book ends with a lasagna recipe – which includes a picture of Charlie looking as if he is about to snap up his (or someone else’s) portion.

     Dogs are common on ranches, but not on the auto-racing circuit. That, however, is where Enzo’s life is focused in Racing in the Rain, an adaptation for readers ages 8-12 of Garth Stein’s adult novel, The Art of Racing in the Rain. This book is more for racing fans than for dog lovers, and it tugs at the heartstrings a little too firmly and transparently; it nevertheless gets a (+++) rating, because it offers a moving story with an uplifting (if scarcely unusual) moral about reaching for what you want and never giving up in your quest for it. The tale is about race driver Denny, his daughter Zoë, and of course Enzo, and the way they all learn about the craft of auto racing, its difficulties, setbacks and triumphs. Enzo narrates the book, a common enough device but one that is rather improbable here, because the arrangement becomes creaky at crisis points: “Oh, how I wished I could speak. How I wished for thumbs. I could have grabbed his shirt collar. I could have pulled him close to me and I could have said to him, ‘This is just a crisis. A flash! You are the one who taught me to never give up.’ …But I couldn’t say that. I could only look at him.” Enzo has poetic realizations that are on the verge of being unintentionally funny: “The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. …Then I knew it wasn’t Denny who was signing. It was the zebra!” Old and hobbled, Enzo nevertheless manages to save the day when things seem darkest, and if the eventual heartwarming/heartbreaking conclusion of the book is scarcely unexpected, it is certainly designed for maximum emotional impact.

     Pretty much at the other of the emotional scale is Dude: Fun with Dude and Betty, officially for all ages but likely of most interest for kids in the 4-8 age range. The dog here, Bud, is “a most excellent dog” who goes along with human friends Dude and Betty in some very mild surfing adventures. The main purpose of Lisa Pliscou’s (+++) book is to teach surf-speak: soak up rays, surfer stomp, stokaboka, gnarly, scopes out, wipes out, righteous, non-bogus and other terms appear throughout the book and in the glossary at the end. Without those terms, there would really be no book at all, since there is barely any story: Bud, Dude and Betty are introduced, go to the beach, surf and sunbathe and snack, and – well, that’s it. The slightest hint of conflict is a “gnarly scene” in which Dude’s parents say he should clean his room and do his homework, but instead “it is time to bail” and he, Betty and Bud head for the waves again. Bud actually has more character than Dude and Betty, and often more expressiveness in Tom Dunne’s drawings – as when Dude runs out of snack money while Bud is noticeably hungry. This thin book’s very thin premise may be fun for beginning readers interested in surfing, but there is not much in it for anyone else.

(++++) ADVENTURES THAT TWIST AND TURN

Heck Series No. 4: Fibble—The Fourth Circle of Heck. By Dale E. Basye. Illustrations by Bob Dob. Random House. $16.99.

Troubletwisters, Book One. By Garth Nix and Sean Williams. Scholastic. $16.99.

The Last Dragon Chronicles, Book 6: Fire World. By Chris d’Lacey. Orchard Books/Scholastic. $18.99.

The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel V: The Warlock. By Michael Scott. Delacorte Press. $18.99.

     Sometimes it takes a bit of a real-world connection to bring out the very best in a fantasy series. Not that Dale E. Basye hasn’t come up with twisted elements of reality throughout the Heck Series – his puns and satires of everything from school to shopping malls are legion. But in Fibble, Basye seems really to have hit his stride, because this weird book is largely based on the fallacies and foibles of advertising – and Basye is, among other things, an advertising copywriter. So when he has twins Marlo and Milton Fauster (whose souls are in other’s bodies as this book opens, for reasons sort of explained at the end of the previous book, Blimpo, although in truth not made particularly clear there) in an ad-venture (“ad-venture,” get it?) like this one, Basye gets to satirize something he knows especially well. It is worthwhile to get past (or revel in) Basye’s usual overdoneness of plot and character here: the evil machinations of P.T. Barnum, who wears burning pants and runs Heck’s circus for liars (and several of whose real-world exhibits, including Tom Thumb and the “Feejee Mermaid,” appear in the book); the Iron John-style teaching of how to be misleading, led by three American Presidents (Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and Richard Nixon, although why he chooses the first two Basye never explains); Orson Welles as supervisor of a devilishly cunning plot (which is in fact plotted by the Devil) with the acronym T.H.E.E.N.D.; and so on. The meat of this book lies beyond the slapstick, beyond the wholly expected adjustment problems of a boy in a girl’s body and vice versa (let’s all smirk at the different ways boys and girls place their legs while sitting). It lies in Basye’s skewering of the advertising business, “the massaging of perception for fun and profit,” which he clearly knows very well indeed: “Advertising is about creating problems that aren’t real so that they can be solved by otherwise pointless products.” This sort of satire, though, is clearly for older readers (and any adults out there who get past the vomit jokes and the clothing made out of lice). A reference to Christopher Marlowe’s play about Doctor Faustus – which, when added to a nod toward the creator of Paradise Lost, gave Basye the names Marlo and Milton Fauster – is also for grownups, as is the mid-book introduction of Basye himself as a character being pushed by another character to write the books he is in fact writing (a bit of circularity that is fun to follow but can be dizzying). There is plenty for younger and less-thoughtful readers in Fibble, too, including “The Man Who Soldeth the World,” a devilish plan for which “the perfect crime requireth the perfect team,” and Principal of Darkness Bea “Elsa” Bubb and her “precious moopie lunkin chunkalunks” Cerberus, an especially nasty incarnation of the famed three-headed dog that guards the gates of h-e-double-hockey-sticks in other mythologies. Fibble is as packed with sillinesses, unsubtleties and internal inconsistencies as the three earlier Heck volumes, but it has enough genuinely pointed satire to balance the generalized raspberries of the previous volumes, making this book a cut above (or below) its predecessors. Even Bob Dob’s illustrations are less repetitious and more pointed here (although the pitchsporks carried by Heck’s demons look the same, which is to say pretty dull). Basye may finally be hitting on all cylinders on the road to Heck, which is clearly paved with bad intentions. Or at least very sarcastic ones.

