(+++) SMALL-SCALE WITH MUCH TO SAY

Franz Reizenstein: Sonata in G-sharp; Geoffrey Bush: Sonata; John Ireland: Sonata No. 2 in A minor. Louisa Stonehill, violin; Nicholas Burns, piano. Lyrita. $18.99.

Martinů: Variations on a Theme of Rossini; Ariette for Cello and Piano; Seven Arabesques; Suite Miniature; Nocturnes for Cello and Piano; Variations on a Slovakian Theme. Meredith Blecha-Wells, cello; Sun Min Kim, piano. Navona. $14.99.

Karl Höller: Fantasie for Violin and Organ; Triptychon for Organ Solo; Improvisation for Cello and Organ. William Preucil, violin; Roy Christensen, cello; Barbara Harbach, organ. MSR Classics. $12.95.

Altius Quartet: Dress Code. Joshua Ulrich and Andrew Giordano, violins; Andrew Krimm, viola; Zachary Reaves, cello. Navona. $14.99.

Stories for Our Time: Contemporary Music for Trumpet by Women Composers. Thomas Pfotenhauer, trumpet, flugelhorn and E-flat trumpet; Vincent Fuh, piano. MSR Classics. $12.95.

Zhen Chen: Music for Piano and Chinese Folk Instruments. Zhen Chen, piano; Jiaju Shen, pipa; Feifei Yang, erhu; Yixuan Pang, voice. Navona. $14.99.

     Three little-known wartime violin-and-piano sonatas from two different wars show just how effectively composers can communicate with a paucity of instruments. Franz Reizenstein (1911-1968) wrote his Sonata in G-sharp in 1945. There is a reason that the sonata is not designated as being in G-sharp major or G-sharp minor: it moves restlessly between the major and minor keys, which the piano establishes at the outset. The uncertainty is a formative element of the work’s first movement. The second movement is a bouncy Scherzo with some obeisance to Shostakovich. The third and last is complex, abrupt and fast-changing, and eventually leads to a juxtaposition of B natural and B-sharp that reinforces the work’s ambiguous tonality. The underlying feeling of being deeply unsettled by a world at war comes through far more clearly than the work’s tonality does. Louisa Stonehill and Nicholas Burns, who call themselves the Steinberg Duo, play the work sure-handedly and with empathetic understanding. They do an equally fine job with the sonata by Geoffrey Bush (1920-1998), who wrote this piece in the same year as Reizenstein’s in G-sharp, 1945. This is the world première recording of the single-movement work, whose thoroughgoing chromatic uncertainty somewhat parallels that of Reizenstein: Bush never allows any key to establish and maintain itself for more than a few measures. The melodies of the work are quite lovely and perhaps reflective of Bush’s hopes for a better postwar world (he was an avowed pacifist); but the setting within which those melodies are heard is that of a world that is at best uncertain of where it stands and where life is going. The second sonata by John Ireland (1879-1962) dates to the previous world war and was first heard in 1917, at which time it caused such a sensation that the first printed edition sold out even before publication. It is an attractive three-movement work whose instant popularity, from the standpoint of a century later, is a bit hard to comprehend. Certainly, though, it has effectively expressed emotional ups and downs: there is clear anguish in parts, balanced by warm lyricism that elicits pity for the horrors of the conflict. The central second movement is the most interesting, evoking the feeling of a death march but containing a beautiful, optimism-filled tune in the center that surely reflected the initial audience’s hopes for the future. The Lyrita recording is technically fine but has bizarre errors in the dates of both Bush and Ireland (the enclosed booklet is correct).

     Many of the works of Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959) were also influenced by war, but that is not the focus of the new Navona CD on which cellist Meredith Blecha-Wells and pianist Sun Min Kim offer five of his suites of short pieces plus a very brief Ariette. Although one of the four Nocturnes lasts six minutes and another almost four, nothing else on the CD reaches three minutes in length: this is Martinů as miniaturist. The style of the works is generally conservative, but the frequent overlay of Czech folk music gives the works a distinctive touch that is typical of Martinů. The brightness of the Rossini variations contrasts nicely with the flowing, lyrical line of the Ariette. The Arabesques are generally upbeat and pleasant and not very consequential. Suite Miniature, in seven movements, has the delicacy and some of the flippancy of a piece for or about children, although it is neither. The Nocturnes are somewhat more expansive and the only works here with a modicum of depth of feeling, although even here the overall impression is mostly one of gentle play and contemplative relaxation. The Variations on a Slovakian Theme show Martinů’s skill in variation form even better than do those on Rossini’s theme, and they allow the cello a kind of broad folkloric expressiveness that fits the material very well and that Blecha-Wells carries off with considerable skill. The interplay between cellist and pianist and their fine ensemble work are major attractions of this disc of mostly lightweight music.

     The three Karl Höller works on a new MSR Classics release focus neither on violin nor on cello, although both are present. The dominant sound here is that of the organ, which is scarcely an instrument usually associated with chamber music. Barbara Harbach, a very fine organist as well as a skilled composer in her own right, clearly finds the music of Höller (1907-1987) congenial. The tonal language here is primarily that of the late Romantic era, but it is blended, generally rather seamlessly, with the neoclassicism of Paul Hindemith and some of the approaches to organ music favored by Max Reger. Indeed, two of the works on this disc have neo-Baroque sensibilities despite their more-modern harmonic structure. Triptychon is a three-movement solo organ work “on the Easter sequence ‘Victimae paschali laudes,’” and Improvisation is a five-movement piece “on the spiritual folksong ‘Schönster Herr Jesus.’” The religious underpinning of both these works ties to the traditional centrality of the church in organ music, yet Höller’s use of a folksong as the basis for Improvisation pulls the instrument our of a strictly ecclesiastical setting and into the wider world. Unlike Martinů, Höller does not seem to take the folk elements of his underlying material deeply to heart, at least in this work, but he writes just as effectively for cello and organ as Martinů does for cello and piano – and in fact Höller’s integration of the stringed and wind instruments is so well done that listeners may wonder why the combination is so rare. As for Triptychon, it is a more conventional piece in its sacred theme and in Höller’s handling of the material, and at nearly half an hour it is somewhat overly expansive, without the tight integration of form that, for example, Widor and Vierne brought to their organ symphonies. Harbach certainly plays the piece very well, though. As for the somewhat slighter Fantasie, here the balance of violin and organ is attractive – and in some ways more immediately appealing than that of the lower, more-resonant cello with the organ in Improvisation. Again, though, the single-movement Fantasie uses the two instruments in such interesting ways that listeners may wish for further examples of this type of strings-and-organ combination, which in skilled hands like Höller’s offers a very intriguing mixture of sounds.

     There is nothing unusual in the instrumental combination on a new Navona release featuring the Altius Quartet – but the quartet itself is determined, absolutely determined, to make the recording as unusual as possible. Thus, while the performers do play one of Haydn’s wonderful, balanced, carefully structured quartets (Op. 74, No. 1), they apparently think it would be beneath them to perform the piece as Haydn intended. Oh, no – that would not have sufficient “contemporary chic.” So after the first movement of the quartet, the players perform two other, entirely unrelated works; then they give the quartet’s second movement; then another unrelated piece; then the third movement; then two more pieces having nothing to do with Haydn; and then the finale – followed by something else. The whole approach is reminiscent of the classic Monty Python line, “And now for something completely different” – an indication of a deliberate non sequitur. And that does indeed seem to be what the Altius Quartet here pursues. Among the pieces that interrupt Haydn is William Bolcom’s Three Ghost Rags, given here in the order 2-1-3 (for no apparent reason): this work itself suffers from being broken up into component parts. And then there is something called Take It that meshes Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” with Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” And a medley of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and “Kashmir.” And Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me.” And, at the CD’s very end, there is “Take on Me” by a-ha (sic). Certainly the disc is intended to be playful and with-it and all that, and certainly there are playful elements both in Haydn’s quartet (1793) and Bolcom’s music (1970). And in everything else here, for that matter. But a juxtaposition of, say, the Haydn (played as a whole) with the Bolcom (played in the order the composer intended) would have made for quite a fine contrast without the necessity of breaking the pieces up into their component parts and tossing in little bits of this and that as well. The Altius Quartet – which, by the way, plays all the music quite well – seems to be trying too hard to be cool and contemporary and cognizant of the extremely short attention span of many listeners today. The longest track on the CD runs less than seven minutes, while the full Haydn quartet would require that people pay attention for (horrors!) 23 minutes. This CD turns out to be testimony to the superficiality of far too much music and far too many listeners in our time.

