Stravinsky: Three Russian Sacred Choruses; Mass; Cantata; Babel; Symphony of Psalms. Robert Craft conducting soloists, the Gregg Smith Singers, the Simon Joly Chorale, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the Philharmonia Orchestra. Naxos. $8.99.
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7, “Leningrad.” Kurt Masur conducting Orchestre National de France. Naïve. $16.99.
For Russian composers of the 20th century, there were really only two choices: flee or accommodate. Igor Stravinsky, famously, fled; Dmitri Shostakovich, equally famously, accommodated. The contrasts between the works they produced are surely due in part to their very different relationships to their homeland, just as they are partly due to differences in temperament and training. Yet each composer was, in his own way, Russian to the core.
Stravinsky’s Three Russian Sacred Choruses were specifically written to be used in the Russian Orthodox Church, and are for chorus only – the church does not allow use of musical instruments. The Mass, which does include instruments, uses the five traditional sections of the Latin mass and encapsulates this Roman Catholic religious experience in 17 minutes. Religious music of this sort was anathema in what was then the Soviet Union, which was officially atheist. Yet Stravinsky clearly felt the pull of religious traditions strongly, and thanks to his exile was able to explore them at length. Nor did he stop with the New Testament: both Babel and the justly famous Symphony of Psalms draw on the Old Testament. The first of these uses text from Genesis, while the second uses parts of Psalms 38 and 39 and all of Psalm 150. Babel includes both a narrator (David Wilson-Johnson in the new Naxos Robert Craft CD) and a male chorus, as well as orchestra, while the Symphony of Psalms is for chorus and orchestra only. Craft understands this music viscerally as well as intellectually, and his performances of all these works reach out successfully beyond the religious texts to the wider audience that Stravinsky sought.
In some ways, the most interesting piece on the latest Naxos/Craft CD is the one least tied to traditional religion: Cantata for 5 Instruments, Female Chorus, Mezzo-Soprano and Tenor. This is a seven-movement work whose central “Ricercar II: ‘Tomorrow Shall Be’” is almost as long as the other six movements put together. Craft expertly merges and highlights the voices of mezzo Mary Ann Hart and tenor Thomas Bogdan with the Gregg Smith Singers and Fred Sherry’s cello, Stephen Taylor’s oboe, Melanie Field’s oboe and cor anglais, and the flutes of Michael Parloff and Bart Feller. There is some straightforward religiosity here: that central “Ricercar II” involves Christ’s foretelling of his crucifixion. But there are also four dirges, a poem of a young bride and more – the totality being an emotionally complex and highly moving work to which Craft provides forward thrust and an overall feeling of unity.
Several of these Stravinsky pieces cluster in or around World War II: Babel dates to 1944 and the Mass was started the same year, though not finished until 1948. But none of these pieces speaks directly to the war, as Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 most assuredly does. The first three movements of the composer’s longest symphony were written in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) while the city was under siege by the Nazis in 1941; the triumphal fourth movement was written after Shostakovich and his family had been evacuated. This symphony quickly became immensely popular in a world at war, and its final triumphalism – required in any case by Soviet rules – effectively united the Allies with Russia and obscured the fact that Stalin was a greater mass murderer than Hitler. Yet the work has not had the staying power of some other Shostakovich symphonies or of Stravinsky’s more modestly scaled pieces (this symphony lasts longer than the entire Stravinsky CD).
The Shostakovich Seventh actually has some relationship to Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, which is recalled in the opening to the symphony’s Adagio. But Shostakovich’s work is most famous for the strident and vulgar march in the first movement, which most commentators take to represent the advancing Nazis. Shostakovich’s technique here was not new: the 11-minute crescendo recalls both Ravel’s Bolero and Rossini’s technique of raising volume by adding instruments, while the increasing menace of side drums sounds much like what Nielsen produced in his Fifth Symphony (written in 1922, shortly after the previous world war). But Shostakovich’s willingness to let the theme be vulgar, to allow it to swallow the idealized simplicity that was portrayed earlier in the movement, was immensely effective – and still is in Kurt Masur’s performance, which pulls out all the stops here. But even Masur’s intensity and the fine playing of Orchestre National de France cannot bring the remaining movements fully into line with the first, which practically stands on its own as a tone poem (which is actually how Shostakovich originally conceived it). The finale, in particular, seems tacked on: it is easy to see why it was welcomed worldwide when international performances began in 1942, but if the first-movement march represents the banality of evil, this movement’s conclusion seems to show the banality of victory. This highly Russia-focused symphony by a composer who stayed in the homeland has less to say to the world today than the more cosmopolitan productions of the exile, Stravinsky. And although Masur’s performance rates (++++) on a strictly musical basis, the Naïve CD deserves only a (+++) overall rating, because the audience at this live recording is unusually noisy – coughing, sniffling, shuffling and crinkling throughout, with even Masur contributing to the sounds. Maybe it’s just hard to sit still for the Shostakovich Seventh in 2006.
November 16, 2006
November 09, 2006
(++++) GOOD OLD STORIES
The Happy Lion Roars. By Louise Fatio. Pictures by Roger Duvoisin. Knopf. $15.95.
Pirates, Ships, and Sailors. By Kathryn and Byron Jackson. Illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren. Golden Books. $14.95.
They don’t make ‘em the way they used to, and in many ways that is a good thing: today’s technologies, communications capabilities, and even movies and TV and written stories are in many ways superior to and more interesting than those of 50 or so years ago. Yet there are charms to certain productions of the mid-20th century that are missing in more-modern works, and that is why it is good to have new editions of some old-time books available for a new generation of young people.
