(++++) FAIRLY, TALES

The Woodcutter Sisters, Book II: Hero. By Alethea Kontis. Harcourt. $17.99.

The Adventures of Gremlin. By DuPre Jones. Drawings by Edward Gorey. Pomegranate. $17.95.

     Recent decades have brought a substantial upsurge in consideration and reconsideration of fairy tales as stories for adults – which is what they were for centuries, before Victorian and post-Victorian sanitization. From Freudian interpretations to feminist critiques, the venerable oral histories and stories of wonder have been viewed, re-viewed and done to a turn to serve a bewildering variety of academic and sociopolitical agendas. One result has been the creation of all-new fairy tales that incorporate, accessorize, mock, expand or otherwise play upon the old ones of Perrault and the Grimm brothers – thus falling into the same category as the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, who created his own tales so effectively that many people still believe he merely retold existing ones. One of the very best contemporary authors to march in Andersen’s footsteps is Alethea Kontis, who has figured out how to give fairy tales some thoroughly modern twists while remaining true to their essential undercurrents and making them appealing to preteen and young teenage readers – whose sophistication today is at a level quite different from that of their peers just a few decades ago. Kontis’ Enchanted was an absolutely remarkable mashup of multiple fairy tales, twisted into a Möbius strip of a story whose romantic, heroic, magical and hilarious elements were constantly tripping over each other, to the delight of absolutely everyone (even including most of the book’s characters). It is wonderful that Kontis has decided to turn Enchanted into merely (merely?) the first book in a series called The Woodcutter Sisters, because the second book, Hero, is every bit as…well…enchanting as the first. The “back story” here is of the seven children of a not-so-simple woodcutter and his wife, whose name is Seven because she is the seventh child of her parents, whose contact with the fey provides the underlying magical connection for many of the happenings. Seven herself, who speaks little because her words have the force of commands whether she wants them to or not, has seven children of her own, their appearances and powers largely (but not entirely!) drawn from the old rhyme that begins, “Monday’s child is fair of face.” Kontis complicates matters thoroughly as she draws on, distorts, remakes and occasionally eviscerates the entire fairy-tale world. Enchanted was primarily the story of Sunday; Hero is primarily the tale of Saturday – tall, statuesque, lacking any magical abilities (she thinks), wishing for adventure, good with a sword (especially one that contains a bit of magic), hotheaded, unromantic and something of a whirlwind (whose mouth tends to run away with her, leaving her glad that her words do not have the force of commands). However, any reader who thinks he or she can figure out where Kontis is going with this combination of characteristics has not reckoned with just how good a writer Kontis is. For every expected element of Hero (Saturday wishes for adventure and finds when she gets it that it is not at all what she wished for), there are numerous unexpected ones (she gets stuck in a mountain so high that Time cannot reach it, where two of her companions are a young, somewhat enchanted skirt-wearing nobleman and a chimera that is repeatedly transformed into stranger and stranger two-creature combinations because of the misfiring, dragon-fueled magic of a blind witch). Mistaken identities and not-understood consequences abound in Hero, and the book is so fast-paced in so many directions that it would be a chore to follow if all the directions were not so tremendously entertaining. Hero is every bit as good as Enchanted – a high compliment. And it not only enthralls from start to finish but also whets one’s appetite for the next installment of this utterly captivating series – a higher compliment still.

     There will be no followup to The Adventures of Gremlin, because both its creators have passed on – and that is a shame, because the oddly skewed and pun-filled world of this book is another fairy-tale delight, although admittedly a lesser one than that of Kontis’ novels. Note that the title does not refer to a gremlin: Gremlin is the name of the book’s protagonist, a little girl whose brother is named Zeppelin. And those are just mild examples of the peculiar sense of humor of DuPre Jones (1935-2012), whose sole published book is this one, which dates to 1966. The story is not quite as timeless as the best fairy tales – for example, 21^st-century readers will likely not understand why the two kingdoms in the story are called Etaoin and Shrdlu, because few people today know what a linotype is and what those letter sequences signify (suffice it to say that they are roughly equivalent to Qwertyuiop and Asdfghjkl on a computer keyboard, but are thankfully easier to try to pronounce). But today’s readers will certainly enjoy Jones’ playfulness with a wide variety of fairy-tale tropes, from the unhappy, adventure-seeking children of a woodcutter (who, unlike Kontis’, is absent from the story), to a thoroughly untraditional fairy godmother who must be summoned with words that Gremlin cannot quite seem to remember, to a wombat much given to lantern-swinging and uttering quotations in Latin. Non-Latin speakers, which would include almost everybody, may find this last element a trifle off-putting; in fact, several characters in the book utter phrases in that elegant language, all of them untranslated; and there are a couple of equally untranslated comments tossed about in French as well. Jones uses his own erudition perhaps a trifle too much as a club to beat his readers about the head. But on the other hand, he is fond of thoroughly bad puns, such as the “buoys and gulls” that the adventuring children find at the seashore and a game in which pirates throw rocks at seabirds as their captain exhorts them to “leave no tern unstoned.” The Adventures of Gremlin is not a book for children, although it has children as its central characters, and in this way it does bear a strong resemblance to traditional fairy tales. The appearance of a giant and a black knight fits the old models, too, as does the discovery – likely to no one’s surprise – that Gremlin is really the princess of Etaoin, abandoned as a baby and then discovered in a thoroughly biblical (specifically Mosaic) way. On the other hand, a bear licensed to eat traitors and a poet who writes really awful limericks and then attributes deep meaning to them are characters right out of Jones’ offbeat imagination. And speaking of offbeat, one truly timeless and completely delightful element of The Adventures of Gremlin is its visualization by Edward Gorey (1925-2000), whose illustrations of the major and minor characters are often laugh-out-loud hilarious (“the muse of mal de mer” and an incongruously dressed pirate leader with one wooden leg and one very hairy flesh-and-blood one are two of the latter). Gorey fans will relish his handling of the portrayal of the Red Cross Knight, whom Gremlin accompanies as he attempts to overcome the seven deadly sins and, falling one short, decides to go back and explore the ones he missed. The skeletal children who “go by the names of the maladies” they contract in a dungeon where Gremlin is held for a time give Gorey a chance to show the “walking cadaver” look with which he is often identified, but it is the touches of humor that are more noteworthy here: the constantly changing words on Zeppelin’s clothing, for example, and the peculiar creature that Gremlin imagines to be the secret admirer with whom she falls in love after he writes her a series of “singularly moving and simple” but decidedly illiterate letters. The Adventures of Gremlin is a pleasure and an oddity, perhaps not in that order – a small book that takes its fairy-tale heritage quite a bit less than seriously and, as a result, produces quite a bit more amusement than it otherwise might.

(++++) WONDERS, UPDATED

Cathedral. By David Macaulay. Houghton Mifflin. $19.99.

Castle. By David Macaulay. Houghton Mifflin. $19.99.

The Wreck of the Zephyr. By Chris Van Allsburg. Houghton Mifflin. $18.99.

Lives of the Pirates: Swashbucklers, Scoundrels (Neighbors Beware!). By Kathleen Krull. Illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt. Sandpiper. $8.99.

     Once gloriously oversized and filled with meticulous black-and-white drawings and architectural plans, David Macaulay’s Cathedral (1973) and Castle (1977) were thoroughly revised, updated and turned into more-ordinary, less-oversized, color-illustrated books in 2010. The new editions of those 2010 versions remain excellent forays into the analysis of fictional versions of some thoroughly remarkable buildings, and the color pictures throughout pull readers into the stories in a way that the more-distancing black-and-white originals never did. Still, something has been lost in this transformation, and parents who fondly remember the original editions of these fascinating books may not find the updatings fully successful – although 21^st-century children will likely find them more involving than the more-cerebral originals. In both books, Macaulay invents people and places and layers them atop real information about how two of the greatest medieval constructions were created. The books make an excellent pair, in part because the purposes of the structures were so different: the one to raise people’s eyes and thoughts heavenward, the other to intimidate them and keep them focused on their place within the secular power structure of the time. In our own fast-paced, impatient age, the dedication of the builders of cathedral and castle is difficult to imagine – especially in the case of the cathedral, whose construction took so long that none of those present at its start would be alive at its completion. Macaulay takes readers through every aspect of cathedral and castle building, from site selection and architectural planning to excavation, site preparation, quarrying and transportation of stone, to funding and labor arrangements, eventual completion of the structures, and what happened to them afterwards (Macaulay’s fictional cathedral, like many real ones, remains in use, while his fictional castle, also like many real ones, is deserted and dismantled for other building projects). By turning the stories of these magnificent 13^th-and-14^th-century buildings into tales of the people of that time as well, Macaulay humanizes the past for young readers in much the way that Barbara Tuchman did for adults in A Distant Mirror. Both Cathedral and Castle remain substantial achievements in their new form, even though Macaulay’s felt markers and colored pencils soften the buildings and characters alike, and the reduced size of the books somewhat reduces their impact as well.