     There is contemporary flair as well on a new MSR Classics CD that is also trying perhaps a bit too hard to be, well, contemporary. It features the very fine trumpeter Thomas Pfotenhauer in six world première recordings of six pieces by six female composers. It is the combined emphasis on all-new material and all-female material that makes this into something of a “cause” recording – which is actually a shame, since the works here all contain elements of considerable interest independent of their provenance. That simply means they are worthy when judged as music, not as music from a specified era or by someone of a specified gender – that kind of musical “identity politics” is really quite unnecessary here. Jazz Professor Glasses for solo trumpet and flugelhorn (2008) by Anne Guzzo (born 1968) is especially interesting, its three movements exploring some of the outer reaches of both instruments to good effect – and with a strong flavoring of Chinese influence in the first movement and of jazz in the finale. All the other works pair Pfotenhauer with pianist Vincent Fuh, who provides very able backup and accompaniment. The longest piece is Framed (2009) by Cecilia McDowell (born 1951), an interesting seven-movement Pictures at an Exhibition derivative intended to capture the artistic styles of Auguste Renoir, James McNeill Whistler, Alberto Giacometti, Hendrick Avercamp, Andy Warhol, Simon Marmion, and Alexander Rodchenko. Whether it does so or not will depend on each listener’s response and on how well an individual knows the painters – but whether or not the musical portraits are wholly successful, they certainly do show the wide range of colors and emotions of which the trumpet is capable. Two nicely compressed three-movement works here effectively contrast the trumpet’s lyrical capabilities with its martial side: Concertino (1989) by Ida Gotkovsky (born 1933) and Sonata (2002) by Elaine Fine (born 1959). There is also the disc’s three-movement title work by Faye-Ellen Silverman (born 1947), Stories for Our Time (2007), and this piece takes trumpet style further than the others do, through greater dissonance, a wider variety of performance techniques, and stronger contrast among the movements. Silverman’s work follows and stands in strong contrast to the lovely single movement called Look Little Low Heavens (1992) by Hilary Tann (born 1947). Inspired by Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem Spring, Tann’s work is gentle, serene and lyrical except for a central dramatic section. Tann, interestingly, is another composer who, like Guzzo, has drawn inspiration from the Orient, although in Tann’s case from Japan rather than China.

     Neither Guzzo nor Tann has, however, absorbed the influence of Chinese music in the way than Zhen Chen has – as is abundantly clear from a new Navona CD. The 10 works here sound as if they are drawn from Chinese folk music, but in actuality they are not – instead, Chen has studied and analyzed the sounds of the music and brought it into forms that allow some of the material to be played on the piano. The other instruments here are the lute-like pipa and bowed erhu. Two pieces, Jade and Dance Floor Banter, are for piano and pipa; two, Regret and Longing, are for piano and erhu; two, Plum Blossom Chant and Lament, are for piano and voice; two, Springfield and Turpan Tango, are for piano, pipa and erhu; one, Stroll by the Lake, is for piano, pipa and voice; and the final work on the disc, Recollection, is for solo piano. The combinations show clearly that Chen has carefully thought through the ways in which these instruments (including the voice, which is used here primarily as an instrument, whether speaking words or singing a vocalise) can interweave with and complement each other. To ears more accustomed to Western music, the works here have a sameness of sound that makes them seem longer than in fact they are: the CD runs just 42 minutes but seems to stretch out much farther. As background music or music designed to enhance meditation or contemplation, the works come across well; but except for Turpan Tango and Dance Floor Banter, which are more upbeat than the other pieces and have some Western-style dance rhythms at their core, there is little to distinguish the pieces here except for their titles. As a showcase for the ways in which Oriental and Occidental musical thinking can be blended and hybridized, Chen’s creations are interesting. But the hybridization wears thin rather quickly and seems more appropriate for contemplative mood-setting than for any focus on the music as music.

(++++) THE MANY FACETS OF BOARD BOOKS

Lines and Triangles and Squares, Oh My! By Zoe Burke. Illustrations by Carey Hall. Pomegranate Kids. $10.95.

Claire Winteringham’s Alphabet Parade. By Claire Winteringham. Pomegranate Kids. $10.95.

I Love My Daddy. By Sebastien Braun. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins. $7.99.

I Love My Mommy. By Sebastien Braun. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins. $7.99.

     Intended as they are for ages from birth through three or four, board books would seem to offer little room for creativity in writing, illustration and design. In fact, however, the opposite is the case: the short, restricted form of these books frequently inspires authors and illustrators to produce very pleasant and highly creative stories and ways of communicating information. Two new offerings from Pomegranate Kids are particularly intriguing for their educational value. Zoe Burke’s Lines and Triangles and Squares, Oh My! is exceptional. Starting with straight, colored lines and using the services of a cartoon cat named Bluebell, Burke and illustrator Carey Hall show young children how a triangle is made and what sorts of things are triangle-shaped (mountains, Bluebell’s hat and ears, and so on). Then, starting with four straight lines, Burke and Hall create a square and show all the square-shaped things around Bluebell. And then they spin the square to make a diamond – using the same four lines in the same four colors, so kids can easily see what is going on – and show diamond-shaped objects. And then they stretch the diamond – the visualization here, using arrows, is quite clear and easy to follow – and now have a rectangle, which they can once again show in a number of places that kids will be able to identify (a table, a door, a bed, etc.). Finally, Bluebell is seen playing with a wiggly line that is smoothed and tied to itself to form a circle – and, yet again, there are plenty of circles to be found in the book’s illustrations. This is a lot of learning to pack into board-book format, and the final two pages – in which Bluebell appears as a train engineer in a scene containing all the shapes explained in the book – make an excellent conclusion. Both the concept and the execution here are well beyond what parents would likely expect from a board book – an impressive achievement.

     Almost as intriguing is Claire Winteringham’s Alphabet Parade, which has no story at all: it simply shows attractive watercolor illustrations of various animals and objects beginning with each letter of the alphabet. The fun here is in the quality of the pictures, the unusual choices of some items to illustrate the letters, and the attractive juxtapositions on some pages. The letter E, for instance, includes elephants and egg – no surprise there – but the egg is balanced right on the end of one elephant’s trunk, and that makes the illustration quite interesting. Furthermore, this letter’s page also mentions egret and eucalyptus tree, and neither that bird nor that plant is commonly found in alphabet books (and the egret is actually perched in the tree). This is Winteringham’s approach throughout the book. The letter I has only two entries, iguana and insects, but there are 11 different insects shown, from beetles to butterflies. The letter N includes not only a nest but also the baby birds in it, referred to as nestlings – and the specific bird species is nuthatch (there is a newt in the picture, too). The letter D has a dinosaur following a duck past date palms and daisies as a dragonfly soars overhead. The letter R has the unusual combination of rabbits, rhinoceros and rocket. And the letter O is an ocean scene (“ocean” is one of the words) in which a very large octopus has one tentacle gently wrapped around an owl and two others cradling oranges. Colorful and clever, Claire Winteringham’s Alphabet Parade makes a fine introduction to the letters of the alphabet, the typical sturdy board-book format making it particularly easy for little hands to hold.

     Other board books, although quite pleasant, are considerably more conventional in telling simple stories and illustrating them pleasantly but not in any exceptional way. Two by Sebastien Braun, I Love My Daddy and I Love My Mommy, fit this description. Each two-page spread of the “daddy” book shows a big brown bear and his small cub together as the cub tells, in just a few words, something that the two of them do: “My daddy wakens me.” “My daddy washes me.” “My daddy chases me.” The bears play hide-and-seek in the forest, run about in a meadow, sit looking out at a mountain vista, play a tickling game, cuddle, and more – and the final page, “I love my daddy,” simply shows the cub curled up in the sleeping big bear’s arms, about to fall asleep himself. I Love My Mommy follows a somewhat different path: here, the basic narrative is similar, but every two-page shows a different animal-mom-and-child scene. “My mommy watches me while I play” features rabbits; “my mommy takes me swimming” has river otters; “my mommy helps me to climb” shows squirrels; “my mommy works really hard” uses beavers; “my mommy cuddles me” features foxes; and the final “I love my mommy” shows a mother bird with two little ones, one tucked within each wing. Braun’s books are simple, straightforward, warmhearted and designed for reading aloud to children who are too young to read themselves. They are sweet and cozy, even a little overdone in their determined delicacy – fine for the very youngest infants, but likely of less interest as babies start becoming interested in reading on their own and are ready to absorb the more-complicated concepts found in Claire Winteringham’s Alphabet Parade and Lines and Triangles and Squares, Oh My!

(++++) CARTOONING FOR ADULTS

“Mutts” Shelter Stories: Love. Guaranteed. By Patrick McDonnell. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.

Big Mushy Happy Lump: A “Sarah’s Scribbles” Collection. By Sarah Andersen. Andrews McMeel. $14.99.

I Feel Bad. Every Day. About Everything. By Orli Auslander. Blue Rider Press. $20.