     There is some amusement as well in Troubletwisters, but this start of a series about twins Jaide and Jack Shield is primarily a straightforward, well-written fantasy. As usual in such novels, young heroes who do not yet know their heroic nature get swept up into strange circumstances in which they have to grow up quickly (at least in some ways) and “find themselves” while also saving the world, or at least pieces of it. The setup here is the most intriguing part of the book: the twins start having trouble with weather (that is a twist), and then face a series of magical disasters (including the explosion of their house). Then they find themselves living with a mysterious woman called Grandma X (that name is a tad overdone, yes?), and the oddities increase at her house (talking cats, disappearing doors, that sort of thing). Garth Nix and Sean Williams keep the pace moving swiftly and the surprises appearing regularly, but the kernel of Troubletwisters is resoundingly familiar and is contained in Jack’s comment to Jaide in the midst of one strange happening: “‘We’ll think of something when we know more about it – her – everything!’” That is really the whole point of Troubletwisters and similar books: ongoing self-discovery and learning about peculiar happenings and the protagonists’ previously unsuspected powers and importance. The book gets a (+++) rating for style and pacing above the ordinary, and some interestingly offbeat elements; at bottom, though, it is a fairly typical fantasy adventure of the “what’s going on here?” type. Not that there is anything wrong with that – the approach is appealing to many preteen and young teenage readers.

     It is also the approach of The Last Dragon Chronicles, which take off in an entirely new direction in the series’ sixth book, Fire World. The previous books have focused on dragons and on the characters David Rain, Lucy and Zanna. Not so here – those characters disappeared at the climax of the previous book, Dark Fire, and Chris d’Lacey’s new novel opens somewhere readers have not visited before: a place called “Co:pern:ica.” There is no hint of how to pronounce those internal colons, which seem to permeate this world’s language (“ec:centric,” “de:constructed”); in fact, the odd spellings quickly become both cumbersome and tiresome, commingled as they are with words whose pronunciation is familiar but whose spelling is not (“katt”) and others whose meaning is clear even though the words themselves differ slightly from English ones (“librarium”). The stylistic affectations work against this (+++) book, but it does have many intriguing elements. Its focus is this world’s David, who is 12 years old, and who (like Jaide and Jack Shield and many other protagonists of similar books) does not quite fit in, and needs to discover who and what he really is and why he is important to his world and those who rule it (here called “the Higher”). David lives in the aforementioned librarium, to which he is sent because of some disturbing-to-authorities elements in his mental profile and his “imagineering” (a Disney term here co-opted for other purposes, perhaps unknowingly). This is a world where “honesty is beauty, and beauty is perfection. Perfection maintains the Grand Design.” But David, not surprisingly, sees things differently, believing that imperfection confers “character,” and this is his central differentiation from those around him. In the main part of the plot, David and his friend Rosanna, who also lives in the librarium and whose name not coincidentally reflects that of Zanna earlier in the series, are involved with firebirds that spend their time in the upper levels of the librarium. One firebird, it turns out, has been taken over by the evil Ix. David and Rosanna need to work with the remaining firebirds to save their world – and (here is the plot tie-in to earlier books) this involves calling across the universe to the dragons, of which the firebirds are mysteriously aware. The dragons are “something beyond our reality” for the inhabitants of Co:pern:ica, but are crucial to saving the planet; and of course the Ix miss their chance to get rid of David when (in typical villainous fashion) the chief evildoer says, “‘Let the boy work for us first. …When the moment comes, he will be no match for me.’” Fire World blends surprising elements with thoroughly familiar ones: existing fans of The Last Dragon Chronicles will enjoy the way this book opens up new vistas, but there is little here to draw new readers to the series.

     Nor is there anything especially gripping about The Warlock, the fifth book in Michael’s Scott’s six-part The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. This book also gets a (+++) rating, but it will be a must-have for fans who have followed the series from the beginning – because without it, the upcoming sixth book, The Enchantress, will not tie into the sequence properly. This is a very tied-together series, which is both a strength and a weakness. It is essentially a single lengthy story (some 2400 pages in all) that just happens to be broken up into six pieces. The piece called The Warlock uses a very old plot device: protagonists who are strong together are forced apart and kept that way. In this case, it means Sophie is on her own with Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel – who, however, are steadily weakening as dark forces close in on them. Josh, meanwhile, is involved with an element of the series that is one of Scott’s favorites: lots of characters from history, introduced pretty much willy-nilly and developed pretty much as Scott wishes (neither his Joan of Arc nor his Shakespeare could ever be confused with the historical figures). The bad guys are characters from history, too, and while Machiavelli works rather well because of the incessant plotting and ongoing chess game that is the complex plot, Billy the Kid – who was essentially a thug – does not fit comfortably into Scott’s attempts at subtlety. The series in general, and The Warlock in particular, are at one level a fantastic romp through and around San Francisco: in this book, for example, the release of monsters from Alcatraz is imminent. Stylistically, Scott remains far too fascinated with his ongoing incarnations of gods and monsters out of myth as well as people out of history. Consider this brief bit of dialogue, one among many: “Mars Ultor looked from Odin to Hel and then turned to the driver. ‘Am I still dreaming?’ ‘If you are, then this is a nightmare.’ The driver held out his hand, revealing his muscular forearms. A thick turquoise band encircled his wrist. ‘I’m Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak.’ He was dressed in worn jeans, old cowboy boots and a faded Grand Canyon T-shirt. ‘But you can call me Black Hawk. My master is Quetzalcoatl.’” The names spin dizzyingly about, but the parade of characters ends up adding little to the narrative other than a passing sense of exoticism (which was stronger in earlier books; it has worn somewhat thin by now). Still, fans of Scott’s style and approach will not be disappointed in The Warlock and will surely find that it whets their appetite for the series’ upcoming final volume.