     The full impact of Chris Van Allsburg’s The Wreck of the Zephyr, originally published in 1983, remains in the book’s new edition, the pastel illustrations here neatly fitting the magical story of a boy who wished to be the world’s greatest sailor and who learned to sail his craft through the air – until he overstepped his bounds and came crashing to Earth. The fairy-tale atmosphere is created by the opening words: “Once, while traveling along the seashore.” And it remains throughout the book, even as Van Allsburg produces remarkably lifelike and nautically accurate renditions of the Zephyr, the boy, and the other characters – none of whose faces is ever presented clearly, thus lending the story an otherworldliness and universality that it might otherwise lack. It is a tale of hubris and hamartia, like so many others, of pride going before a fall, of overreaching, of striving for that which one was not meant to know. But as such tales go, it is a gentle one, with sadness but not despair, injury but not death, and – thanks to Van Allsburg’s illustrative style – considerable beauty throughout. The ending will come as no surprise to readers, yet it produces thoughtfulness and a sense of wonder nevertheless, and The Wreck of the Zephyr becomes one of those tales of wonder that stay with the reader for the implications they carry beyond the story line itself.

     Ships and seafarers of a different and much rougher sort are the subject of Lives of the Pirates, a 2010 entry in the Lives of series that is now available in a somewhat-too-small paperback version. Kathleen Krull’s text is as effective as it invariably is in these books, but Kathryn Hewitt’s always-attractive illustrations – featuring oversized heads on detailed but disproportionately small bodies – look better in the book’s original, larger size. There are 20 or so pirates here – how you count them depends on several pirate dynasties and the clever inclusion of the wholly fictional Long John Silver, whose invention by Robert Louis Stevenson created many pirate myths that persist today. Krull and Hewitt portray their usual mixture of the well-known and virtually unknown here: Blackbeard, Captain Kidd and Sir Francis Drake on the one hand, Lady Mary Killigrew, Conajee Angria and Rachel Wall on the other. The book is filled with the usual carefully researched facts that make the Lives of series so consistently entertaining as well as informative. Several examples: “Captain Kidd may have been the only pirate who ever buried his treasure.” Sir Henry Morgan retired from piracy, spent years enjoying his wealth, and at his death left behind, among other things, 640 gallons of rum. William Dampier was a diarist and dedicated scientific observer. Black Bart may have been a woman in disguise. And so on. Lives of the Pirates reveals that many pirates had short careers – Blackbeard’s lasted only 15 months – and, indeed, short lives: Stede Bonnet and Rachel Wall were both hanged at 29, Blackbeard was killed at 38, Mary Read died in prison at 36, and Black Sam Bellamy died in a shipwreck at 28. This book’s full title is an amusing play on the series’ usual “And What the Neighbors Thought,” and the book itself fits the series very well indeed, with its mixture of clear fact, strong writing and informative or amusing sidelights (in sections at the end of each mini-biography labeled “Buried Treasure,” whether or not most pirates really buried their loot). The book would be better in a slightly larger size – and was in its original form – but there is still plenty of fascination to be had in this well-priced paperback version.

(+++) LIFE LEARNING

Why? Answers to Everyday Scientific Questions. By Joel Levy. Zest Books. $10.99.

How Not to Be a Dick: An Everyday Etiquette Guide. By Meghan Doherty. Zest Books. $16.99.

     Here are two books containing some things that everyone should know, but not everyone does. And not everyone knows whom to ask. So in Why? Answers to Everyday Scientific Questions, Joel Levy tackles, in very simple but not inaccurate form, questions about why water freezes and iron rusts, why the dinosaurs died out, why the sea is salty, why blood is red, why humans cannot eat grass or breathe under water, why Earth is round, why some objects float, why the sea appears blue and so does the sky, why we forget – a not-very-organized compendium of curiosity-based questions about this and that and the other thing. The book is in three somewhat overlapping sections called “Nature and the Earth,” “The Human Body and Mind,” and “Physics and Space,” although “Why does the earth quake?” is in the first section and “Why does the wind blow?” in the third. If you don’t mind the rather arbitrary assignment of questions and the likelihood that one you may wonder about may very well not be included (there are only 54 in the book), then Why? Answers to Everyday Scientific Questions will give you some straightforward information in a format that provides a very short answer immediately and a slightly longer explanation thereafter. “Why do tides ebb and flow? Tides ebb and flow because the tidal pull of the moon remains stationary while the earth continues to spin around.” “Why can’t we hear dog whistles? We can’t hear dog whistles because they are too high pitched for human ears.” “Why do we dream? Because the brain is such a complex organ, nobody has a conclusive explanation for why we dream.” That last example is an exception: by and large, Levy does explain what science knows about a variety of subjects, and his longer explanations – which are still short, often just a page or two – contain some interesting facts. The discussion of dreams, longer than most at five pages because it is inconclusive, says, for example, that most of us have at least four dreams per night, with each lasting five to 34 minutes. Not all the questions are phrased sufficiently carefully. For example, “Why are we running out of oil?” should really be more along the lines of, “Why are we running out of usable oil?” – since at some point the oil remaining underground or under water will be too expensive or impractical to recover, even though it will still be present. By and large, though, for a once-over-lightly look at a selection of common scientific questions, Levy’s book will provide some solid answers about which interested readers can get more information on their own.

     Meghan Doherty’s is another helpful but less-than-comprehensive guide to everyday life, its focus not on science but on sociology and interpersonal relationships. How Not to Be a Dick has an obvious straightforward meaning, as well as being a pun on the male sex organ, but there is more to it than that, because Doherty illustrates the book, from the cover right through the appendix (“A Typology of Dicks”), with a pair of preteen “Dick and Jane” characters who act out the various situations, hints and recommendations. This is sometimes effective and sometimes flat-out weird. Dick and Jane as office workers, with Jane contemplating an office romance using three different thought balloons while having the same expression in them all? Dick at a party, on the phone, telling his mom, “I’M WASTED!”? Then, on the same page, Dick riding a tricycle while carrying car keys? Jane at a bar, saying, “I would like something savory, my good man – and with gin!”? And telling Dick, “I am mad about so many things that I’m not articulating right now!”? The illustrations are what make How Not to Be a Dick unusual, but they often interfere with the reasonable and straightforward messages that Doherty provides. Those messages come in chapters about relationships, home, school, work and play, and in ones called “In Transit” and “On the Internet.” There’s nothing wrong, or unusual, in most of what Doherty says: “If you wouldn’t say something to someone’s face, don’t say it at all. That goes double for texting and tweeting.” “Take the opportunities that birthdays and other office parties provide to talk about things other than work or to pass along praise you just didn’t get a chance to share during your busy day.” “Don’t ride your bike with your headphones on. This makes it difficult to hear cars and pedestrians.” “If you find people have no idea what you’re talking about because your only topic of conversation is funny online videos, you’re on the internet too much.” “Before you start each workday, make sure you get plenty of sleep and wake up with enough time to get ready at your own speed.” There is nothing remotely revelatory here, and it is perhaps testimony to our modern social consciousness, or lack thereof, that a book filled with common sense (much of which comes down to “treat others as you want them to treat you”) should be construed as a guidebook. Still, the advice is sensible and clearly presented, despite the oddities occasioned by the Dick-and-Jane drawings, and someone looking for a plain-language etiquette guide to everyday life will find it here.

(++++) MOUSE POWER

Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Mouse. Windows 7/RT/8. Microsoft. $59.95.

Microsoft Touch Mouse. Windows 7/8. Microsoft. $79.95.

     Microsoft is often condemned these days for being insufficiently creative, for resting on past laurels and allowing its two cash cows – operating systems and the Office suite – to carry it along despite a lack of innovation. The criticism is overstated and unfair, as generalizations tend to be, but it has some validity when it comes to software, since Microsoft itself has admitted missing the widespread move away from desktops and laptops to portable devices for the consumption side of computing. Of course, the creative side of computing still requires the power and screen real estate of desktops and laptops, neither of which is going away anytime soon. Handheld devices just don’t have the necessary power or visual punch required for truly creative endeavors – but of course the vast majority of people are information consumers, not information creators.