     The notion that comics are only for children was the result of the emasculation that comic books suffered in the 1950s, the McCarthy era, in a wave of hysteria drummed up largely by Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent (1954) and skillfully manipulated by moral crusaders of the time for purposes of their own. In more-recent years, comics have been slowly but surely reestablishing themselves as a highly effective form of visual-plus-verbal communication not only for children but also for adults – with adult themes ranging from sex and violence (underground comics in the United States, hentai cartoons in Japan) to equally adult but less flashy matters such as becoming a grown-up, entering the workplace, developing relationships, handling student debt, and more. There are, however, very, very few cartoonists who can create strips that appeal both to adults and to children. One of that elite group is Patrick McDonnell. His Mutts strips are done in an outwardly simple drawing style that is in fact very difficult to manage (much as was the case for Charles Schulz’ Peanuts). Many of the strips are simple, child-friendly adventures in home, school and yard, with interesting anthropomorphic animals talking to each other and interacting with the humans who show up from time to time. But there is always an undercurrent of seriousness in McDonnell’s work, never more clearly than in his excellent Shelter Stories – a kind of strip-with-a-strip in which he presents lovable, love-desiring adoptable animals (usually but not always dogs and cats) and imagines what they would say to people if they could talk. By literally giving shelter animals a voice, McDonnell makes a very strong case for adoption rather than purchase of a pet – a case that, while it can sometimes be overdone and become strident, is most of the time delivered with exceptional artistic skill and emotional punch. A hardcover collection of Shelter Stories, with comics interspersed with photos of actual adopted animals and comments by the people who gave them homes, was published in 2008 and is now available in paperback – and it is more than worth a second look. The material here, both McDonnell’s and that taken from the real world, is enough to bring tears to a reader’s eyes. McDonnell’s endearing portraits of caged, rescued animals are amazingly sensitive, and his occasional use of his enormous talent for incorporating famous fine art into his strip – a touch of Matisse here, a bit of Raphael there – makes this book very special indeed. In fact, it is every bit as special as the many, many wonderful adoptable animals whose lives McDonnell, a strong advocate for animals, has been responsible for saving. The inclusion at the end of information on how to go about adopting a pet makes the heart-tugging plight portrayed in the book easy to diminish, and – as the photos and stories of real-world pets show – enormously satisfying.

     Adult matters of a different sort are explored by Sarah Andersen in her Sarah’s Scribbles cartoons, the second collection of which, Big Mushy Happy Lump, offers more of the wry and amusing (but, beneath it all, rather serious) observation found in the first, Adulthood Is a Myth. In the new book, Sarah’s big-eyed cartoon alter ego has everyday adventures to which adults of any age (not just millennials) should be able to relate. In one sequence, she looks around her messy home and thinks of how much she has to do – after which a stick figure labeled “Motivation” leaps away from her, out the window, and runs away, leaving Sarah as, well, a big mushy happy (and unmotivated) lump. Elsewhere, there is a sequence that every cat owner will recognize: the cat tries to decide where to nap, considering all the comfortable spots around the house (cat bed, human bed, couch) before deciding to flop on the computer keyboard while cartoon Sarah is trying to work. Then there are “Costumes to Scare Millennials,” one of which is “gluten” (a bread-slice costume) and another of which is “cell phone bill” (a Dracula-like figure saying, “I have come to drain your finances”). There is an occasional fashion strip here, such as “Describe Your Style,” in which spring is “casual and pretty,” summer is “light and fun,” fall is “comfy, cozy layers,” and winter is “ball of hatred trying to stay warm” – each description perfectly illustrated. There is a growing-up sequence showing cartoon Sarah being praised for intelligence in elementary school, middle school, and high school, until – in college – another of those stick figures, this one labeled “Reality,” slaps her in the face and says, “You are utterly average.” Toward the end of Big Mushy Happy Lump, Andersen provides some self-evaluative writing and then illustrates it, instead of having her feelings communicated strictly through cartoons. For instance, she writes, “I’m not good at interacting with the world. In fact, I’ve never been good at interacting with the world.” And then she shows various sorts of people in social situations: social butterfly, chameleon, wallflower – and herself as “a social blobfish.” Then, explaining her tendency to overthink and thus over-worry, she imagines “a superhero whose super power is the ability to say, ‘I don’t care.’” And then she draws a stick figure labeled “Over Thinking” worrying about possible social problems, only to be knocked down and defeated by a caped hero who flies in to state, “I don’t care.” Both the adult themes and the ways of coping with them are particularly skillfully handled in these “essay” parts of the book as well as in the part that communicate strictly through cartoon sequences.

     Andersen’s worries seem like nothing, however, compared with those that Orli Auslander explores at extended guilt-ridden length in I Feel Bad. Every Day. About Everything. Just think about that title – it sounds as if this is a book of therapy affirmations (or de-affirmations), not a book of cartoons. In fact, it is both: Auslander started doing these drawings as a form of therapy to cope with her incessant guilt feelings, but soon found that the panels connected with other people and could be a form of artistic expression – “neurotics love company,” Auslander opines. The fact is that while Auslander’s personal circumstances are entirely her own, her way of expressing her concerns, worries and fears does connect her with people who have concerns, worries and fears of their own, although not the same ones. Auslander helpfully numbers her illustrated “I Feel Bad” thoughts from 1 to 100, although the numbers do not in themselves have any particular meaning. Number 4, for instance, has her packing lunch for her son, who asks what he is having, to which Auslander (worried about the health content of just about everything) is shown saying, “The usual, honey. Cancer on whole wheat, fruit wrapped in cancer, and cancer juice.” On the counter is a roll of “Toxic Wrap.” Number 18 is “I buy my kids too many toys,” with an illustration of a huge Target store bearing a gigantic banner on the front, “Welcome Orli.” Number 31 is “my husband’s always the fun one,” showing Orli on one page encircled by comments such as “That’s bad for you,” “Put him down,” and “That’s too loud,” while the opposite page shows her husband, dressed as a smiling clown, surrounded by comments such as “Candy for breakfast?” and “Fireworks in the yard!” Number 68 is “I want to control everything and everyone,” showing small illustrations of Auslander telling an airline, “Too many delays,” telling her son, “Too much sugar,” telling her husband, “Too much spending,” and so on. Other numbered self-imposed guilt trips involve Auslander’s opinion of her body, her sex life, her enjoyment of vodka and marijuana, and more. None of her worries is really the remotest bit funny, but what she communicates so well here is that everybody has his or her own worries, fears, uncertainties, dissatisfactions and small-scale forms of unhappiness. These cartoons make it clear that Auslander’s particular concerns are specific to her – but at the same time touch a universal cord because she, like everyone who reads this book, has the misfortune…or good fortune…to be human.

(++++) ROBOTS AND SUCH

And the Robot Went… By Michelle Robinson. Illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier. Clarion. $16.99.

Evil Emperor Penguin. By Laura Ellen Anderson. David Fickling Books. $8.99.

     Sometimes an author has so much fun playing games with a conventional element of children’s books and stories that what results is something wholly UN-conventional. And when an author plays games with more than one standard element of kids’ books, what results is – well, something like And the Robot Went… The ellipsis in the title makes it clear (to adults, anyway) that this will be yet another book in which lots of things happen to or with a robot. And so it is – that’s one convention. How they happen is another: various characters do things to the robot, and the results are piled onto each other in house-that-Jack-built fashion. That’s another convention. And to make sure that young readers remember who elicited what from the robot, each page of Michelle Robinson’s book combines a large Sergio Ruzzier illustration of the latest thing happening with small ovals within which the characters that made earlier things happen are seen again. That’s a third convention. But Robinson and Ruzzier refuse to treat any of the conventions conventionally. First of all, the robot is pieced together by a Nosy Fox, Eager Beaver, Wicked Witch and other improbable characters, and what it does as each character performs some action is make a noise – it is the noises that pile up as the book progresses. Secondly, the things done to or with the robot are as entertaining and offbeat as the characters: “The Bear in the Blazer fired the laser,” for instance, and “the Crocodile turned the dial,” and “the Band of Knights polished the lights.” Thirdly, the characters refuse to sit calmly in their oval portraits as the book progresses: the fox falls asleep on one page, the witch ducks down so only her hat is visible on another, the beaver appears upside-down at one point, and so on. Things get mighty elaborate as well as mighty funny. By the time “the King of Dogs [wearing a crown of bones] clobbered the cogs,” the robot is in pieces all over the place and making sounds that include (but are not limited to) Tippa-Tappa, Flash, Clang, Zap and Boooo. And then it turns out that the book’s narrator is a little girl, and she announces, “Then along came me,” and she has a key to get the robot going, and she commands all the other characters to redo what they have already done to the robot – and by now, the robot has a distinct look of alarm on his face. And even though he has no choice but to go along with the manhandling he receives on the girl’s instructions, he certainly does not seem to be enjoying himself. And that would explain why, when everyone is finished doing everything, the robot is fully assembled, no longer in pieces or coming apart, and says “Thank. You.” to everyone – and then gets as far away from this crew of characters as he can. So And the Robot Went… (with ellipsis) turns, at the end, to “And the Robot…went.” The re-placement of those three dots turns out to be what the whole book is about. And a very clever, funny and oddly wistful book it is.