(++++) TALES OF JOY AND SORROW

The Mommy Docs’ Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy and Birth. By Yvonne Bohn, M.D., Allison Hill, M.D., and Alane Park, M.D., with Melissa Jo Peltier. Da Capo. $15.95.

Pacific Air: How Fearless Flyboys, Peerless Aircraft, and Fast Flattops Conquered the Skies in the War on Japan. By David Sears. Da Capo. $27.50.

     Very, very few people are likely to have an equal interest in these two books about aspects of real-world life, one of which focuses on how life begins and the other of which looks at ways in which, for many, it ended. Both books are examples of highly targeted, well-written works with very specific audiences in mind, focusing closely on narrow matters and exploring them in considerable depth.

     The Mommy Docs’ Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy and Birth is the longer of the two, at nearly 600 pages, and although obviously dealing with targeted subject matter, is far wider in appeal. Not just another discussion of pregnancy and birth – there are plenty of those – this book has the huge advantage of presenting the views of three obstetricians who really have seen it all when it comes to this material…and are all mothers themselves, which means they have experienced in their own lives a great deal of what they write about. This is a highly appealing mixture, and the best part is that it is not vitiated by medical jargon: although the authors clearly know technical terminology and use it when necessary, they write for the most part with plainspokenness and ready accessibility. Furthermore, they tell tales on themselves, not just about themselves. Alane Park talks about the mistake she made with her first pregnancy by planning to work until a couple of days before she was scheduled for induced labor: her water broke early and “my planned two days off turned into a few short hours,” resulting in chaos and total exhaustion for a time. Yvonne Bohn shares a related story about intending to take all her available parental leave after giving birth, and even being set up to do gynecological surgery and deliver a lecture when she was 36 weeks pregnant – when she went into preterm labor, found herself wholly unprepared , and ended up going over lecture notes the day after having her baby so someone else could give the talk. These humanizing anecdotes are coupled with stories of the doctors’ patients’ fears and concerns: one shy woman worries about all her erotic dreams during the first trimester, then comes to see that this is a much better symptom of hormonal changes than morning sickness. There are also self-revelatory passages, as when Allison Hill talks about the time she was “doubled over, couldn’t walk, and felt nauseous” because of the severity of ligament pain, after which “I finally understood what my patients had been complaining about for all these years.” There are photos here of ultrasounds, stretch marks and much more; tables showing fetal development; lists of what to bring to the hospital; an excellent discussion of “the fourth trimester,” the often-neglected first three months after a baby’s birth; a diagram of how to swaddle an infant; and chapters on high-risk pregnancies and “Things You Never Expect When You’re Expecting,” such as relationship problems, siblings’ adjustment difficulties and work-related issues. Actually, some of those matters can be expected, or at least anticipated, but never mind; that is a mere detail. The Mommy Docs’ Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy and Birth is so filled with medically sound advice, intelligently presented case histories, extensive debunking of myths, and all-around sensible writing, that the book itself becomes a thing you might not expect while expecting: a super-clear, super-helpful, easy-to-read and easy-to-use guide that beautifully balances the medical with the personal.

     Designed for a much narrower audience and oriented as strongly to men as the book by the “Mommy Docs” is to women, Pacific Air is a well-researched, well-written work of very limited appeal. It is the story of aerial combat in the Pacific during World War II – one of an ever-increasing number of books about heroism during that war, presumably intended to tap into baby boomers’ nostalgia for a war experienced by their parents, whose numbers are now decreasing steadily. Vietnam veteran and former Navy officer David Sears includes some unusual elements in the book, notably a focus on the engineering prowess that led to production of planes that eventually turned the tide against a Japanese air force that had been far superior to that of the United States until 1944. The different engineering of such planes as the TBF Avenger, F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat is well explained and will surely be of interest to the subset of readers fascinated by aeronautical design and how it affects combat success. Other readers will be more drawn to the book’s conventional elements, including, for one thing, an engagement-by-engagement buildup to the eventual climax of the Battle of the Philippine Sea; and, for another, the multiple profiles of pilots: Jimmie Thach, inventor of a specific aerial combat maneuver; Dave McCampbell, famous for having 34 aerial kills; Navy ace Butch O’Hare; Alex Vraciu, whose exploits – including six aerial kills during a single battle – inspired Sears to write the book; and others. One of those “others” is an unusual and unusually interesting choice: Imperial Japanese Navy pilot Saburo Sakai, whose story provides great insight into Japan’s approach to aerial combat and also helps show the eventual weaknesses of Imperial Japan – Sakai, after being seriously wounded and losing the sight in one eye, was nevertheless forced to return to combat because Japan at that point was in such desperate need of skilled pilots. Packed with far more detail than its 372-page length would suggest, Pacific Air is written in a long series of very short sections within its five parts and 20 chapters – the result being constantly shifting perspectives that illuminate many elements of the air war in the Pacific but that also produce a choppy narrative. The writing is straightforward and has little artistry, being designed to appeal to lovers of military lingo: “At 4:18 p.m. the bogey reappeared on Enterprise’s radar, still bearing 320 degrees but much closer. ‘Many bogeys ahead,’ Lieutenant Henry A. ‘Ham’ Rowe, Big E’s FDO, radioed a VF-6 CAP section lead [sic] by thirty-seven-year-old Lieutenant (junior grade) Harold E. Rutherford. ‘Get up high.’” The book gets a (+++) rating for its meticulous research, attention to engineering as well as combat matters, and interesting focus on Japanese as well as U.S. pilots, but it is strictly for an extremely limited group of readers.