     Still, when it comes to providing tools for the creative, Microsoft remains as strong as ever, and this is especially evident in its hardware division, not so much in the well-publicized if somewhat underwhelming Surface tablet but in such mundane but crucial equipment as the mouse. Despite all the talk about touchscreens being the wave of the future – talk accelerated when Windows 8 showed up as touchscreen-friendly but cumbersome for traditional, non-touchscreen use – the creators of content (without whom the consumers of content would have nothing to consume!) still work most efficiently and effectively with keyboard and mouse. And Microsoft still makes some of the best of both you can buy anywhere.

     Two new Microsoft mice show just how creative and forward-looking the company continues to be in this field. The Sculpt Ergonomic Mouse is a right-hand-only, tilt-wheel-equipped wireless unit with an unusual curved design that requires holding it somewhat differently from other mice – but that repays the not-very-steep learning curve by making it possible to use the mouse for an essentially unlimited period without developing carpal tunnel syndrome or any pain in the hand, wrist or forearm. The mouse is on the high side – part of what users must become accustomed to – with an angle that quickly comes to feel natural once you start using the device. Diagrams included with the mouse show how to hold it and how not to, and they make positioning simple. Both the mouse and its packaging are triumphs of modern industrial design: even the box in which it comes is elegant, and mercifully free of the horrendous plastic covering that so many products came in just a few short years ago. The included batteries and tiny wireless transceiver are packed inside the mouse itself, beneath an oval magnetic cover that, when replaced, is the unit’s bottom panel. It is a very simple and neat design.

     The black plastic of the thumb scoop in the Sculpt Ergonomic Mouse has a matte finish, while the rest of the upper portion of the mouse is shiny – lending the unit an unusual two-tone look while also making the thumb-rest area extra-comfortable. Atop the thumb rest is a Windows button that provides instant access to the Start screen for users running Win8; for Win7 users, the button brings up the Start menu. There is a helpful Back button as well, although its position takes some getting used to: it is initially difficult to click it without also depressing the right-click portion of the mouse. The tilt wheel, on the other hand, is quite easy to use, and it allows left, right, front and back scrolling. The distinctive shape of this mouse is somewhat reminiscent of the shape of trackballs, which never really caught on with most users: its height and rounded appearance make it more ball-like than traditional mice, and it is also larger than most. But the size difference is not significant in office work – although anyone who does a lot of traveling may want to leave this mouse behind and carry a smaller one on the road. Easy and pleasant to use and very easy to forget altogether once you adjust to the hand position and become accustomed to the feel of the unit, the Sculpt Ergonomic Mouse quickly becomes second nature and allows users to focus entirely on their work and creativity – which is just about ideal, especially for people who must spend long hours every day at a computer. This is a piece of hardware that becomes nearly transparent as you work with it: your focus shifts from it to the work you are doing, and it quickly becomes an extension of your hand, arm and mind rather than a tool whose needs intrude on your own.

     The user experience is quite different with the Touch Mouse. This is an ambidextrous unit and a sleek one, long and low – almost sports-car-like – and with a gently knobby finish unbroken by curves, buttons or wheels. It comes with a wireless transceiver plus a cable to be used with desktop units: the cable runs from the CPU to the desktop, so you can plug in the transceiver close to the mouse for optimal signal strength. Microsoft is really taking care of the creative, desktop-using community here.

     This mouse uses touch scrolling – which, like virtual keyboards on smartphones, may take some getting used to for some people, but which eventually becomes easy and natural-feeling. Nearly the entire surface of the Touch Mouse is touch-sensitive, putting it in line with Microsoft’s increasing commitment to touch as an input method. It is the input system that makes this mouse so distinctive – and the system changes based on which operating system you are using. The idea here is to use one, two or three fingers, plus your thumb, to control what the mouse does. In Win7, one finger (the index finger for right-handers) lets you scroll, flick or pan, and you can vary the speed of screen motion by varying your finger speed – and tap to stop whatever you have started. Using two fingers at the same time – index and middle for right-handers – gives you side-by-side windows or lets you maximize or minimize. The middle finger is positioned above a line that runs down the middle of the mouse, so knowing where to place it is easy. Using three fingers at once – index, middle and ring placed left to right for right-handers – shows all open windows at once, or reveals the desktop. And you use your thumb, placed at the left side of the mouse for right-handers, to go forward or back.

     These are not intuitive movements or uses; as a result, the learning curve for the Touch Mouse is steeper than for the Sculpt Ergonomic Mouse. However, as computing in general moves further toward a touch-based model, the Touch Mouse approach will seem increasingly natural, and those who already use touchscreen equipment will find themselves quickly becoming comfortable with this mouse. Users not yet familiar with such equipment will split into two groups, one finding the gestures and motions easy to learn and frequently more useful than traditional mouse moves and the other finding them unnatural and unwieldy.

     Before deciding which group you fit into, you should consider what operating system you are using and what you will be using in the near to medium term. The reason for this is that the Touch Mouse controls are different under Win8 from what they are in Win7. Microsoft has accomplished something really interesting here by adapting the same piece of hardware to two different operating systems. The functions are certainly related, but they are different enough so anyone moving from one OS to the other will notice immediately. Under Win8, a right-handed user positioning his or her fingers the same way as in Win7 will find that one finger is a content-management control: you slide the finger in any direction to scroll, and flick it in any direction to scroll more quickly. You manage apps using two fingers together: sliding your fingers left displays the Win8 Charms (search, share, devices and settings); sliding them right switches through all open apps; sliding forward and backward shows app commands. In Win8, using three fingers gives you zoom control: slide forward to zoom in and back to zoom out. And the thumb position is used to move through apps – sliding right to go forward and left to go back. Again, these are not intuitive moves and not ones comparable to those used with other mice – but anyone using Win8 will catch on very quickly, because the Touch Mouse fits naturally into the Win8 environment to a greater extent than it does into Win7. Therefore, this is a mouse whose utility is likely to increase for anyone who decides to upgrade to Win8 and later operating systems. Furthermore, the Touch Mouse, although not ergonomic in design, has a low, sculpted shape that makes it comfortable to use for long periods. It does not provide as much comfort when used for many hours as the Sculpt Ergonomic Mouse does – but on the other hand, it is lighter, smaller and easier to carry along when you travel, and that can be a significant advantage for those who work from multiple locations.

     There is, of course, no single mouse that is just right for all users – which is why Microsoft’s hardware division makes so many different ones in so many different designs. The creativity of industrial design in this part of Microsoft’s business has never diminished and shows no sign of doing so now. There have been some recent arguments that the mouse itself is on the way out as an input device – touchscreens and (perhaps) touch pens, it is argued, are the wave of the future. But just as the death of the PC has been vastly and inaccurately over-reported, so the disappearance of the mouse is unlikely to occur anytime soon. The media in general have a difficult time distinguishing between the needs of the creators of content and the desires of content consumers – of whom there are, of course, vastly more. Yes, content users are increasingly turning to handheld devices and away from computers, keyboards and mice; but if those consumers want to continue receiving new content and upgrades of the old, they are going to remain dependent on a host of creators for whom desktops, laptops, keyboards and mice have an ease of use that makes them the preferred tools of the trade. Microsoft may have been late in joining the rush to new forms of hardware and software for information consumers, but it serves the creative community well and has never stopped doing so. The Sculpt Ergonomic Mouse and Touch Mouse are two examples of how important Microsoft remains for those who traffic in creativity.

(++++) ORGANIC GROWTH

Vierne: Complete Organ Symphonies, Volume 2—Nos. 3 and 4. Hans-Eberhard Roß, organ. Audite. $19.99 (SACD).

     The excellent Audite survey of the six Organ Symphonies of Louis Vierne (1870-1937) here continues with a second volume as distinguished as the first. Vierne was a master organist – at Notre-Dame, no less – and his works are enormously challenging to play; full cycles of them are exceptionally difficult to bring off. Hans-Eberhard Roß is doing a splendid job with these large-scale, broadly conceived and emotionally complex pieces. Roß plays the recently completed Goll Organ of St. Martin, Memmingen, which is a particularly felicitous choice for these Vierne works: its fullness and power are nicely complemented by delicacy and lyricism, providing the tremendous sonic and emotional range that these pieces require. And the polyphony of the music comes through clearly, thanks to the fine acoustics.  Roß makes a number of changes to Vierne’s indications about registration and tempo, and while it can certainly be argued that Vierne’s own views of his works ought to hold sway, it is equally arguable that these symphonies benefit from an entirely fresh approach when played on an organ other than the Cavaillé-Coll instrument to which Vierne devoted his life at Notre-Dame.