     Evil Emperor Penguin is a (+++) book that tries to be clever, but tries rather too hard and stumbles over its own would-be ingenuity. The title is about the neatest thing here: yes, there are emperor penguins, and yes, in various fantasy stories there are evil emperors, so why not create a portmanteau title? Well, that works pretty well. But the rest of Laura Ellen Anderson’s graphic novel is much more forced. Evil Emperor Penguin (EEP to his friends, if he had any friends) loves spaghetti rings and hates pretty much everything else. His chief minion is a small and adorable abominable snowman named Eugene who loves hugs, rainbows and unicorns, but still hangs around with EEP and supports EEP’s plans for world domination. His other cohort is a very tall, intellectual, monocle-wearing purple octopus named Number 8, always called “Squid” by EEP. The headquarters of EEP, Eugene and Number 8 includes a Spy Room of Evil, Parking Space of Evil, Evil Hat Closet of Evil, Living Room of Evil, and so on. The stories in the book – each short but all interconnected – have to do with EEP’s feckless plots to take over the world, and the way they either fail on their own or fail because Eugene inadvertently (or sometimes deliberately) turns the bad stuff into cute rainbows, unicorns and such. The dialogue here wears thin rather quickly: “We have urgent evil matters to discuss.” “Yes, evil master.” And although some plot elements are amusing (Eugene’s greatest fear turns out to be jelly babies in one chapter; in another, the “big red evil button” releases unicorns because EEP is “still working on its evil-ness”), others drag (Number 8 buys a cat that turns out to be an evil, anti-EEP mastermind; EEP’s greatest fear is his mother; EEP’s sister shows up wearing a cape like his and says she wants to be called Ruth-less rather than just Ruth). Actually, the summaries of the events are more interesting than the way they are worked out in the book: Evil Emperor Penguin has enough silliness so young fans of easy-to-read graphic novels will enjoy it. But really, yet another sure-to-fail robot invention that is supposed to be amusing just because it is called “Evil Emperor-Bot of Icy Doom” and is supposed to operate based on EEP’s use of a “Control Pad of Evil”? There is too much predictability and too much repetitiveness in the plotting for Evil Emperor Penguin to be fun for even slightly older graphic-novel readers. But kids just coming to the graphic-novel format will likely enjoy the book before moving on to something a tad less frothy.

(+++) ROCK ON

Small Town Talk: Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix & Friends in the Wild Years of Woodstock. By Barney Hoskyns. Da Capo. $15.99.

     Those who think rock ’n’ roll is capital-I Important and capital-M Meaningful will also think that the venues where rock musicians spent their time are capital-S Significant. And those capital-F Fans are the target audience for Barney Hoskyns’ in-depth look at the town of Woodstock, New York, which famously gave its name to the 1969 Woodstock Festival that actually happened 60 miles away because the town refused to give it a permit. The book, originally published last year and now available in paperback, is a 400-page paean to a capital-T Time and capital-P Place that are dear to the capital-H Hearts of true believers in the people and groups of the subtitle and a variety of producers, rock wannabes, hangers-on and others associated with the capital-S Scene.

     This is a book for rock-music-celebrity worshipers. Here are Hendrix, Morrison, Todd Rundgren, Paul Butterfield, English jazz bassist Dave Holland, Graham Parker (another Brit), and many more. Comments from a few of the people here have the ring of truth: singer Maria Muldaur and the poet and onetime Fug, Ed Sanders, are particularly good. And of course the inevitable drug binges pervade the book, and there is plenty of sex-with-the-stars stuff as well. But the center of Small Town Talk is someone who is notorious in the rock-history scene and unknown outside of it: Albert Grossman, who managed Dylan, The Band, Janis Joplin, and many others. Hoskyns seems to believe that Grossman was like a force of nature in the town of Woodstock, buying up property and opening restaurants and building the Bearsville Studio. But really, Grossman simply comes across as an opportunistic businessman, perhaps not very admirable but certainly not devilish in his doings. Yet Hoskyns clearly dislikes him with nearly visceral hatred, picking up approvingly on a comment from Dylan (who eventually got out from under Grossman’s thumb), “You could smell him coming.”

     Well, books need heroes (all the wonderful rock musicians of old) and villains; Grossman largely fills the latter role. But try as he may – and he does try – Hoskyns, a longtime writer about popular music who is based in London, cannot quite make Grossman loom large enough to shoulder responsibility for the deterioration of the capital-G Greatness of the capital-M Music associated with the people who, for a time, congregated in and around Woodstock. Hoskyns is at his best when encapsulating the capital-S Songs he admires (although he is, somewhat surprisingly, rather harsh on Dylan and his work). But writing about the music is not what he does in most of the book. Instead, he offers a chronological story about the coming of the capital-R Rock capital-M Music capital-S Scene to Woodstock – the capital-G Glory capital-D Days of that scene and the people in it – and he then follows matters through a whole series of disappointing, sometimes disastrous, sometimes merely dull endings that collectively show the studied impermanence of this music and the people who made it. The divisiveness and outright hatred spawned by participants in the so-called capital-S Summer of capital-L Love had already started to become clear with the Rolling Stones’ Altamont disaster in December 1969. What Hoskyns sticks around to chronicle is the slower but no less thorough dissolution of whatever spirit the not-held-in-Woodstock Woodstock Festival latched onto and tried to promote and propagate.

     Small Town Talk outstays its welcome by about 100 pages. Muldaur’s comments are useful in looking back at what once was (and what some people want to believe once was) a capital-I Important capital-P Place and capital-T Time, but there are rather too many of them. And after a while, it gets tiresome to read name-dropping, detail-drenched writing such as, “Having made three undistinguished albums of his own – and after surviving a bitter custody battle with Libby Titus over their daughter – Levon Holm began talking about a Band reunion in early 1983. The very notion appalled Robbie Robertson, who felt it made a mockery of the Last Waltz, but he opted not to block the Band Is Back tour that kicked off at the Joyous Lake on June 25, 1983. ‘Instead of coming up with new material they just repeated all their old material,’ John Simon said. …‘It had gotten to be what I call the vomit-and-sawdust crowd.’”

     In the long run – and we are already in the long run, nearly 50 years after the Woodstock Festival (which gets only minimal coverage), and more than 30 after the death of Grossman (1926-1986) – Woodstock-the-town just doesn’t matter very much as a capital-M Mecca for any but the most misguided aficionados of a long-gone Age of Aquarius era that long since turned out to be less significant than its more-vocal advocates proclaimed it to be. However hard he tries, Hoskyns cannot give this time, this town and these events any greater capital-S Significance than they actually had – which has turned out, except for a hardcore group that continues to pretend otherwise, to be Not Very Much.

(+++) KNOWN FOR OTHER THINGS

Sullivan: Songs. Mary Bevan, soprano; Ben Johnson, tenor; Ashley Riches, bass-baritone; David Owen Norris, piano. Chandos. $18.99 (2 CDs).

Nadia Boulanger: Songs; Works for Piano, for Cello and Piano, and for Organ. Nicole Cabell, soprano; Alek Shrader, tenor; Edwin Crossley-Mercer, baritone; Amit Peled, cello; François-Henri Houbart, organ; Lucy Mauro, piano. Delos. $24.99 (2 CDs).

     Let it be said immediately that these are specialty items, fascinating in their way for revealing sides of these composers that will be quite unfamiliar to most listeners – yet in both cases revealing rather too much and, if anything, confirming that the careers for which Sir Arthur Sullivan and Nadia Boulanger were far better known are ones at which they were in fact far better.