(+++) PASSING THE TCHAIKOVSKY BATON

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5; Francesca da Rimini. Russian National Orchestra conducted by Mikhail Pletnev. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD)

Tchaikovsky: Francesca da Rimini; Serenade for Strings; Marche Slave. USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky. Apex. $6.99.

     In the last days of the Soviet Union, 1990-91, state-sponsored orchestras continued their tradition of making high-quality music in concert and recordings, even as entrepreneurial musicians began looking for ways to go beyond the old Soviet system and create music in new and less constricted ways. Gennadi Rozhdestvensky was a world-class conductor who flourished under the old system; Mikhail Pletnev was a harbinger of the new. Pletnev founded the Russian National Orchestra, a non-state organization, in 1990; Rozhdestvensky was still conducting such ensembles as the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra in 1991. These two releases of Tchaikovsky’s music are a microcosm of what has changed – and what has not – in two decades of post-Soviet music-making.

     When Pletnev succeeds in Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, he succeeds brilliantly: No. 6, his orchestra’s first recording, was amazingly good, and the more recent No. 4 was almost at the same level. But when Pletnev fails, he does so on just as large a scale – and his Tchaikovsky Fifth is, not to mince words, a failure. It is an odd failure, a throwback to the days when the conductor mattered more than the composer, when Tchaikovsky’s deep emotionalism (over-emotionalism to some) invited swooning on the podium and a level of rubato that, far from bringing out the inner workings and feelings of the music, inevitably imposed the conductor’s feelings on it, and on the audience. This is simply unforgivable today, even when the conductor is Pletnev. His Tchaikovsky Fifth is well-nigh incoherent, the tempos varying so much in the first and final movements that listeners will be whipsawed rather than pulled along through this most carefully structured of Tchaikovsky’s symphonic works. The finale is little short of a disaster, slowing down so much that the rhythm flags, then speeding up to such a point that the beauties and the musical lines themselves are simply lost. And the coda, which always hangs uneasily onto this otherwise profound symphony, is a mess, so perfunctory that it seems as if Pletnev had simply had enough of the symphony and wanted to get it over with. The superb playing of the Russian National Orchestra, which keeps up unerringly with all the conductor’s quirks, gains this performance a (++) rating, but any listener expecting great things of Pletnev – who has done them before with Tchaikovsky’s symphonies – is going to be deeply disappointed with this inelegant and ill-considered interpretation. What saves the CD and gives it, barely, an overall (+++) rating is the performance of Tchaikovsky’s longest and most interesting symphonic poem, Francesca da Rimini. This rendition is everything that Pletnev’s reading of the symphony is not: carefully modulated, generally well-paced (although there is some untoward rubato here as well), highly dramatic in the musical depiction of the eternal winds of this circle of Hell, and equally highly emotive in the aural retelling of the story of doomed lovers Paolo and Francesca. The conclusion of the work – as the horns announce the arrival of Francesca’s husband, which leads to the lovers’ death, and then the sound of the winds creeps slowly in until the vortex bursts forth in all its fury once again – is particularly well done, combining intense drama with a genuine sense of creepiness. What a shame that Pletnev uses his tremendous abilities so well here while misusing them to such an extent in the symphony.

     In contrast to Pletnev’s, the re-release of Rozhdestvensky’s 1991 Francesca is reasonably well played, has reasonably good sound, and comes across as more than a little stodgy. Rozhdestvensky makes the slow opening very slow indeed, and the orchestra’s somewhat muddy textures do not help matters. Rozhdestvensky dwells on the dissonances and forward-looking harmonies of this tone poem to good effect, but he never really produces a sense of drama – the swirling winds have little bite. The central section portraying the love story is very well done, with especially beautiful clarinet playing. But the music as a whole never soars: the performance is more than passable, but not much more. The same is true of the Serenade for Strings, which is one of Tchaikovsky’s sunniest scores but here sounds partly cloudy. Rozhdestvensky emphasizes the slow portions of the work with very slow tempos and great gouts of sound: the introductions to the first and final movements are far more portentous than necessary in this generally light and pleasant work, and the Élégie is made overly weighty as well. This is too bad, because when Rozhdestvensky lets up a bit in the second-movement Walzer and the second theme of the finale, the proportions of the whole work seem better – the conductor was clearly capable of a light touch, but chose not to use much of one in this performance. The Marche Slave, however, is excellent, with a real snap to the main section and a suitably triumphant (although somewhat-too-fast-for-marching) coda. For all the differences between the musical climates of Rozhdestvensky’s and Pletnev’s time, one thing these recordings make clear is the very strong sway that both conductors exert over their respective orchestras: the interpretations of both men are very personal ones.