     The ultimate question is how effective Vierne’s works are in Roß’s interpretations – and the answer is that they come off beautifully. There is always a deep spiritual dimension to Vierne’s music, and Roß is sensitive to it without ever becoming overbearing or pushing the music too hard in a particular direction.  These five-movement Vierne pieces are masterful works that truly deserve to be called symphonies, sounding not at all like the organ works of Bach and other masters of the Baroque, but clearly influenced by them; this too is an element of which Roß is quite aware. Symphony No. 3, in F-sharp minor, dates to 1911 – a year of personal tragedy for Vierne – and features a highly energetic first movement and a rather strange, almost grotesque Intermezzo instead of a Scherzo. Its slow movement is highly emotive, and the final toccata – which barely moves into the major key at the very end – could be a virtuoso showpiece if it did not contain such depth of feeling. Symphony No. 4 (1914) is even more impressive. Written in G minor, it opens with an extended slow movement, whose gloom and angst may well be connected with the start of World War I. This organ symphony is a more tightly knit work than the Third, using two first-movement themes to develop material for the entire work. It is also a more chromatic piece than its predecessor, with a sharpness relieved by some unusual approaches to the movements: the third, for example, is marked “Menuet: Tempo di Minuetto” (in 1914!) and has a distinctly light touch. A beautiful slow movement (appropriately designated “Romance”) leads to a dramatic finale with jazz-like elements that one would not expect to hear on the organ. The work as a whole is highly impressive – especially when played with the verve that Roß brings to it.

     The fine sound of Audite’s SACD washes over the listener throughout the disk, pulling him or her entirely into Vierne’s universe, and showing that the symphonic form, in its many variations and incarnations, has retained its power over the centuries and can even be used in a highly effective way for pieces created for a single instrument – provided that an interpreter is equal to challenges of music composed in so complex a structure and that the instrument has symphonic capabilities, as the great organs (including that of St. Martin, Memmingen) decidedly do.

(++++) QUESTIONS OF IMPORTANCE

A Single Pearl. By Donna Jo Napoli. Illustrated by Jim LaMarche. Disney/Hyperion. $17.99.

Tallulah’s Nutcracker. By Marilyn Singer. Illustrations by Alexandra Boiger. Clarion. $16.99.

     The imagined musings of a grain of sand that does not realize how important it will turn out to be are the heart of the sweetly told and unusual A Single Pearl. The fact that sand irritates oysters, encouraging them to coat sand grains in nacre – which builds up until it eventually becomes a pearl – is a fascinating element of zoology, one that many young readers may know before picking up this book (although the word “nacre” does not appear in Donna Jo Napoli’s story). But whether they understand the process or not, what children will learn here is an oft-given lesson about how much something – or, by implication, someone – can matter. The story is told from a sand grain’s point of view, although Napoli stops short of anthropomorphizing the bit of sand to an extreme by writing lines such as, “The grain of sand would have cried, if sand could make tears.” It is, after all, only a grain of sand, which does think – Napoli gives it that much humanity – but cannot actually do anything. What is done to it and with it turns out to be meaningful, though, as it gets stuck in an oyster, becomes the center of a pearl that grows year after year, and eventually finds itself – that is, the pearl whose center it is – harvested by a human pearl diver and “sold…to a prince for bags and bags of money.” Jim LaMarche’s illustrations really come into their own at this point, the expressions of the people fully reflecting the wonder and delight that the pearl creates – although the humans think not at all of the sand grain that made the pearl possible. Eventually the sand finds its pearl hung around the neck of a young princess, and now, Napoli writes, “The grain of sand laughed in joy, for anyone can laugh.” That would be a lovely conclusion – but it is not quite the end, for A Single Pearl is really about how small things can matter a great deal, and it is entirely fitting that the book should go on a bit longerr and that its final words should be, “And it mattered.” A lovely story.

     Tallulah’s Nutcracker takes a nearly opposite approach to the notion of importance. Tallulah is a young, aspiring ballerina who is honored to be chosen to be a mouse in a professional production of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. She is, in fact, a little too honored, deciding that she is quite important indeed. She practices extra-hard, which is all to the good, but her motivation becomes increasingly self-centered: “Being in a real ballet is Big Time. Maybe I’ll be on TV!” Then Tallulah does her best to impress the ballet master; and as she practices and practices – Marilyn Singer makes it clear that this is hard work – Tallulah is thinking that “the whole audience will notice me” and “I bet they’ll ask for my autograph.” Tallulah is obviously headed for a fall, and she literally has one during the performance, right after thinking that she is “the scariest, mousiest, most marvelous mouse of all.” Tallulah picks herself up, manages to finish her dance, but then rushes offstage to hide, “tears rolling down her cheeks,” convinced now that she will never be a star dancer because “they’re all better than me.” But of course Singer cannot and does not leave things there, as Tallulah gets some support from unexpected quarters: the stars of the ballet, who tell her about their own early misadventures on stage. And she ends up with just the right level of self-esteem after all, thinking, “maybe I’m not the best mouse or a star, but I AM a real dancer – at least, I’m going to be.” This is a delightful story that transcends the seasonality of The Nutcracker, and Alexandra Boiger’s illustrations make it something particularly special: Tallulah looks so small backstage after the on-stage disaster, but when she realizes at the end that she is important after all, the illustration “looks up” from street level at Tallulah with arms spread, herself looking up at the gently falling snow, and then looks up beyond her at the concert hall, the Christmas decorations, and the lit windows above – a truly lovely scene. And Boiger’s cover, with beautifully applied glitter, is a real charmer. The humility lesson in Tallulah’s Nutcracker is scarcely a new one in children’s books, but Singer and Boiger make it feel new, just as The Nutcracker itself feels new at every performance even after 120 years.

(++++) ANIMALS ALL ABOUT

The Animal Book: A Collection of the Fastest, Fiercest, Toughest, Cleverest, Shyest—and Most Surprising—Animals on Earth. By Steve Jenkins. Houghton Mifflin. $21.99.

What’s in the Rain Forest? A Nature Discovery Book. By Zoe Burke. Illustrations by Charley Harper. Pomegranate Kids. $14.95.

     Anyone who doubts the continued importance of reference books in our electronic age would do well to take a look at The Animal Book. With simple but not overly simple text and excellent drawings that are both realistic and designed to highlight specific animal features, Steve Jenkins presents children and adults alike with a top-notch introduction to the animal kingdom past and present, and along the way manages to explain the evolution of life on Earth and to answer a whole series of intriguing questions.  Everyone knows that the dinosaurs were the biggest animals ever, for example – right? Nope: the single biggest animal ever to live exists today – it is the blue whale. Dinosaurs were the biggest land animals ever, though. Well, everyone knows that the biggest land mammal ever is the elephant – right? Again, nope: the extinct indricotherium, four times the weight of an African elephant, holds that distinction.

     All this information is available online, of course, but not the way Jenkins presents it. His juxtapositions, his use of scale to show animal sizes, his careful emphasis of certain characteristics that would not be as clear in photographs or when found at typical Web sites, combine to create a book that is not only fact-packed but also fascinating. For example, he draws the eye of the colossal squid actual size – it takes up most of two pages – and shows the smallest known spider in its actual size (about as big as the period at the end of a sentence in the book) as well as much enlarged to make its appearance clear. The silhouette of an adult human is used to show how big a great white shark is – and how much bigger the extinct megalodon was. Elsewhere, the human silhouette helps readers comprehend the size of a manta ray, which is bigger than a grizzly bear, and an oarfish, which is larger than a hippopotamus.

     In one section, “The Story of Life,” Jenkins points out that every animal on Earth is related to every other one, since all trace their lineage back to a microscopic single-celled organism that lived billions of years ago. He then goes on to provide “a brief history of life,” and here his skill at illustration makes a major contribution as he shows animals that looked like plants, nautiloids (ancient ancestors of today’s squids and octopi), “strange segmented animals, unlike any alive today,” and many more. The Animal Book is filled with well-known animals – and also with strange ones of which readers have probably never heard, such as the tiny water bear, “the champion of extreme habitats,” which can “thrive at temperatures hundreds of degrees below zero and swim in scalding hot springs” and even survive “for days in the vacuum of space.” And then there are animal defenses: how many readers will know, before Jenkins tells them, that the slow loris is the world’s only poisonous primate and that the boxer crab defends itself by picking up poisonous anemones from the sea floor “and waving them like boxing gloves in the face of an attacker”?