     Sullivan’s 14 collaborations with W.S. Gilbert are the works for which he is justifiably famed, even though he wrote quite a few other stage works (the grand opera Ivanhoe; the late and rather odd The Beauty Stone; two even later operas, The Rose of Persia and The Emerald Isle, both to libretti by Basil Hood; as well as ballets and incidental music). Sullivan also wrote choral, orchestral, chamber and church music – and a great number of songs. The exact number is rather hard to determine, since he sometimes offered the same music with different words (e.g., “In the Summers Long Ago” is also “My Love Beyond the Sea,” and “Bride from the North” is also “Bride of the Isles” and “The White Plume”). Furthermore, Sullivan’s songs sometimes occur within theatrical works: “Love Laid His Sleepless Head” in The Merry Wives of Windsor, for instance, and “Little Maid of Arcadee” in Thespis. So it is hard to know whether to deem them songs or parts of a larger theatrical production. Be all that as it may, Sullivan’s songs are little-enough known so that the very well-performed and generously proportioned two-CD set from Chandos is extremely welcome for anyone interested in less-familiar (and admittedly lesser) Sullivania. There is almost two-and-a-half hours of music here, and listening to the recording straight through is well-nigh impossible: these songs were mostly intended as individual pieces, and almost all come across better that way. That said, there are two cycles here that are of considerable interest: Five Shakespeare Songs (1866) and The Window; or, the Songs of the Wrens (1871), to words by Alfred, Lord Tennyson – ones that the poet laurate understandably decided after writing them that he would have preferred to retract (Sullivan would not hear of it). In addition to Tennyson, Sullivan favored lyrics by the short-lived Lionel H. Lewin (1848-1874) and a scattering of better-known literary figures: Victor Hugo, Robert Burns, Percy Bysshe Shelley. He also wrote songs to Biblical texts and in several languages: “Oh! ma charmante,” with words by Hugo, is the 1872 French version of a song that also appeared in Italian in 1873 as “Oh! bella mia” and in English in 1874 as “Sweet Dreamer.” Confused though the pedigree and enumeration of Sullivan’s songs may be, the one thing that this fine recording makes clear is that the composer was quite sensitive to whatever words he chose to set. The songs are scarcely trailblazing in expressiveness, harmony or overall construction, but they are without exception written to fit the words, emphasizing the verbal meanings and building upon the feelings and descriptions evoked by the language. In his collaborations with Gilbert, Sullivan was often frustrated at the primacy that the words seemed to receive over the music (shades of Richard Strauss’ Capriccio!). In these songs, though, he seems to have achieved a balance that he deemed suitable: Sullivan wrote songs from 1855, when he was just 13, until the year of his death, 1900, and would surely not have continued doing so had he been dissatisfied with the expressive potential created by words and music together. It is true that nothing in this generous helping of well-sung, well-played music will dislodge the impression that Sullivan was at his best when paired with Gilbert (who provided the words for only one of the songs heard here). But it is also true that this recording shows Sullivan to be a composer whose skills did not lie only on the stage or only in the comic: there is much here that is romantic, delicate, expressive, and simply beautiful.

     If Sullivan tends to be seen as a narrow composer, Nadia Boulanger tends not to be seen as one at all. The long-lived and brilliant pedagogue (1887-1979) was, however, a composer of some note in her earlier life, although she later devoted herself to promoting the music of her younger sister, Lili, and once famously told Gabriel Fauré, “If there is one thing of which I am certain, it is that I wrote useless music.” Yet this self-deprecating appraisal is not so, certainly not on the basis of a new two-CD Delos recording featuring 37 Nadia Boulanger compositions, including 13 that have never been recorded before. What is so is that unlike Lili (1893-1918), who accomplished much compositionally in her short life, Nadia never moved significantly beyond a variety of models with which she clearly felt close kinship. In other words, all the music here is derivative, to a greater or lesser extent, and all of it has a recognizable resemblance to the music of other, much-better-known composers of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Like the Sullivan set, this one offers a generous amount of music – nearly two hours – but little that is likely to keep listeners returning for additional hearings. Nadia’s 26 songs sound very much like the work of Debussy, occasionally shaded not with any highly personal style but with a soupçon of Saint-Saëns and touch of Franck. Nadia was also clearly familiar with Russian composers of the late-Romantic era; and although less prone than Sullivan to settings in multiple languages, she did write three songs to German words – but without anything particularly Germanic in the settings themselves. The performers handle the material admirably and idiomatically, but nothing here is particularly striking or, indeed, especially original in sound or setting: the music is not bad but merely ordinary. As for the instrumental works, those for piano are Vers la vie nouvelle and Trois pièces pour piano; there are also Trois pièces for cello and piano; and, for organ, Trois improvisations and Pièce sur des airs populaires flamands. Although these are not easy works, none of them is especially difficult; all come across as occasional pieces, the occasions perhaps being practice sessions for some of Boulanger’s more-advanced students. The last organ work connects to an opportunity missed in this recording, for although these pieces represent Nadia’s complete works in these specific forms, they are not all the music she wrote. In particular, in 1912, Nadia wrote a flamboyant and rather silly six-movement work called Fantasie (variée) for piano and orchestra – one that goes well beyond the rather mild “airs populaires flamands” in the solo-organ piece to produce a work somewhat on the order of Ernő Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Tune, and written in something of the same thumbing-one’s-nose-at-the-world spirit. It is unfair to criticize this release for what it does not include, but the reality is that Nadia’s Fantasie (variée) shows a far less serious and sober, far less academic side of the famous teacher, and one that it would have been delightful to experience along with the well-made but ultimately rather nondescript items offered here. Perhaps an enterprising recording company will decide to present, at some point, a CD containing Nadia’s Fantasie (variée), Dohnányi’s Variations, Shostakovich’s arrangement of Tea for Two, and a few other works in the same spirit. That would be a spirited release indeed.

(++++) BACK TO HARRY’S WORLD

Hogwarts Library: Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them; Quidditch Through the Ages; The Tales of Beedle the Bard. By J.K. Rowling. Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic. $38.99.

     The new editions of three ancillary books in the Harry Potter canon, nicely transformed from their original small paperback format to a larger and more-elegant hardcover appearance and placed within a library-style cardboard slipcase, offer fans of J.K. Rowling’s books a new chance to appreciate the world-creating that has helped make her tales so wildly popular. One way Rowling went beyond traditional fantasy-adventure stories was by suggesting the sorts of things that students of magic might study at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry – and then producing some of the actual books that the students might have used in their classes. That is what these three slim volumes are. In addition, Rowling wove the “study” books into the fabric of the Harry Potter tales by, for example, having The Tales of Beedle the Bard (“translated by Hermione Granger”) contain “notes by Professor Albus Dumbledore,” and then writing the book in two separate voices – one representing Hermione’s “translation” of that of the storyteller of long ago, the other sounding much like that of the headmaster of Hogwarts in Harry’s time. This authorial complexity, for which Rowling does not always get sufficient credit, helps make the Harry Potter tales a good deal more than just another example of escapist magical fantasy.

     Now, of course, these little literary sidelights on the Harry Potter world are in the process of becoming extended items of their own. This actually began within the primary Harry Potter books themselves, since the Beedle stories are crucial to the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and to the two movies made from that book. But now Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them is in the process of becoming its own multi-movie franchise, and although no plans for a quidditch movie have been announced, who knows what the future may bring? Potterphilia has already shown its ability to move beyond the original fans of the seven Rowling novels – many of those fans literally grew up alongside Harry, Ron and Hermione, and now have families of their own and are ready to bring the Rowling universe to a new generation. And the nostalgia value of revisiting a world of magic and miracles, one in which evil is pervasive but conquerable by those of good will and good heart, should not be underestimated.

     As for these three books themselves, they are essentially the same in 2017 as they were when they first appeared in 2001 (Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages) and 2007 (The Tales of Beedle the Bard). The ostensible author of Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them, Newt Scamander, is the central character in the new films, but the focus of the book itself is not its author but the beasts herein discussed. Rowling apparently had a lot of fun with this little book. For example, in a passage about the Fwooper, “an African bird with extremely vivid plumage” that looks amusing even in the black-and-white illustration, and whose song “will eventually drive the listener to insanity,” there is this footnote: “Uric the Oddball attempted at one time to prove that Fwooper song was actually beneficial to the health and listened to it for three months on end without a break. Unfortunately the Wizards’ Council to which he reported his findings were unconvinced, as he had arrived at the meeting wearing nothing but a toupee that on closer inspection proved to be a dead badger.” The beasts themselves are fascinating to read about, including the “Quintaped (also known as Hairy MacBoon,” which has “a particular taste for humans,” the Dugbog, “which resembles a piece of dead wood while stationary,” and many others. The book is intriguing enough so that it could be an entry point to the Harry Potter novels themselves, for those not yet initiated into their pleasures.

     The other two books are more rarefied. Quidditch Through the Ages “by Kennilworthy Whisp” is strictly for those enamored of the sport in which Harry excels at Hogwarts and in which many of his friends also participate – it helps to know the books’ passages about quidditch matches before launching into discussions of “creaothceann,” which is “the most dangerous of all broom games,” as well as “shuntbumps,” “swivenhodge” and other games. Details of how quidditch is played, which teams play it, and so on, are for fans of fantasy sports – that is, sports that really are fantasies. As for The Tales of Beedle the Bard, its stories are interesting in themselves, but they are so tightly woven into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that they make a poor entry point to Rowling’s world – they are really best read while exploring that final, very long novel, or as a sort of appendix afterwards. Taken as a whole, these new hardcover editions of the three short books, collected under the overall title of Hogwarts Library, will make an excellent addition to the shelf of anyone who already has the original seven-book Harry Potter sequence. And they will be even more enjoyable for Potterphiles who are eagerly following the expansion of Rowling’s original conception into the stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the new set of movies featuring Newt Scamander as protagonist, and into who-knows-what other realms of magic and muggles.