(++++) HILARITIES

Pearls Blows Up: A “Pearls Before Swine” Treasury. By Stephan Pastis. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.

Drive! “Zits” Sketchbook 14. By Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

Big Nate: Boredom Buster. By Lincoln Peirce. Harper. $10.99.

     It’s one thing to be funny…well, actually, no, it’s not one thing. It’s a number of different things, as these books show. Stephan Pastis’ Pearls Before Swine is funny-snide-sarcastic, with its cast of misfit animal characters and its continual violation of traditional comic-strip conventions – for instance, by having Pastis himself as a recurring character, drawn as a sloppy, unfunny chain smoker who (in this book’s laugh-out-loud cover) is blown up, along with numerous other Pearls denizens, when the strip’s adorable little kitten (who stockpiles weapons of mass destruction) sets off a charge prominently labeled “T-N’T.” Pearls is also bad-art funny, with Pastis making repeated comments about how lousy his drawing is – thereby thumbing his nose at all those who think the pictures are what really matter in a comic strip. A small sampling of his comments from beneath the strips in this book: “There is a good way to draw water and a bad way. This is a worse way.” “The way you know that’s an antelope and not Goat is by looking at the dialogue bubble where the hyena calls him an antelope.” “This breaks a cardinal rule in Pearls: Never draw anything with wheels. Why? Because it comes out looking like that thing.” “I am the Martin Scorsese of the comics page but without the fame, money, or talent.” Pastis does have talent, though: he is very good at killing characters (the body count in Pearls is sky-high, as are some of the characters; at one point Pastis even kills himself off) and making weird animals that look vaguely like doodles (and in fact got started as doodles) into hysterically funny commentators on just about everything, including themselves. Pearls Blows Up is an oversize “Treasury” collection, which means everything in it has been published before (well, except for the nine pages of family photos at the end). The strips come from two smaller-size collections, 50,000,000 Pearls Fans Can’t Be Wrong and When Pigs Fly. But Pastis is insidiously clever (or maybe just plain insidious): the many comments he writes specifically for the “Treasury” collections of his work really do add something to the strips as originally published, so even people who already own the smaller-size books will likely want Pearls Blows Up as well – and if not for the remarks, then for the two inside covers (front and back) showing outtakes of the “exploding Pastis” scene used as part of the cover. If Pastis is crazy, he’s crazy like that proverbial fox.

     The sly snickers produced by Pearls are very different from the guffaws and snorts that accompany Zits, the outstanding being-a-teenager-or-raising-one strip from writer Jerry Scott and artist Jim Borgman. The 14^th Zits “Sketchbook” (which is actually the 18^th Zits book in this size, thanks to publishers’, writers’ and artists’ unending attempts – successful in the case of Zits – to wring ever more uses from available material) not only has now-16-year-old Jeremy Duncan going through one of the great rites of teenagerdom by getting his driver’s license, but also has him using it in typical Zits fashion: he doesn’t just get lost, he gets LOST, as in driving to the Eiffel Tower and Sydney Opera House, then returning to what he thinks is home – only to find a woman there speaking Russian and threatening him with a frying pan. Bad-driving jokes are easy and familiar, but Scott and Borgman make them new in Zits, and for that matter bring the same freshness to other elements of parent-teenager relationships. The Sunday strips are a particular joy in this regard, such as the one in which mother Connie changes costumes in every panel as she explains to Jeremy that she is his teacher, coach, disciplinarian and so on – but “I never nag” (in a panel showing her as a centaur). Then there is the strip in which Jeremy tries to explain to his father, Walt, some elements of image editing, and Walt is captured perfectly with that deer-in-the-headlights look – as a deer at night, on a road, caught in the headlights, with eyes wide and bewildered. Scott and Borgman have tremendously clever ways of showing just how teens and parents communicate – or, far more often, fail to do so. Connie nods so enthusiastically when Jeremy says they need to talk that her head falls off; and her mouth (saying “yabba yabba yabba”) separates from her body and follows Jeremy around as he tries to ignore it. Before Jeremy’s driving test, Walt tells him, “I hope you don’t screw this up too badly,” explaining that “when I can’t come up with ‘meaningful’ or ‘inspiring,’ I usually go with ‘obvious.’” For his part, Jeremy texts a smirk when he sees the clothes his father is wearing for yard work, and drives his mother to explode in a burst of fireworks by explaining that he has waited until the last instant to remind her about “the mandatory thing you have to attend if I want to graduate or something.” Also in this collection is Connie’s lament, “I’d be a better full-time mother if I had a part-time teenager,” showing her surrounded by just a few of all those teen-mom interactions. And Scott and Borgman do not forget Jeremy’s peers: Jeremy stuffs Pierce in his backpack to smuggle his detention-sentenced friend out of school, and Sara attempts to improve Jeremy’s kissing, because “every time we kiss I’m afraid you’ll swallow my lip.” Toss in a few “Love Isn’t” parodies (“offering her your toaster strudel after you’ve licked the frosting off”) and you have another heaping helping of Zits hilarity, still with plenty of frosting on top.