     Along the way in this fascinating book, Jenkins takes time to discuss animal groups, animal extremes, the techniques of predators, and some amazing animal senses: the platypus has electricity-sensitive receptors on its bill, for example, and the naked mole rat uses the Earth’s magnetic field to find its way through its tunnels. There are surprises everywhere here, even in a pie chart showing the number of living animal species: of the 1,367,765 listed in 2011 by the World Conservation Union, 1,000,000 were insects and another 102,250 were the insect-like spiders and scorpions. The Animal Book is a reference work that families will enjoy having around for years, no matter how sophisticated Web searches become, because the book offers the thrill of unexpected discovery in a way that focused Web searches never can. And Jenkins’ well-wrought illustrations provide exceptional clarity throughout – as when, for example, he surveys and portrays the creatures that are deadliest to humans and points out that “the world’s most dangerous animal, by far, is the mosquito.” The Animal Book makes you think – and helps you discover.

     The aims are more modest and the discoveries not so all-encompassing in What’s in the Rain Forest? But that does not make this little book any less attractive – in fact, it is considerably easier to digest than Jenkins’ large and thick one. Charley Harper (1922-2007) was a well-known, highly skilled nature artist who combined accurate observation, a wonderful sense of color and shape, and skillful stylization into illustrations that make animals seem even more real than they are in reality. This book makes a fine companion to Pomegranate Kids’ previous Zoe Burke/Harper “Nature Discovery Book,” What’s in the Woods? It also stands quite well on its own. Burke’s simple text portrays each animal in amusing rhymes that nicely complement Harper’s elegantly stylized drawings: “Straight ahead, the Quetzal bird,/ His splendid feathers bright./ The avocado in his beak/ Is this bird’s favorite bite.” There are birds aplenty portrayed here, but they are scarcely the only rain-forest creatures that get Harper’s very personal treatment. One of the most intriguing illustrations is that of a very slow mammal: “A two-toed Sloth peers out at us—/ So furry and quite brown—/ Her favorite way to spend the day/ Is hanging upside down.” The sloth is a pure study in geometry, with two circles for nostrils, two slightly larger ones for eyes, a pentagonal head, and 11 absolutely straight darker vertical lines on what is visible of its tan body. Some of Harper’s pictures, such as the one of a katydid’s head, are definitely worth a double-take: the katydid looks like a child’s wheelbarrow with red wheels until you turn the page counter-clockwise and realize that the wheels are its eyes, peering from its green head, which is connected by a contrasting stripe (another of those perfect straight lines) to its white body. What’s in the Rain Forest? ends in the same clever way as What’s in the Woods? There is an invitation to find the animals once again, and a foldout shows all of them at once – followed by a key on the final pages. Harper’s art is entirely different in kind and impact from Jenkins’. Families that have both to look at will find themselves appreciating animals in a variety of different ways.

(+++) HISTORY RE-EXPLORED

Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials. By Marilynne K. Roach. Da Capo. $18.99.

Young Mr. Roosevelt: FDR’s Introduction to War, Politics, and Life. By Stanley Weintraub. Da Capo. $25.99.

     Now more than ever, the United States seems determined to lurch forward with little regard for history – except for certain very specific elements of history that specific groups have a vested interest in specifically memorializing. In general, the country has long been more forward-looking than past-oriented – a state of affairs that is both a strength and a weakness. The result is that questions of what we can learn from specific studies of history are inevitable when new books examining particular people or periods are written. What Six Women of Salem has to teach us is that issues of class and race, of gender, of religion, of community, of obedience and subservience, were as crucial and complex in 1692 and 1693 as they are today, however different the settings and the people. In fact, it is by showing some of those involved in the Salem Witch Trials as people rather than types that Marilynne K. Roach is most effective. She chooses to profile six of the 255 people involved in the colony’s extended trauma, picking the six from among those who were executed, died in prison, accused others, were themselves accused, or passed judgment. Sharp-tongued widow Bridget Bishop, educated Mary English, elderly Rebecca Nurse, anxiety-ridden Ann Putnam, the slave Tituba and the hired girl Mary Warren are all portrayed with care and sensitivity – and in somewhat more detail than even Roach’s meticulous research can justify. For example, at one point, Mary Warren faces her master’s anger, and Roach writes, “Mary nods, unable to speak. She has often wondered what being this close to her master would be like, but this was not the sort of touch she had daydreamed about.” These bits of novelistic, almost lurid excess actually make sense in a story that is largely about mass hysteria and the effects of sexual repression. But they fit somewhat uneasily with Roach’s determination to include as many facts and as much accurate, primary-research based dialogue in the book as possible. Just before the passage about Mary’s imagined daydreams, for example, Roach offers this: “As [Mary] later described it, a shape, possibly Goody Corey’s, drifted about the room, and as it passed her, Mary snatched at it and pulled it toward herself. Yet when she did, she found that the specter on her lap now had the appearance of her master, John Procter. Procter himself stood elsewhere in the room, observing this suggestive mime. ‘[I]tt is noe body but I,’ he said, ‘itt is my shadow that you see.’ Mary tried to explain what she had seen, but Procter was disgusted. ‘I see there is noe heed to any of your Talkings, for you are all possest With the Devill for itt is nothing butt my shape.’”

     Readers need to be as comfortable dipping into the old-fashioned spellings and expressions as they are with Roach’s imagined or re-created thoughts of the characters to get the full effect of Six Women of Salem. Yet the effort is by and large worthwhile, because amid all the recitations of names and documents and accusations and complaints there emerges here a greater sense of the underlying humanity of the people involved in the Salem Witch Trials than other books about the subject have provided. It is very hard today to understand the mindset and circumstances in which the trials took place, but Roach so successfully humanizes her chosen six women that some of the sense of being real-world people rubs off on those around them as well – even on those who accused the supposed witches, tried them and executed them. The book is not particularly easy reading, being filled with long sentences that list name after name: “The documents in her [Susannah Martin’s] case include statements from the afflicted (written out for them by Thomas Putnam), including Annie Putnam, Mercy Lewis, and Sarah Bibber about her spectral torments during Martin’s hearing and at other times; statements from Reverend Parris, Nathaniel Ingersoll, and Thomas Putnam concerning what they saw the afflicted do and say at certain times; and statements from various neighbors in Amesbury who had had unfortunate encounters with her.” Still, for more than 400 pages, from the initial set of introductions that portray the six women effectively and include some imagined thoughts for each, through the events that ran from February 1692 to May 1693, Roach shows how thoroughly she has researched her subject (on which she has written before and is considered an expert) while also giving modern readers something to think about in our own days of social and political witch hunts. Six Women of Salem is primarily for those already familiar with and fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials – for whom it may not shed new light on the events themselves, but will provide a greater sense of the real-world lives of those who engaged in and were victimized by those events.

     Young Mr. Roosevelt deals with much more recent history and a much better known individual, but it is of more limited interest than Roach’s book. Stanley Weintraub here focuses on Franklin Delano Roosevelt from his appointment at age 31, in 1913, to the post of assistant secretary of the Navy, through his gaining of the Democratic vice-presidential nomination in 1920. There is a modicum of almost-titillation here – this was the period when FDR, estranged from his wife, Eleanor, became involved with Lucy Mercer – but Weintraub is too focused on Washington infighting and political issues (and appears to be too much of an old-fashioned gentleman) to place the affair front-and-center in his narrative. Weintraub prefers writing like this: “By then, TR [Teddy Roosevelt] (still ‘the Colonel’ to those on his side) had ended his relationship with The Outlook and begun publishing articles through the Wheeler Syndicate, including two for The New York Times criticizing [Woodrow] Wilson’s ‘infirmity of purpose.’ The Colonel sought a larger audience for his burgeoning pro-British truculence, and Franklin, encouraged by the more militant admirals on the Department staff in Washington, conceded that passive neutrality was shortsighted, and that intervention, however deferred by distance, was inevitable. ‘The difference, I think,’ TR explained to Rudyard Kipling, ‘is to be found in the comparative widths of the [English] Channel and the Atlantic Ocean.’” Those who enjoy political and literary name-dropping will find plenty of it here – especially the former type – while those fascinated by the intricacies of policymaking and infighting in Washington will be delighted to learn, if they do not know it already, that backstabbing, half-truths and changing loyalties are scarcely anything new. FDR fanciers who want to know more about the way he rose from inconsequential playboy state senator to major national political figure will find much to enthrall them in Young Mr. Roosevelt, and anyone who happens upon the book by chance will surely be fascinated by the photos showing a young, vigorous and decidedly not wheelchair-bound FDR (he did not contract polio until 1921). But the book is strictly for those so enamored of FDR that they want to know a great deal about the early political events that turned him into a towering figure after the time chronicled here. Surely there are many politicians today – Democrats and Republicans alike – who wish for the sort of presidential power that FDR wielded seven to eight decades ago. But those were deeply different times nationally as well as internationally, and while FDR will no doubt continue to fascinate historians (obviously including Weintraub) for years to come, it is doubtful that those without strong historical or political involvements will find a great deal to interest them in this chronicle of FDR’s first years on the national stage.