(++++) SEARCH AND FIND

The Queen’s Handbag. By Steve Antony. Scholastic. $17.99.

Tugboat Bill and the River Rescue. By Calista Brill. Illustrated by Tad Carpenter. Harper. $17.99.

     There is a certain old-fashioned charm to these stories of chasing and rescue: nothing is ever really in significant peril, but the idea of problems being solved by attractive and amusing characters makes the books easy to read and easy to enjoy – and the illustrations help quite a bit. Queen Elizabeth II is scarcely a likely protagonist for Steve Antony’s The Queen’s Handbag, but Antony here follows his previous The Queen’s Hat with another bit of royal silliness that might cause the queen herself to crack a decorous smile. This is a chase story, plain and simple: as the queen’s coach is pulled through the streets of London at the start of her tour of Great Britain, “a sneaky swan” (sporting traditional black “burglar stripes” around its white body) snatches the royal handbag. The reason for this is simply to give Antony an excuse to show a variety of British locations and scenes, through all of which the determined queen chases the bird – with a long line of British bobbies also in pursuit, as feckless as the Keystone Kops from the other side of the Atlantic. Antony lavishes his artistic talent on the places where the pursuit takes place rather than on the humans doing the pursuing: young readers get to see Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, the White Cliffs of Dover, and other famous locations – details of which are offered at the back of the book. Although the geography takes up most of the space in The Queen’s Handbag, the royal pursuit offers most of the amusement: the queen chases the swan via car, motorcycle, jet plane, an old-fashioned bicycle with a huge front wheel, a parachute festooned with the Union Jack, and other thoroughly entertaining conveyances. The bobbies, meanwhile, are surprisingly well individualized as they are shown crowded on the Giant’s Causeway, crammed into a train passing beneath the Angel of the North sculpture, riding horses past Edinburgh Castle while some of their number run along the battlements, and eventually presenting a “Where’s Waldo?” moment in which readers have to find the swan in a crowd of athletes running the London Marathon. The queen finally tackles the swan and retrieves her handbag, the swan gets a stern talking-to from one of the bobbies, and all ends thoroughly amusingly and entirely satisfactorily.

     All’s well at the end of Tugboat Bill and the River Rescue, too, but this is as much an American story as The Queen’s Handbag is a British one. Calista Brill’s book is set in New York City, specifically in and about the Hudson River that runs along the west side of Manhattan (the island to which people usually refer when they say “New York”). The gently rhyming text mirrors the river’s rhythms: “The Hudson River is/ smooth or choppy./ It is blue or gray./ It is swift or sluggish/ depending on the day.” Bill has a human captain who spends just about all his time sleeping while Bill does the needed work of escorting ships along the river. One of those craft is Mabel, an old barge that is “loyal and brave/ and just a bit leaky.” These two working-class river friends are mocked by the “big and graceful” ships also found along the river, which “think they are so great” (Tad Carpenter’s illustrations show their haughty expressions quite clearly). But when the chips are down, the heroes here are Mabel and Bill: a kitten falls into the water, the self-important big ships refuse to trouble themselves or get dirty by rescuing it, and it is up to Mabel and Bill to get the soaking kitten out of the river to perch, safe and sound, atop Mabel’s deck – resulting in an award for heroism and the jealousy of the big, fancy ships, which “aren’t happy” and do not deserve to be. By the end of the book, the kitten has become the mascot of Mabel and Bill – complete with sailor hat – and people on shore are cheering the barge and tugboat when they see them, the sun is shining brightly and smiling down on everyone, and Bill’s captain remains fast asleep. The story is simple, amusing and just a touch heartwarming, the illustrations fit the tale perfectly, and Tugboat Bill and the River Rescue has a look about it reminiscent of such New York river classics as Hildegarde’s Swift’s beloved The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge. The city, its river traffic and its stories are, of course, nothing like the tales in these books, but the sense of wonder and fun conveyed by Brill and Carpenter makes a journey on the make-believe Hudson River at least as enjoyable as a trip on the real one.

(++++) COMEDIC CHARACTERS’ PURPOSES

Snoopy to the Rescue: A “Peanuts” Collection. By Charles Schulz. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

Fly Guy Phonics. By Tedd Arnold. Scholastic. $12.99.

The Bad Guys #3: The Furball Strikes Back. By Aaron Blabey. Scholastic. $5.99.

Victor Shmud, Total Expert #1: Let’s Do a Thing! By Jim Benton. Scholastic. $5.99.

     It seems pretty obvious that the purpose of amusing characters is to amuse readers. But within the context in which the characters are described in words or shown in pictures (or both), there are often reasons for their existence beyond simply “to be funny.” Thus, Snoopy became, over the years, something of the heart and soul of Charles Schulz’ wonderful Peanuts comic strip. Charlie Brown, Snoopy’s angst-ridden owner and the perpetually put-upon central character of Peanuts, certainly needed a foil to bring some light to a strip that was darker than many adults now remember when they gaze back at it fondly (Schultz died in 2000, so it has been a long time since there have been any new strips!). Snoopy is not all sweetness and light, but his basically positive attitude toward life, his willingness to take what comes and cope with it – sometimes through elaborate fantasies – stands in stark contrast to the attitude of Charlie Brown, who at one point says that he has improved his outlook because now “I only dread one day a time.” The latest Andrews McMeel repackaging of Peanuts strips, Snoopy to the Rescue, certainly has its share of Charlie Brown-isms, as when Linus asks Charlie Brown if he prefers to solve a life problem immediately or think about it for a while, and Charlie Brown replies that you should definitely think about it “to give it time to go away.” But there are plenty of Snoopy-isms on display here as well. There is the hockey face-off in which Snoopy gives Lucy a “smak” right on the nose and ends up in the penalty box; the baseball scene in which Snoopy gets the “Rookie of the Year” award and then misses an easy catch because he is holding his huge award trophy and plaque; the “World War I Flying Ace” scene in which Snoopy discovers it is raining and decides not to fly because “I hate to get my plane wet”; Snoopy’s attempt to climb the dreaded kite-eating tree to rescue Schroeder’s piano after Lucy throws it into the tree in one of her usual fits of pique; and a now-classic strip in which Lucy tells the happily dancing Snoopy that “you wouldn’t be so happy if you knew what was going to happen,” and Snoopy, pausing for a moment in his dance, then resumes it with the thought, “Maybe it’s already happened!” That is classic Snoopy, and a reason that Snoopy is a classic character within a classic and still-much-beloved comic strip.

     Peanuts was always aimed as much at adults as at kids, if not more, but many cartoon characters are specifically designed for kids’ enjoyment. Tedd Arnold’s Fly Guy is one of them – but his purpose is a loftier-than-usual one in an excellent new 12-short-book package called Fly Guy Phonics. This is exactly what the title says: books that help teach young readers about all five vowels in both their long and short forms in 10 books, plus two workbooks to apply the lessons of the 10 instructive ones. What is particularly enjoyable about Fly Guy Phonics is that the books tell stories that really do reflect the personality of Fly Guy, who is the pet of Buzz and can say the boy’s name (“buzz,” of course). The “short A” book, for example, is a very funny school-lunchroom story in which Fly Guy is responsible for the lunch lady getting fired and then helps her get her job back. Among the short-A words here are fast, smack, mad, bad, grab and class. “Short O” has Buzz and Fly Guy visiting a pet shop and features words including dog, sloppy, rock, spot, chomp and knock. The “long E” book is an “origin” story, showing how Buzz and Fly Guy first met; among the words here are street, meet, eat, need, free and see. “Long U” features Fly Guy meeting a girl fly; among the words here are cute, dude, flew, food, true and rude. As for the workbooks, the first deals with short vowels and the second with long ones. The challenges here are actually fun. For instance, kids have to unscramble letters to make “short E” words, change “short I” words to “short O” ones, draw lines between words that connect because they have the same vowel sounds, do word searches for words that have specific vowel sounds, and more. It is true that this nicely boxed set will be attractive only for kids who already know Arnold’s Fly Guy adventures – a lot of it is fun precisely because it calls on Fly Guy’s personality and love of fly-ish things, such as garbage and smelly messes. For Fly Guy fans, though, it will certainly be a big hit.