     Lincoln Peirce’s Big Nate is not quite a teenager yet – he’s in sixth grade – but it’s easy to see what a mass of hormones and overconfidence he is going to be in a short time. He’s actually there already, except for the hormones. Big Nate: Boredom Buster is the third book from Harper based on Nate’s adventures; and like the two earlier ones (Big Nate: In a Class by Himself and Big Nate Strikes Again), it combines cartoon strips with activities, commentary on his friends Francis and Teddy and his enemies Gina and Mrs. Godfrey, and much more. But unlike the two earlier hardcovers, it has no plot. That is not a criticism – the plotlessness is there by design. Boredom Buster is designed to keep readers engaged (that is, not bored) during detention, dull family events or pretty much anytime. There are tests about the strip and many samples of it, but much of the book simply uses Nate and other characters to introduce puzzles and games of all sorts: “Francis’s Fantastic Secret Alphabet,” “Poetry Slam Rhyme Time” (to which Nate contributes “Ode to a Cheez Doodle”), a place to draw yourself as a superhero and another in which to list superpowers and pick which you would most like to have, “Cosmic Cookies” containing fortunes that need to be decoded, a list you create of “Top 5 Things for After-School Fun,” even places to doodle. There are also “scrambles” to solve (find 20 kinds of pets or 22 words that are important in Nate’s world, for example), a place to list “your top 10 worst foods ever,” and speech bubbles to fill in to help Nate get revenge on his big sister, Ellen (among other things). One of the most amusing elements of Big Nate, the comic strip, is that Nate himself is a cartoonist, so we have a cartoonist drawing cartoons about a cartoonist, which means Nate’s cartoons (which are Peirce’s meta-cartoons) carry a lot of the narrative of the strip and are a big part of Boredom Buster as well. This book is only for existing Nate fans – it does introduce and even explain the strip’s various characters, but anyone not already familiar with Peirce’s work is unlikely to want to start with it here. But it is a clever expansion of the comic-strip-collection concept, and for those who already know Big Nate and enjoy his antics and infinite sense of self-importance, Big Nate: Boredom Buster will be a highly amusing way to…well, relieve boredom.

(++++) HOW SILLY CAN YOU GET?

The Underpants Zoo. By Brian Sendelbach. Orchard Books/Scholastic. $16.99.

No Dogs Allowed! By Anne Davis. Harper. $16.99.

Splish, Splash, Splat! By Rob Scotton. Harper. $16.99.

Monkey: A Trickster Tale from India. By Gerald McDermott. Harcourt. $16.99.

     Preschoolers and early readers will delight in these journeys into absurdity, whose authors have neatly captured the utter ridiculousness and even a little of the sweetness that will appeal to this age group. The Underpants Zoo has a single absurd premise: all the animals wear underpants, and Brian Sendelbach explains (in poetry, yet!) just which animal wears what sort of underwear and why. Thus, “Hippo’s have hearts, because she’s such a romantic. Elephant’s size is Extra-Jumbo Gigantic.” But the ridiculousness of the concept and words does not fully show how much fun this book offers. The pictures, featuring animals that are googly-eyed (and, in the case of Elephant, cross-eyed) add extra hilarity, and visual details provide even more fun. For example, the text says that Leopard prefers spots for his underwear, and the picture shows a spilled can of purple paint that Leopard has clearly used to paint those purple spots on his plain white briefs. Elephant’s picture includes a small bowl that says “Feed Me.” A tree in which five sloths doze peacefully in comfy white underwear bears a sign, “Shh! Sleeping Sloths.” Kangaroo wear boxers emblazoned with basketballs, and is seen in the midst of a vertical leap, tossing a ball through the hoop. And the Penguins – who “chill their underpants in the freezer” – have icicles hanging from their underwear; and one of their number is eating a purple ice pop. This is Sendelbach’s first picture book – he is a cartoonist and illustrator – and he certainly seems to have the right sort of immature mind to do more for the same age group.

     No Dogs Allowed! is also by someone who is not best known as an author: Anne Davis runs a greeting-card company featuring dogs and cats. But Davis has done a book before: Bud and Gabby, about two feline friends with different personalities. The two return in No Dogs Allowed! – in which a third character, a dog named Cookie, invades their personal space. Gabby, the smaller, black-and-white, lighter-hearted cat, likes having Cookie around, and shares cheese and reading time with the stray pup. But orange-striped Bud, who narrates the book, is not happy that the cats’ twosome has become a threesome, and draws a sign that emphatically declares, “NO DOGS!” – with a picture of Cookie on it. So Cookie, her eyes downcast, leaves, and the two cats play happily together again – until a big rainstorm hits, Gabby gets worried about Cookie, and Bud confesses to being concerned as well. So the two cats go looking for the dog – after Bud amusingly wrestles with an umbrella and Gabby manages to get a flashlight going – and find the pup “all shivery and cold and alone” under a neighbor’s porch. Bud takes charge of getting everyone home under the umbrella, and the two cat friends warm Cookie up and feed her so she is comfortable and doesn’t catch cold. By the end of the book, the unlikely duo has become an unlikely trio, and the message of friendship has resounded loudly, clearly and amusingly.