(+++) FIRST ADVENTURES

Sky Jumpers. By Peggy Eddleman. Random House. $16.99.

Lara’s Gift. By Annemarie O’Brien. Knopf. $16.99.

     Here are two adventures, one from the future and one from the past, by authors creating their first novels for preteens and young teenagers (what is called the “middle-grade” market). Sky Jumpers is the first of two books about a town filled with inventors, built in a bomb crater left after World War III has nearly destroyed everything and has brought a horrific disease called Shadel’s Sickness. Inventing being a rather cerebral activity, the town of White Rock is ill equipped to fend off encroaching bandits who are determined to steal the town’s priceless supply of an antibiotic called Ameiphus. Luckily, the townspeople are not all inventors: 12-year-old Hope is unskilled at creating things and is much more interested in a kind of futuristic cliff diving called sky jumping, which involves the thrill of leaping into a band of compressed air called the Bomb’s Breath that covers the bomb crater itself. So here, it would seem, we have a novel arguing that athletic prowess is better than intellectual endeavor – reinforcing a horrendous negative stereotype that leads us to pay professional athletes millions of dollars while relegating teachers to the lower rungs of the middle class, if that. Luckily, though, Peggy Eddleman does not structure the book as mind vs. body. She makes sure that Hope, who narrates the book, is sensitive and even nurturing despite her athletic interests and abilities. For example, Hope is genuinely moved by her mother’s constant references to the brothers that Hope does not have: “My eight brothers…died before they were even born. It comforted her to believe they hung out with me as angels and acted like real brothers would while I did my farm chores. She wasn’t crazy. That was just her way of dealing with the fact that she wanted a house full of kids but only got one.” Hope’s father, meanwhile, knows she is destined for something important: “‘You’re a leader. People follow you. That means the decisions you make affect more than just you. You need to have the good of others in mind too.’” Hope does not consider herself leader material, but of course when the town faces its great crisis, it falls to Hope – along with her friends Aaren and Brock – to find a way across the surrounding mountains to bring help from outside. Aaren’s five-year-old sister, Brenna, proves an added complication, following the three preteens so they have to take her along. The difficult escape proves only the first huge challenge for Hope and her friends, and the book eventually leads to Hope’s realization that she is indeed a leader, that she can single-handedly face down the head of the bandits, and she can – unknowingly – invent something extremely important after all. This is a familiar coming-of-age story arc within an equally familiar dystopic future, but Eddleman handles it nicely and brings the book to a satisfying conclusion that nevertheless leaves the way open for the planned sequel.

     Lara’s Gift looks back for atmosphere, not forward: Annemarie O’Brien sets the novel in 1910, in Imperial Russia, a place so different from anything young readers will be familiar with today that it might as well be just as fictional as Eddleman’s future world. The protagonist here is Lara, who looks forward to carrying on her family’s tradition of breeding borzoi dogs good enough for Russian nobility or even for Tsar Nicholas II himself. Lara expects to follow in her father’s footsteps to become kennel steward to Count Vorontsov, but when Lara’s baby brother, Bohdan, is born, her father decides that he should be the next kennel steward. And Lara is cut off from more than her expected future, for she has a vision when a borzoi named Zarya gives birth to a litter – a vision that angers and frightens her father but that induces him, very reluctantly, to allow the runt  of the litter to live if Lara herself takes care of the pup. Lara knows from what she has seen in her mind that this dog, which she calls Zar, will have an important role to play, but she does not know what her own future will bring, except that she is sure it will involve the dogs she loves – which she has an extraordinary ability to understand. O’Brien uses a number of Russian words to give the story the ring of historic truth – the glossary at the back is not only helpful but also necessary for full understanding – but despite the exotic setting, O’Brien’s underlying theme of a young girl trying to find out where she fits in the world is not all that different from Eddleman’s. The family issues, although couched in different terms, are similar, too. Lara’s mother tells her at one point, speaking of Lara’s father and his attitude toward Lara’s visions, “‘He has much to think about now. His whole world of beliefs and Rules has flip-flopped. He’s struggling to sort it all out and make it right for you, himself, and the future of the dogs.’” Lara herself has much to think about, too, and the eventual rapprochement with her father and confirmation of her vision about Zar are, if not surprising, handled well and with sensitivity. O’Brien evokes the Russian settings more effectively than the personalities of the characters, most of whom fit preordained roles and have little that is surprising to say or do. But the story’s combination of the exotic and the expected is nicely handled, and the use of Russian and of some real people – Count Vorontsov’s borzoi kennels were in fact famed in their time – lends the whole work a pleasantly solid feeling of authenticity.

(++++) DOGGONE GOOD SCARES

The Nightmare Before Christmas: 20th Anniversary Edition. By Tim Burton. Disney Press. $17.99.

Frankenweenie. Adapted by Elizabeth Rudnick, based on the screenplay by John August. From an original idea by Tim Burton. Disney Press. $16.99.

Your Skeleton Is Showing: Rhymes of Blunder from Six Feet Under. By Kurt Cyrus. Illustrated by Crab Scrambly. Disney/Hyperion. $16.99.

     It is hard to believe that it has been 20 years – 20 years! – since Tim Burton brought the world The Nightmare Before Christmas. But the proof is right there on the cover of the new Disney Press edition of the book version of the tale, which Burton wrote and illustrated himself. Right there it says (on a gravestone-shaped sticker, no less) “20 Years.” Wow. Burton’s film was a small masterpiece (some would say not so small), combining more chills than were usually expected at the time in kids’ fare with some thoughtfulness about finding and adhering to one’s role in life – all within the context of a love story between two highly unlikely and, on the face of it, highly unattractive characters. Oh – and it was a musical, too. Burton’s book, which is entirely in verse, simplifies the plot – eliminating quite a few characters, dropping the love story altogether, and having Santa provide a somewhat too-pat moral at the end, undoubtedly to make the book more attractive to the children for whom Disney Press intends it. And shorn of their weirdly apt animated motion, the characters in the book are less scary than those on the screen, which is probably just as well for the targeted audience. The Nightmare Before Christmas is still marvelous, though, and Burton’s twisted poetic sense adds some things to the book that were not in the movie at all: “And though Jack and his friends thought they’d do a good job,/ Their idea of Christmas was still quite macabre.” What a rhyme! Furthermore, Burton’s sense of wonder is as finely tuned as his sense of fright, and some of his illustrations – such as the two-page spread showing Zero the dog guiding the skeletal reindeer pulling Jack on Santa’s sleigh – are alone worth the price of the book. The Nightmare Before Christmas remains a highly unusual dual-holiday treat, one that in the end can really make families think about the meaning of Christmas. And Burton’s book, although simpler and more sanitized than his film, has enough that is unusual about it so that it makes a fine introduction to the movie for kids and parents who, at the conclusion of the story, wish they could have more of it.