     Aaron Blabey’s The Bad Guys books are hits in a different way. The purpose of this madcap series is primarily just enjoyment, but there is an undercurrent here of not judging a book (or a character) by its cover (or appearance) and of accepting the possibility that people (or characters) typecast in one specific way can turn out to be quite different from what is expected. Blabey deliberately downplays the “message” elements of this series, though, and in the third entry turns them upside-down. The Furball Strikes Back picks up after the end of the second book, Mission Unpluckable, in which the team of bad-guys-determined-to-do-good rescues 10,000 chickens from a dastardly chicken farm – and then, at the end, rescues an adorable little guinea pig named Marmalade. Alas, it turns out that Marmalade is the owner of the dastardly chicken farm, and many other evil places as well, and in The Furball Strikes Back he seeks revenge on the bad-guys-doing-good and at the same time wants, as usual with mad scientists, to conquer and take over the world. The Bad Guys are “the monsters that haunt our darkest nightmares,” as a TV reporter explains at the start of this book, but they are determined – under the guidance of their leader, Mr. Wolf – to change their image and do good for a change. The team includes Mr. Shark, Mr. Snake, Legs the Tarantula, and Mr. Piranha, who is irritated at being constantly referred to as a “mutant sardine.” Mr. Snake is the crabby one who does not really believe in the whole “heroes” thing. Mr. Shark is the master of disguise – well, actually no, he looks utterly ridiculous, but somehow all the other characters in these books think his disguises are absolutely perfect. Legs is the technology expert here, and Mr. Piranha supplies a lot of the comic relief, as when he has to “go ‘number two’” on the way to the latest showdown with evil. The Bad Guys are, you know, guys, but that element of the series changes a bit in The Furball Strikes Back, when the team encounters a particularly foxy fox from the International League of Heroes – dressed as a ninja. Mr. Wolf immediately falls for her, leading him to claim to be good at motorcycle riding even though he cannot ride a motorcycle, all of which leads to yet another improbable and thoroughly ridiculous escape from certain death and doom perpetrated by Dr. Rupert Marmalade, who has “created a secret weapon that would make sure no one ever called him cute and cuddly again.” The weapon turns out to be, umm, zombie kittens (zombie kittens?), and the outcome of the Bad Guys’ confrontation with them will have to wait for the next book in the series. All of which is fine with Blabey, who undoubtedly has Attack of the Zittens just about ready to go already.

     Blabey is prolific, but not quite at the level of Jim Benton, who seems to invent new comic and cartoon characters at the drop of a hat – and even when not wearing a hat. Benton’s best characters have specific purposes beyond their obvious entertainment value: Happy Bunny, for example, is an antidote to all the super-sweet greeting-card characters out there, looking adorable but acting nasty and rotten, while middle-schooler Jamie Kelly is a perfect compilation of all the worries and silliness that Benton can pack into the Dear Dumb Diary series. But Benton characters without any apparent reason for being except to extend the “Benton character line” are weaker, which is why the first book in a new series called Victor Shmud, Total Expert gets a (+++) rating. There is no real personality to Victor, whose misplaced confidence in his own wonderfulness comes across as rather pathetic, in contrast to, say, that of Lincoln Peirce’s Big Nate. Victor considers himself a computer scientist because he turned a box upside-down and called it the “Electro-Brain Three Million,” believes he could easily be a teacher or the school principal, and considers himself an Expert Bird Veterinarian – but repeatedly identifies his ever-faithful sidekick, Dumpylumps, as a chicken, even though Dumpylumps is a duck. That oh-so-obvious mistake makes Victor less appealing than he otherwise might be – it is just too far out. Victor also declares himself “an expert on knowing when people aren’t completely right,” and a “Makeover Expert” who needs only a comb and a jar of mustard to beautify people. Or, as it turns out, aliens. But before meeting the aliens, Victor goes to school along with Dumpylumps, who is more interesting and smarter than Victor himself even though Benton says “most things amaze” the little duck: “the universe, invisibility, peanut butter.” Victor’s teacher, Mrs Nozzleburp, is old and crotchety-looking, but Victor adores her even though he never pays attention to what she says. Victor also has a friend named Patti, who introduces him to a cellphone game called “Interspace Destruction Warriors” that Victor cannot play at all but that Dumpylumps wins by sitting on Patti’s phone. And that brings in the aliens, who are called Grooglings and who teleport Victor and Dumpylumps to their battered spaceship to get help fighting their enemies, the Frappletonians. Everything gets formulaically complicated, including Victor’s ability to use his cellphone in space to talk to Patti and Mrs. Nozzleburp back on Earth. The book is very amply illustrated, but most of Benton’s pictures here are not among his best – except for the beauty-makeover sequences, which are hilarious. In the first one, Victor tries out his mustard approach on the school janitor, Mr. Plumporski, and Benton shows the portly, mustachioed janitor in three poses taken right out of a fashion magazine – and, later, with super-long, super-curly hair that can only be stopped from getting even curlier by a bucket of mop water. It later turns out that the same treatment works on aliens just as well (or badly), and Victor’s eventual return to Earth is enabled by his use of the mustard on the Grooglings, who assume the same sorts of fashion-magazine poses in which Benton placed Mr. Plumporski. If the entire Victor Shmud, Total Expert book had been at this level, it would have been right up there with Benton’s best. It is not, though – not even in its title, the essentially meaningless Let’s Do a Thing! Certainly Benton plans to have Victor do a number of other “things,”  but unless Victor himself becomes a more interesting character, all that will likely happen in this series is that one thing will lead to another. And another.

(+++) DEATH AS AN INCONVENIENCE

Verlaque and Bonnet No. 6: The Curse of La Fontaine. By M.L. Longworth. Penguin. $15.

     There is no charm in murder, but there is much that is charming about murder in the Verlaque and Bonnet mysteries by M.L. (Mary Lou) Longworth. The reason is that death and killing are not central to these very Gallic explorations of fine wine, delicious food, lovely settings, and – quel dommage – the occasional corpse. The decidedly leisurely pace of these stories of examining magistrate Antoine Verlaque and law professor Marine Bonnet is integral to the charm and effectiveness of the novels. The sixth book in the series, The Curse of La Fontaine, starts with Antoine and Marine getting married at last, at a location described by Longworth with her usual thoroughness, pleasant verbiage and sure eye for detail. Then the book meanders through a series of neatly titled chapters: “Verlaque Eats a Disappointing Lunch,” “Paulik Thinks, ‘Welcome to the Real World,’” “Suzette’s Ginger Shrimp,” and so forth. The linchpin of the story is the discovery of a skeleton in a shallow grave next to a fountain in Aix-en-Provence, where Longworth has lived for 20 years. Longworth takes time out from fine descriptive passages of food and scenery to create a context for the discovery and produce the central mystery. The basic story is that restaurateur Bear Valets plans to introduce outdoor seating at his upscale “La Fontaine,” which means placing tables in a courtyard that the establishment shares with neighbors – who fear noise and disruption and seek ways to thwart the plan. It is while digging a garden that Valets discovers the body – at the spot where a peasant was once executed for failing to salute the king.

     It is this body that forms the central mystery here, as Verlaque is called to investigate it and discovers that it is probably only about eight years old – dating to the time when the son of a local count disappeared. Lest that seem too neat a solution (the son proves to have been the proverbial “black sheep” of the family), Verlaque discovers a monarchist plot (with Bonnet going undercover into a royalist group to look for possible connections with the killing), human trafficking, and drug sales, not to mention the Association Historique Aixoise. Oh, and the fountain where the skeleton is found has a local reputation as being cursed.

     There are, as usual in these genially written books, echoes of other well-mannered mysteries, as well as some tropes of the field, such as, in this case, threats that start coming to Valets and require some of Verlaque’s investigative energy. Verlaque’s position as “examining magistrate” does not exist in the English-speaking world, but it is essentially that of formally sanctioned detective. Verlaque is also a great enjoyer of the finer things of French life, including the pleasant company of sophisticated (and frequently well-connected) neighbors and friends. Most of the characters here are not explored in much depth, but their surroundings are: the Verlaque and Bonnet books are all about the setting and the circumstances of the stories, far more than they are about any sort of action or character development (although personalities that are explored at length and in depth, especially those of the protagonists, are limned so effectively that readers will feel they really know these people as people).

     A major reason for staying with the slow unraveling of this and other Verlaque and Bonnet mysteries is to experience some unalloyed Francophilia. This is also why the books will not be to all readers’ taste. When Bonnet tells Verlaque, “I once had a friend who said that Sartre and Beauvoir lied to each other and everyone else,” adding that “Sartre was a classic philanderer straight out of Molière and Beavoir put up with it,” readers who are not steeped in the lives of French philosophers may find the subject matter confusing or, worse, boring. And when, after listening carefully, Verlaque says to Bonnet, “Just give your readers the facts and make it an enjoyable read,” it is necessary to accept the multi-level reality that Verlaque’s advice is sincere and integral to (and reflective of) his personality, but it is not advice in which the actual author of this pleasantly discursive book, Longworth, has any interest – or for which she has any empathy. “Just the facts” is an American approach to detective work. “La vie est si intéressant!" (“Life is so interesting!”) is a better encapsulation of The Curse of La Fontaine and the other tales of Verlaque and Bonnet.