     Friendship between unlikely felines is also at the core of the latest book about Splat the Cat – the fifth in Rob Scotton’s series about a feline with wiry fur and huge, bulging eyes. Splat’s problems this time are dual: water and Spike. Splat’s mom has set up a playdate with Spike, who always makes fun of Splat, eats his candy fish and breaks his toys. Furthermore, today is the day Splat’s class – which includes Spike – will be starting swimming lessons. Could the day get any worse? Well, yes, as it turns out. Mrs. Wimpydimple announces that swimming lessons will begin, and the whole class goes silent – except for Plank, who cheers. But he’s weird. Anyway, something strange happens with the lessons (after Spike teases Splat, who does not have a swimsuit): both Spike and Splat turn out to consider water “scary and wet,” and both complain that “it makes us soggy.” The realization that he and Spike have something in common helps Splat come up with a way to help Spike get into the water – and then get in himself. And of course they discover that water, although it is indeed wet, isn’t so bad after all. And they even enjoy their playdate, where Spike breaks only one of Splat’s toys – but helps make up for his clumsiness with a particularly appropriate present. The message here, told and shown amusingly, is that friendship can be built on some mighty unlikely foundations.

     There is, however, no friendship at all between Crocodile and the title character in Monkey, the sixth and final volume of trickster tales retold and very well illustrated by Gerald McDermott. This story from India is a traditional brains-vs.-brawn tale, in which Monkey outwits hungry Crocodile not once but twice. First, Crocodile tricks Monkey into riding on Crocodile’s back to an island where sweet mangoes grow – but Monkey tricks Crocodile into returning him safely to dry land. Then Crocodile pretends to be a stone, to catch Monkey crossing the water, but again Monkey outwits his hungry enemy. Trickster tales like this one have a certain rhythm and familiarity all over the world – Monkey will remind readers familiar with Br’er Rabbit of some of that wily character’s adventures – but the stories are ever-new in their celebration of cleverness at the expense of brute force, and in the amusing way authors such as McDermott retell them. The language here is simple and straightforward, with some of the cadence of the oral traditions from which trickster tales spring. And McDermott’s illustrations, collages made from cut and torn paper and sometimes turned furry by a special technique, are gems, neatly capturing everything from Monkey’s joyful (and sometimes bemused) expressions to Crocodile’s very prominent and protruding teeth. Like other tricksters, Monkey is a loner; like other trickster tales, Monkey ends with a sort-of explanation for the real-world circumstance of crocodiles lying low in the water, waiting to grab any monkey foolish enough to come too close. But the elements of Monkey that it shares with similar stories are less important in McDermott’s book than the delights of the story itself – and the sillinesses and absurdities through which the clever title character repeatedly bests his dangerous and far stronger foe.

(++++) WORRIES AND WONDERS OF ANIMALS

Rescuing Rover: Saving America’s Dogs. By Raymond Bial. Houghton Mifflin. $16.99.

Friends: True Stories of Extraordinary Animal Friendships. By Catherine Thimmesh. Houghton Mifflin. $16.99.

     There are few stories more heartrending than tales of lost, abandoned, abused and mistreated dogs and puppies: human-dog interaction has existed for so long that we feel a kinship with this very different species that produces tremendous empathy when a canine suffers. So Rescuing Rover, despite its uplifting title and generally positive outlook, will be a difficult book for young people (and their parents) to read. But it is an important one, too, because Raymond Bial – himself the owner of four dogs and a cat described as an “honorary dog” – balances historical information on animal rescues with material about the great need for these rescues today, including clear explanations of how any reader can participate in this tremendously important process by becoming an adopter. Of course, to discuss adoption and explain why it matters so much, Bial has to explain how (if not why) some people so often mistreat dogs, and in what poor condition pups are often brought to shelters and foster homes. Sensitive to readers’ likely aversion to too much detail about what can and does happen to dogs, Bial avoids highly graphic descriptions of seriously malnourished and abused animals, and there are no photos here of the truly horrible shape in which some barely alive dogs make it to a rescue center, if they are lucky. But what Bial does show is upsetting enough, such as a picture of the filthy, stacked-high cages of a puppy mill, most of which contain one or more adorable, sad-eyed pups. On the facing page, a closeup of one puppy-mill dog is enough to make a sensitive reader want to adopt every single one of them. Bial does explain how puppy mills came to be big business after World War II, “when the United States Department of Agriculture encouraged farmers to raise purebred puppies for profit” in a classic case of government overreaching with severe, negative unintended consequences. He explains how to fight the proliferation of these puppy mills – which, unfortunately, are largely supported by pet stores, to which they generally sell their animals, and by Web sites that may look good but that sell malnourished and mistreated dogs that are dressed up to look good, if only temporarily, for purchase. On a much more positive note, Bial shows behind-the-scenes photos of animal rescuers at work, explains just how much work organizations such as the ASPCA and Humane Society must do, and offers plenty of pictures of staff and volunteers alike caring for, medicating, feeding and playing with the animals that they will offer to “forever” homes. Old photos of the ASPCA headquarters in New York City, of hounds bred specifically to hunt, and of other canine-human history enliven the book, while explanations of how shelters work (and why they are called “pounds”) provide an interesting historical and modern-day perspective. Information on how the adoption process works will be especially helpful to families that, after reading this book, decide to do their part to help rescue a dog by adopting one as a companion. Hopefully Rescuing Rover will save many dogs’ lives – our longtime companions deserve no less.