     Burton himself has scarcely been idle since The Nightmare Before Christmas, having turned out a number of other movies in similar and not-so-similar veins. None has quite matched the success of The Nightmare Before Christmas, because even when they have the same amount of heart, they lack the holiday-themed scaffolding on which to, um, hang it (think of The Corpse Bride, for example). But Burton’s trademark scares-and-warmth blend always has a lot going for it, and it flowered (if that is the word) in last year’s film, Frankenweenie. This feature-length stop-motion movie was actually based a much older, much shorter Burton film: way back in 1984, Burton created a half-hour live-action movie of the same title. In both films, a dog takes center stage, even more than Zero does in The Nightmare Before Christmas. In fact, the dog Sparky is at the center of both Frankenweenie movies and of the novel derived from the newer film, which is quite delightfully printed on black paper with white type. Sparky, hit by a car, is revived from the dead by Victor Frankenstein – here a child, not the adult scientist of Mary Shelley’s original book – and of course the electricity that Victor uses to do that explains the dog’s name. The plot arc of the 1984 and 2012 films is essentially the same, including a very funny love relationship between Sparky and another dog – whose fur resembles the famous hairdo in the original 1930s film, The Bride of Frankenstein. The newer Frankenweenie, being three times as long, has more heft to it, and John August did a fine job of expanding Burton’s 1984 screenplay without making it seem overly bloated. One thing that happens in the newer film, and therefore in Elizabeth Rudnick’s novel adapted from it, is that Victor is pushed into sharing his reviving-dead-animals secrets with other kids, who are by no means as sweet and selfless as is Victor himself. “Sparky was still a regular dog – not counting a few stitches and neck bolts,” the book explains. “But that was because he had been brought back out of love. What the others had done was due to jealousy, greed, and selfishness. Which meant the creatures they had made were bound to have some … deformities.” Um, yes. That ellipsis (which is in the book) implies it all. And the result is some highly amusing writing: “The Turtle Monster continued wreaking havoc as Nassor approached with Colossus, his pet hamster.” Everything does eventually work out just fine, at least for Victor and Sparky, and Burton here shows again that he has a very special ability to make the potentially horrific humorous – and vice versa.

     Dogs seem to fit naturally into all this ghoulishness: their sweet nature somehow prevents the frightening stuff from getting too far out of hand. And sure enough, a dog is the prime mover of the story told by Kurt Cyrus in Your Skeleton Is Showing. There are actually two dogs here – one provides a very satisfying ending. The one that moves the plot, though, is dead, not unlike Sparky. Well, okay, unlike Sparky – because this dog is dead when the book starts, being a ghostly dog floating along in a graveyard. And the unnamed boy narrator explains that the dog is “lost. Afraid. Alone.” The boy feels sorry for the ghost dog and decides to help him “find his master’s tomb.” And so boy and dog traverse the cemetery, as Cyrus poetically narrates the thoroughly absurd endings that brought the graveyard’s inhabitants to their resting places. There is the boy who picked his nose so much that “it bled, bled, bled.” And the boy ghost flying about and frightening a certain specific sort of bird. Why? “When Mortimer Poe was eleven or so,/ a gaggle of geese took him down./ Only eleven, and hoisted to heaven/ garbed in a goose-feather gown!” There is Mary Lou South, who choked on a mouthful of milk when someone said something funny; Wanda Gripp, an over-enthusiastic hugger whose final hug was given to an anaconda; a garbage man who “was buried in a garbage can”; and so on. The illustrations by Crab Scrambly are funny enough to keep any vestige of fright away, although the deceased gym teacher who “delivers a pep talk from inside his coffin” is certainly on the grotesque side. None of the departed gets many poetic lines, but in fact the shortest remarks are often the funniest, as in the case of Rodney Highstep, which reads in toto: “‘Tripped on his zipper,’ the coroner wrote./ We found the likelihood rather remote.” Boy and dog try to play together as they continue their search, but it doesn’t work out: the boy cannot pick up a ghost stick to throw, and the dog cannot catch a real one. So the search continues, with the boy at one point finding a living dog that helped dig the grave of her really nasty owner, whose passing no one regrets because she does not deserve to be fondly remembered: “Nobody misses you, Mrs. McBride./ You cheated. You lied. You stole./ Even your dog doesn’t care that you died;/ in fact, she helped dig the hole.” This provides the happy-ending foreshadowing, but getting there requires boy and ghost dog to do some further searching – which ends when they do find the ghost pup’s owner, who calls “Up!” and has the satisfaction of watching her dog float upwards to join her. This is not a Tim Burton book, but it has some of the trademark Burton heart at its core, and just as the Burton books transcend the Halloween season at which they are most likely to be trotted out, so does Your Skeleton Is Showing, which deserves to show up throughout the year rather than only on a seasonal basis.

(++++) EASY AND PLEASING

Folk Tale Classics: Jack and the Beanstalk; Rumpelstiltskin. By Paul Galdone. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $8.99 each.

Digger the Dinosaur. By Rebecca Kai Dotlich. Pictures by Gynux. Harper. $16.99.

     Paul Galdone’s illustrated versions of familiar fairy tales certainly do stand the test of time – even more so when he illustrates an unfamiliar version, as he does with Jack and the Beanstalk. This book, originally published in 1974, uses a verse variant of the familiar story of the boy, the beanstalk and the giant – one taken from a book published in 1807 and entitled The History of Mother Twaddle and the Marvelous Adventures of her Son Jack. Apart from giving the mother in the story a name and telling the whole tale in rhyme, this version has a few differences from the more-familiar ones, one of the most notable being that Jack does not have a cow to trade for magic beans: he has an actual coin, a sixpence that he is supposed to use to buy a goose, but that he instead uses to get one, not three, magic beans. And while there is indeed a nasty giant atop the inevitable beanstalk, there is also a fair maiden there, who helps Jack and at the end weds him. But there are no magical implements, and Jack disposes of the giant not by chopping down the beanstalk but by cutting off his head after he falls asleep from an overdose of wine that the maiden has given him. This is still a somewhat bloodthirsty story – many, many fairy tales actually are, but this one is somewhat less sanitized than most – but Galdone’s illustrations, in which the humans are pleasantly plump while the giant is huge and hulking, help make it a fine version even for younger children. Mother Twaddle even gets her goose dinner at the end. Kids who do not yet know Jack and the Beanstalk may do better with any of the numerous books giving the better-known version of the tale, but those who do know the story will especially enjoy this variation on it, and Galdone’s very fine illustrations are certainly a treat.

     There are several versions of Rumpelstiltskin as well, but in this case, Galdone’s book, which dates to 1985, uses the best-known one and moderates the ending a bit, having the evil little man stamp his way into the ground and disappear, but without tearing himself in half. Galdone (1907-1986) was capable of a wide variety of illustrative styles, and in this late work he uses one that is quite different from the one he employed in Jack and the Beanstalk. Here the human characters have more reality about them, and the tears shed by the miller’s daughter are artfully handled, as are her expressions of determination when Rumpelstiltskin shows up to claim her child and she refuses to give the baby up. The little man himself is a pot-bellied dwarf with a huge nose and gigantic hat, a comical character except in what he demands of the young woman he helps. In truth, he is less unpleasant-looking than the king, whose harsh appearance is in line with his impossible demands of his soon-to-be-wife and whose haughty look at the marriage ceremony may make some thoughtful children wonder who is the real villain of the piece. The handsome reissues of these works from the Fairy Tale Classics series are most welcome, both for the quality of Galdone’s art and for the chance the books give parents to introduce a whole new generation of children to some timeless tales of wonder and enchantment.

     Digger the Dinosaur is unlikely to capture the “timeless tale” label, but this very simple story of a cute young dino who doesn’t always listen as carefully as he should fits very well indeed into the “I Can Read!” book series, in which it appears at the very first level: “My First,” labeled as “ideal for sharing with emergent readers.” Children not quite ready to tackle the somewhat-more-complex Galdone-illustrated fairy tales will do just fine with Rebecca Kai Dotlich’s simple story, in very large print, with Gynux’s illustrations showing Digger as a sort of miniaturized, not-at-all-threatening T. Rex, and his friend Stego as an upright-walking mini-Stegosaurus. The two are ready to play baseball when Digger’s mom says he has to clean his room first, because it’s a mess. Digger thinks she says “yes,” he can go play, but Stego corrects him and offers to help. But distracted Digger puts his coat on a book, not a hook, and puts away a pile of stones, not a pile of bones – he just doesn’t pay attention to what he should be doing. However, he quickly corrects his mistakes, and Stego is perfectly good-humored about helping with the whole process, and then the two dinos both mis-hear what Digger’s mom says and get to have a good laugh about their misunderstanding before they go out to play. The book is a fine addition to the reading series in which it appears, and it makes a nice beginning-reader story that will help young children develop the confidence they need to move on to books such as Fairy Tale Classics and then to many, many books beyond.

(++++) MYSTERIOUS HAPPENINGS

Mr. Wuffles! By David Wiesner. Clarion. $17.99.

Raven and the Red Ball. By Sarah Drummond. Pomegranate Kids. $9.95.

Calendar Mysteries: #9—September Sneakers; #10—October Ogre. By Ron Roy. Random House. $4.99 each.