(++++) AS CONCERTOS DEVELOPED

Mozart: Horn Concertos Nos. 1-4; Rondo, K371; Bassoon Concerto. Louis-Philippe Marsolais, horn; Mathieu Lussier, bassoon and conducting Les Violons du Roy. ATMA Classique. $16.99.

Bériot: Violin Concertos Nos. 4, 6 and 7; Air varié No. 4; Scène de ballet. Ayana Tsuji, violin; Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra, Pardubice conducted by Michael Halász. Naxos. $12.99.

Nielsen: Flute Concerto; Clarinet Concerto; Aladdin Suite. Samuel Coles, flute; Mark van de Wiel, clarinet; Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Paavo Järvi. Signum Classics. $17.99.

Jennifer Higdon: Viola Concerto; Oboe Concerto; All Things Majestic. Roberto Díaz, viola; James Button, oboe; Nashville Symphony conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero. Naxos. $12.99.

     Although established in the Baroque era as a way to contrast one or more solo instruments with a larger complement, the concerto evolved significantly, and quite quickly, as composers realized its potential, and as instruments – and their players – became more and more adept at more and more complex performance techniques. Concertos were often written for specific performers: Mozart wrote many of his piano concertos for himself and others for his pupils. His horn concertos, however, were written for Joseph Leitgeb (1732-1811), and matched so well to Leitgeb’s abilities that it is possible to note the considerable skill required in the early concertos and the diminution of Leitgeb’s ability, for which Mozart made allowances, later on. Sometimes played on the natural horn for which they were written, sometimes on a valve horn, the four completed concertos are by any standards music of great beauty and wonderful flow. Louis-Philippe Marsolais plays them with understanding as well as skill on a new ATMA Classique recording that also features the clean, clear and chamber-like sound of Les Violons du Roy under Mathieu Lussier. Indeed, the lightness of the scoring and the clarity of pacing and balance are major attractions throughout the CD, which also includes a standalone horn movement, Rondo, K371, that was probably intended to be part of a fifth concerto but never made it that far. There is polish as well as hunting-horn proclamation in Marsolais’ handling of all the horn works, and Lussier gives him fine backup throughout. And then Lussier himself shines forth as soloist in Mozart’s earliest wind concerto, for bassoon – a work that allows the bassoon to show its virtuosic capabilities and its emotive ones as well, with its better-known clownish and bubbly sounds reserved for the final movement. Lussier seems genuinely to enjoy playing this music, taking his instrument through all its paces while retaining exemplary control of the ensemble.

     By the time of the Romantic era, concertos were serving stirring emotional purposes as well as ones of display and exploration of instrumental capabilities. Naxos has been very slowly working its way through the complete violin concertos of Charles-Auguste de Bériot (1802-1870), having now released recordings of nine of the composer’s 10 – with entirely different soloists and ensembles. Nos. 1, 8 and 9 were recorded all the way back in 1986 by Takako Nishizaki and the RTBF Symphony Orchestra, Brussels, conducted by Alfred Walter. Nos. 2, 3 and 5 were recorded in 2006 by Philippe Quint and the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra under Kirk Trevor. And now Nos. 4, 6 and 7 are available in performances from 2016 by Ayana Tsuji and the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra, Pardubice conducted by Michael Halász. Tsuji, a first-rate young violinist, seems to have no trouble whatsoever with the complex bowing techniques and other performance difficulties of these works; and while the emotional elements of the concertos are primarily surface-level, she brings out what feelings the works do have with very considerable skill. Bériot wrote these for himself to play, and it is clear from the techniques required that he deserved the very high esteem in which he was held in his time. These days he is better known as a pedagogue than as a concerto composer, but Tsuji and Halász bring out what depths the concertos possess very well indeed. The CD actually had plenty of room on it to include a performance of No. 10, the only one of these concertos not yet available from Naxos, but instead it offers two extended showpieces that show the composer’s skill in other forms. Air varié No. 4, titled “Montagnard,” is a fairly typical set of variations on a fairly ordinary theme, a work not intended to go beyond superficiality but presenting its material with great smoothness and attractively varied technique. And Scène de ballet, perhaps Bériot’s best-known piece and actually a series of different forms at different speeds, comes off simply splendidly here: Tsuji and Halász play the music with substantial joie de vivre and a fine sense of pacing and balance. Hopefully that elusive Concerto No. 10 will be forthcoming from these same performers without the need for an extended wait.

     Neither brightness nor a sense of fun will be found in the Nielsen concertos heard on a new Signum Classics release: these are serious works that go well past the era of Romantic expressiveness and handle the contrast of solo instrument with ensemble quite differently. They are, in one way, tied to the past: Nielsen wrote them for specific performers. But the ways in which they break with earlier concertos are more notable than any in which they resemble them. The Flute Concerto goes beyond Nielsen’s usual refusal to allow the ear to settle on a work’s home key (even his First Symphony begins in one key and ends in another): it is unsettled throughout, landing in one key sometimes, another at other times, and generally keeping listeners unsure of where it is going tonally (the first movement alone is in three keys and seems to end in a fourth). The work is also in two movements rather than the traditional three or four. It feels somewhat like chamber music, and in this way (and this way alone) bears some resemblance to the concertos of Mozart’s time. But the prominent bass trombone makes it quite clear that this is a concerto of a much later era. Samuel Coles handles it stylishly, with very fine support from the Philharmonia Orchestra under Paavo Järvi. The Clarinet Concerto is an even more dissonant work, and also includes an instrument not usually associated with the solo instrument here: the snare drum, which repeatedly challenges the clarinet and often seems to throw or pull it off track. Nielsen’s tonal approach stretches even farther here – the keys of E and F struggle with each other throughout the work. And now the composer produces an extended concerto in a single movement, although its sections break down into what could be called four movements played without pause. Keeping this work moving smartly ahead and giving it cohesiveness can be a real challenge for soloist and orchestra alike. Mark van de Wiel and Järvi prove themselves equal to the task – and Järvi does a particularly nice job with the concerto’s textures, which reflect scoring that is even closer to chamber music than is that of the Flute Concerto. The orchestra gets its own chance to shine in the Aladdin Suite, a lighter work than either concerto and one that in many ways sounds less like “typical Nielsen,” to the extent that this ever-developing composer had a “typical” sound. The seven-movement suite moves along through a series of suitably contrasting scenic displays. The fifth of these, “The Marketplace in Ispahan,” is the most unusual and sonically interesting, although the concluding “Negro Dance” makes for a rousing conclusion as an orchestral display piece. Taken as a whole, this recording is a showcase for two very adept woodwind soloists, an always-excellent orchestra, and a composer whose non-symphonic works remain, more than 80 years after his death, less commonly performed than their quality suggests they should be.

     Concertos continued to develop after Nielsen’s, of course, and remain a popular form for composers to use today. Jennifer Higdon (born 1962) has some interesting and unusual ideas about how to handle the format, as listeners will hear on a new Naxos CD. Higdon’s penchant for using tonality and atonality as the mood strikes her is evident in the concertos here, of which the Viola Concerto (2014) is especially successful. The opening movement is quite lovely, sharing in some of the musical sentiments heard later on the disc in All Things Majestic. The work’s second movement is spirited, forthright and folklike in sound and feeling. The finale has it both ways, its lyrical elements eventually giving way to brightness and jazzy, dance-like vitality. Roberto Díaz, for whom the work was written, plays it with great style and apparently effortless virtuosity, and the Nashville Symphony under Giancarlo Guerrero provides first-rate backup. Higdon’s concerto is not in the same league with the 20^th-century giants of the form, the concertos by Bartók and Walton, but it is attractive, well-made and a worthy addition to the repertoire for an instrument that to this day remains comparatively neglected in a solo role. The Oboe Concerto (2005) is more consistently lyrical, with an unusual single-movement structure that both begins and ends with a single sustained note in the solo instrument’s middle register – a hint and affirmation that beauty and warmth of sound are central here (although there is a certain amount of playfulness as well, in the work’s middle section). James Button plays the concerto with a lovely tone, and again the orchestra provides fine support. All Things Majestic (2011) complements the concertos in some ways but is more obvious than they are: it is a set of four scene-paintings of Grand Teton National Park, and while the individual movements (“Teton Range,” “String Lake,” “Snake River” and “Cathedrals”) contain appropriately descriptive musical elements, the suite as a whole goes on rather long and is pretty much one-dimensional in its repeated (and again repeated) portrayals of beauty and expansiveness. It is pleasant and accessible music but not as distinguished or interesting as the two concertos here – which, individually and together, show just how effectively the concerto form itself continues to thrive.