     Companionship of another and more surprising sort is the basis of Friends, in which Catherine Thimmesh briefly recounts stories of unlikely animal pairings – some brief, some long-lasting. The topic is naturally attractive and the pictures, by a wide variety of photographers, are excellent; but the book’s structure does not quite work, so it gets a (+++) rating. Simply looking at the photos will give anyone a smile and a sense of being uplifted: a tiny macaque gently stroking the back of a pigeon, a Vietnamese miniature pig and Asian camel nuzzling each other over a fence, a giraffe and ostrich putting their heads together, a polar bear sprawled on its back to play with (rather than eat) a nearby sled dog. Structurally, though, the book seems not quite sure what it wants to be. Part of each page explains what the photos show, and that portion of the text is a delight. But above the explanatory material, in larger type, some not-very-good poetry about friendship makes the book seem like a larger-size version of those little “friendship gift books” and their treacly sentiments: “No matter if spotted or dot-less and white, a friend gives protection through day and through night.” Furthermore, Thimmesh offers some questionable characterizations of animals (e.g., calling a frog’s skin “craggy”) and makes an occasional error (an Anatolian shepherd dog is described twice as “Antolian”). It is, however, easy to overlook these flaws by simply focusing on the sheer visual impact of Friends. Kids and parents alike will delight in seeing a tawny owl perched atop a basset hound, a mouse riding on a frog, an Asiatic bear protecting a stray cat, and a baby orangutan hugging a tiger cub – among other heartwarming and thoroughly endearing scenes that, surprisingly, actually occurred not only in wildlife sanctuaries but also, in some cases, in the wild itself. Certain animal interactions, whether or not the human word “friendship” really applies to them, can clearly be amazing things.

(+++) MIDDLE-SCHOOLERS MOVE ON

The Crepe Makers’ Bond. By Julie Crabtree. Milkweed Editions. $16.95.

A Million Miles from Boston. By Karen Day. Wendy Lamb Books. $15.99.

     A book whose plot is incidental to the recipes offered throughout its pages, The Crepe Makers’ Bond is a sequel to Julie Crabtree’s Discovering Pig Magic, which introduced Best Friends Forever Ariel, Nicki and M. The plot, in the new book as in the earlier one, hinges on Ariel’s cooking, which she does when feeling frustrated; and that means the plot has to make her frustrated frequently; and that is just what the plot does. Among the frustrations this time are the impending end of middle school; M’s mother’s plan to move out of the Bay Area, which will separate the BFFs and will be, like, totally not acceptable; and the girls’ discovery that as much as they care for each other, living with each other (when M moves in with Ariel) creates stresses beyond anything any of them expected – forcing them all to confront their inner feelings and look at the coming changes in their lives. This girls-grow-up plot is so unoriginal as to be hackneyed, but Crabtree’s way of structuring it around food – and including multiple recipes within the body of the book, not in an appendix – lends The Crepe Makers’ Bond some extra helpings of style. “Shaky Ground Stuffed Wontons with Peanut Sauce,” “Too Cool for School Cucumber Salad,” “Guilty Daughter Baked Brie,” “Friendship Bread” and many other recipes permeate the pages – 24 in all, which means one per chapter or about one every 10 pages. The plot meanders pleasantly enough among the foods, with Ariel narrating such adventures as M’s sudden desire to act in an advertising spot to be created by Ariel’s Dad and based on The Sopranos: “Carmela will discover a locked, suspicious-looking case of what she imagines as contraband. Like guns or drugs or something. She’ll use actual dialogue from an episode to go off on Tony for bringing his dangerous stuff into the house with the kids. …Tony (Dad) will dramatically throw open the chest to reveal piles of hand-crafted chocolates. They will all gasp and look at Tony in horror as the picture fades out and the screen says, ‘Island Sweets. So Good They Should Be Illegal.’” Now, the fictional girls haven’t actually been allowed to watch The Sopranos, and it is a fair bet than many intended readers never saw the show either – and may not remember details of characterization if they did see it – but none of that really matters, since the plot points here are all about typical middle-school-girl issues of friendship, bonding and looking ahead in life. And there is plenty of that, including a “6 Months Later” epilogue, in which an enforced separation ends and a whole new set of life adventures is poised to begin. The writing and plotting are unerringly sentimental, and for that very reason should appeal to many middle-school girls – provided they have as strong an interest in food as in camaraderie.

     Relationship issues are even more complex in A Million Miles from Boston, whose narrator, Lucy, is having tremendous trouble coping with change. The biggest change in her life came before the book opens, with her mother’s death when Lucy was six years old. Since then, Lucy has sought stability through summertime visits to Pierson Point, Maine, with her father and brother. The area is filled with reminders of Lucy’s mother, providing Lucy with anchors in her life. But the summer of this book is the one where the rock of stability starts to fracture. Ian, a popular and loud boy from back home in Boston, comes to Pierson Point with his family, and he and Lucy are at loggerheads from the start (which, predictably, means Lucy will eventually discover that there are many good things about Ian – and that is just what she does learn). Even more upsetting to Lucy is “the PT,” as she calls the physical therapist who is her father’s girlfriend and who is going to be spending some weekends with her and her dad in Maine. Lucy predictably resists her father’s attempts to bring her and the PT closer together – but here too Lucy soon learns that the PT is no ogre and can even provide some helpful advice (about everything from Ian to pierced ears) that Lucy’s father cannot offer. The lessons of A Million Miles from Boston are thoroughly unexceptional and unexceptionable: that old wounds do heal, that new love can make the healing faster, that change is inevitable and is better embraced than resisted. Karen Day’s prose is straightforward and simple to read: “I jumped up. I couldn’t stand these feelings anymore.” The ease of reading the book and the forthright nature of its lessons will make it more suitable for readers on the younger end of the target age range of 8-12 than for older or more-mature ones. For those who do find the story resonant, including young readers coping with family loss, A Million Miles from Boston may come across as more profound than it really is – and may help some hurts heal, which can be more important for this age group than an offer of storytelling depth.