     There is an old, much-used but still fascinating plot in science fiction, and it revolves around size. What if first contact with aliens has already happened, but we know nothing about it because our sizes are different by orders of magnitude? What if our entire universe is merely a speck within a vastly larger, unimaginably huge universe? And so on. The idea actually predates what we think of as science fiction: Jonathan Swift used it brilliantly in Gulliver’s Travels, and there is a wonderful Edgar Allan Poe story called The Sphinx in which a trick of perspective leads the narrator to believe he is seeing a gigantic monster in the distance when what he is really observing is an insect very close to his eyeball. So there is nothing particularly new about the underlying plot of David Wiesner’s Mr. Wuffles! But the book is so well-done that it is a genuine pleasure from start to finish. “Well-done” in this case means “well-paced,” “well-plotted” and “well-drawn,” but not “well-written,” because one distinctive element here is that the book is almost entirely a pantomime – except in “framing” panels at the start, finish and middle. Mr. Wuffles is a cat, and like many cats, is standoffish when the human of the house tries to get him to play with toys – since what he is offered is not the right toy. What is the right one? There is definite potential in a little something sitting next to a rubber-band ball and shaped pretty much like it, but not quite. The “not quite” refers to a flat ring around the middle of the “ball,” which in fact is nothing more or less than a spaceship. Now this is worth playing with, and Mr. Wuffles does so with typical feline abandon – causing substantial upset, physical and emotional, to the tiny, vaguely insect-like creatures that have just finished celebrating what appears to have been a successful interstellar journey. Neither the aliens nor Mr. Wuffles can speak in words we humans would recognize – the aliens certainly talk, using a mixture of geometric symbols, but it is their body language and facial expressions that communicate what they feel as Mr. Wuffles unintentionally puts them at risk of their lives. Well, clearly the aliens have to do something, and being intelligent (obviously!), they do. What they do is get out of their craft into a small, out-of-the-way space in the room, where they discover an entire Earth-insect civilization with which they turn out to have a great deal in common. Soon Earth insects and interstellar insectoids are communicating quite well, watched by a staring cat that cannot quite get to them in their protected space; and eventually there is a dramatic escape that, even though it is handled with humor, will have readers (or viewers) wondering….could this happen? Well, why not? Perhaps the Earth insects are shown to have more intelligence than they really do – or than we know they really do – but who is to say what aliens might really look like and what creatures on our planet they might have an affinity with? Mr. Wuffles! is more than amusing and interestingly drawn – it is foundationally fascinating, raising some genuinely thoughtful questions that kids and parents alike may want to consider, if not the first time they go through the book then the second, third or fourth.

     The pantomime format can be a highly attractive way to tell stories, provided that the author/artist comes to it with care and sensitivity. Sarah Drummond brings both to Raven and the Red Ball, which has no words at all – just a series of striking black-and-white woodcut-like illustrations of a raven and a dog, plus a red circle (the ball) that briefly unites the two animals. Perspective is put to particularly good use here, starting as we look down over Raven’s wing to the dog far below; continuing as bird and dog begin to interact after the red ball draws Raven’s eye (a circumstance that Drummond shows by cleverly having the ball become Raven’s eye); and continuing further in a series of chase scenes in which Raven consistently escapes, eventually leaving the dog exhausted – at which point Raven drops the ball right on his head. The result: a happy dog that has the ball again, and Raven flying high once more. Raven is a trickster god in Native American mythology, and Drummond seems to draw on that in showing Raven’s behavior here, but the main point of this short and attractive book is simply to take young readers on a journey of high spirits and exuberance, without a single word written or needed. And Drummond’s art is attractive and detailed enough to bring kids back to the book several times.

     The slight Calendar Mysteries stories are unlikely to provoke repeated readings, being too simple for most kids ages 6-9 to enjoy more than once. These (+++) books are enjoyable one time, though, and they are certainly easy to read. September Sneakers involves green sneakers being left around the town of Green Lawn in exchange for various things that go missing – such as a hamster, a flower and a doormat. The kids are sure their teacher – with the exceptionally obvious name of Ms. Tery – has something to do with the happenings, and that turns out to be true, in a manner of speaking, as Bradley, Brian, Lucy and Nate go through their usual tracking down of clues and following of leads until everything falls into place. Each of these books is tied in some way to the month of its title, September being the first full month of school; so of course October Ogre is tied to Halloween. In this one there is – what else? – a haunted house in the town. It is actually a hotel transformed for the holiday, complete with ogre out front. But something is wrong: the kids who go inside don’t seem to be coming out. And so the mystery solvers get involved with fog effects, plastic spiders, a severed head that is actually a scary face painted on a volleyball, and so forth. They even stumble on a recipe for “witchy stew” that requires using three small children. And then, even the local policeman disappears! Of course there turns out to be a perfectly logical, non-magical explanation for everything, but this book is a touch more mysterious than most in Ron Roy’s series, and so kids will get a touch more enjoyment out of it, especially if they read it around the time of Halloween. It is still not the sort of book to which readers will return time and time again, but at least it is fun while it lasts.

(+++) COMFORTABLY VEGAN

The Cheesy Vegan: More Than 125 Plant-Based Recipes for Indulging in the World’s Ultimate Comfort Food. By John Schlimm. Da Capo. $19.99.

     Remember The Farmer in the Dell? That’s the kids’ rhyme with the line, “The cheese stands alone.” And so it does, for many people: cheese is delicious on its own as well as being a wonderful complement to everything from elegant dishes to French fried potatoes, hamburgers and macaroni. But cheese is an animal product and therefore a problem for vegans, whose philosophical commitment to their lifestyle has left them striving to accept tofu, seitan (wheat gluten) and other cheese substitutes, or led them to eat vegan cheese that has neither the flavor nor the mouth feel of the real thing.

     John Schlimm’s The Cheesy Vegan intends to do something about that. Schlimm may be exaggerating in calling cheese “the world’s ultimate comfort food” – has he somehow missed out on chocolate? – but certainly cheese is a comfort food, and also a staple of many people’s diet and an excellent addition to the food choices of many more.

     Schlimm’s basic recommendation is that vegans make their own cheeses, which he describes as “versatile and fun to make.” These are not going to be tempting to non-vegans, and many of the ingredients will not be ones that non-vegans are familiar with, but this book is not intended to convert people to a vegan lifestyle, as many vegan-focused books are – it is aimed at helping those who are already committed to living as vegans enjoy a type of food that they would not otherwise be able to eat. So you will find a cheddar recipe here that uses agar powder or flakes, cashews and pimientos; a mozzarella one that includes rolled oats and tahini; a brie recipe using “crumbled firm silken tofu,” agar powder and smooth tahini; a Swiss one calling for cashews, almond slivers, soy milk and miso; and so on. These are really hands-on recipes, and sometimes hands-in ones: “Using your hands, crumble the tofu into a medium-size bowl. Continue mixing with your hands until the tofu achieves the texture of large-curd cottage cheese.” (This is from the cottage-cheese recipe.)

     Schlimm is well aware that the absence of cheese can be an issue for vegans and would-be vegans: “The mere mention of cream cheese sends the imagination in so many delicious directions at once, from breakfast straight through to that midnight snack,” he writes at one point. But he argues that his cheese-creation recipes will give vegans substitutes that will be more acceptable to them than what they have been able to eat before. And of course the book is not entirely about making your own cheese – most of it is actually filled with recipes for using various vegan cheeses in a wide variety of ways. Indeed, cheese creation gets only one of the 10 chapters here, the other nine being devoted to “Breakfast & Brunch,” “Sides,” “Sandwiches,” “Appetizers & Snacks,” and so forth. There is even a “Mac ’n’ Cheese” chapter with seven recipes (one featuring ground cashews and truffle oil, another called “Parmesan-Cheddar-Swiss Skillet Macaroni”). And yes, there is a “Cheesecake” chapter as well, including creations that are unlikely to appease the sweet tooth of non-vegans but that certainly sound tempting within the vegan context: “Pecan-Crusted Cheesecake Bars” and “White Chocolate Cheesecake Petit Fours,” for example.

     Vegan eating is a choice that limited numbers of people make, generally for sociopolitical and philosophical rather than dietary reasons – although there are plenty who argue for it on health grounds as well. To non-vegans, the vegan form of sustenance looks like a real sacrifice, and apparently some vegans feel that way as well, which is why there are books such as The Cheesy Vegan. The underlying idea of Schlimm’s book, and others of the same type, is that vegans can fulfill whatever rationale they have for the way they eat and live without giving up the flavors and food experiences that non-vegans enjoy. The proposition is arguable, but certainly books like Schlimm’s make a good argument for it when it comes to specific types of foods and food groups.