The Happy Lion Roars is the second of 10 Happy Lion books by the wife-and-husband team of Louise Fatio and Roger Duvoisin. The first book, The Happy Lion, originally released in 1954 and reissued in 2004, chronicled the adventures in the city of the pleasant, well-fed title character. The Happy Lion Roars, which dates to 1957, starts with the happy lion being unhappy – because he is lonely. Duvoisin’s delightful illustrations give the lion facial expressions and body language that show his loneliness quite clearly, while Fatio’s descriptions of the companionship enjoyed by other animals – and the humans who come to the zoo to visit them – make the lion’s predicament clear. Then the Happy Lion spots a Beautiful Lioness, who is visiting the animal park as part of a circus – and the two lions hatch an escape plot that leads to the Beautiful Lioness moving into the Happy Lion’s cave house, where the Happy Lion’s body conceals her from everyone searching for her. But then a little girl spots the lioness, the circus people move in to recapture her, and “the Happy Lion roared the biggest, loudest, longest roar he had ever roared in his life.” This sets the stage for a happy ending, an end to loneliness, and a book that retains every bit of its charm 50 years after it first appeared.
Pirates, Ships, and Sailors is not a full-length book but a collection of 24 stories and poems – a mixed bag, and a very pleasant one. Dating all the way back to 1950, this large-size book – 10½ by 12 inches – offers denser storytelling than you will usually find in a modern book of 70 pages. Some stories are heartwarming: “The Wonderful Bottle” is about a little girl’s discovery of a ship in a bottle, and how she gets one of her own. Some are adventurous: “The Big Little Cook’s Boy” is the story of how a young boy foils a band of pirates. Some are based on legend: “The Flying Dutchman” is the tale of one seaman’s encounter with that damned soul, and is accompanied by one of the best Gustaf Tenggren illustrations in the book. Kathryn and Byron Jackson tell all the stories straightforwardly and with evident relish, and they sprinkle poems in between the tales, from the moving “Lighthouse” (now rendered obsolete by advancing technology, but still the stuff of little boys’ dreams) to the silly “Twenty-Five Sailors Went Down to the Sea.” More than half a century after its first publication, this remains a book to cherish.
Pirates, Ships, and Sailors. By Kathryn and Byron Jackson. Illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren. Golden Books. $14.95.
They don’t make ‘em the way they used to, and in many ways that is a good thing: today’s technologies, communications capabilities, and even movies and TV and written stories are in many ways superior to and more interesting than those of 50 or so years ago. Yet there are charms to certain productions of the mid-20th century that are missing in more-modern works, and that is why it is good to have new editions of some old-time books available for a new generation of young people.
The Happy Lion Roars is the second of 10 Happy Lion books by the wife-and-husband team of Louise Fatio and Roger Duvoisin. The first book, The Happy Lion, originally released in 1954 and reissued in 2004, chronicled the adventures in the city of the pleasant, well-fed title character. The Happy Lion Roars, which dates to 1957, starts with the happy lion being unhappy – because he is lonely. Duvoisin’s delightful illustrations give the lion facial expressions and body language that show his loneliness quite clearly, while Fatio’s descriptions of the companionship enjoyed by other animals – and the humans who come to the zoo to visit them – make the lion’s predicament clear. Then the Happy Lion spots a Beautiful Lioness, who is visiting the animal park as part of a circus – and the two lions hatch an escape plot that leads to the Beautiful Lioness moving into the Happy Lion’s cave house, where the Happy Lion’s body conceals her from everyone searching for her. But then a little girl spots the lioness, the circus people move in to recapture her, and “the Happy Lion roared the biggest, loudest, longest roar he had ever roared in his life.” This sets the stage for a happy ending, an end to loneliness, and a book that retains every bit of its charm 50 years after it first appeared.
Pirates, Ships, and Sailors is not a full-length book but a collection of 24 stories and poems – a mixed bag, and a very pleasant one. Dating all the way back to 1950, this large-size book – 10½ by 12 inches – offers denser storytelling than you will usually find in a modern book of 70 pages. Some stories are heartwarming: “The Wonderful Bottle” is about a little girl’s discovery of a ship in a bottle, and how she gets one of her own. Some are adventurous: “The Big Little Cook’s Boy” is the story of how a young boy foils a band of pirates. Some are based on legend: “The Flying Dutchman” is the tale of one seaman’s encounter with that damned soul, and is accompanied by one of the best Gustaf Tenggren illustrations in the book. Kathryn and Byron Jackson tell all the stories straightforwardly and with evident relish, and they sprinkle poems in between the tales, from the moving “Lighthouse” (now rendered obsolete by advancing technology, but still the stuff of little boys’ dreams) to the silly “Twenty-Five Sailors Went Down to the Sea.” More than half a century after its first publication, this remains a book to cherish.
(++++) TRUTH AND INCONSEQUENTIALITIES
Great Mythconceptions. By Karl Kruszelnicki. Illustrated by Adam Yazxhi. Andrews McMeel. $12.95.
The Odd Brain. By Stephan Juan. Andrews McMeel. $10.95.
See Spot Smell. By Sue Warwick. Andrews McMeel. $7.95.
Sometimes an author gets the balance in what are colloquially called “fun facts” just right. Great Mythconceptions is one of those books in which the fun and the facts are just about equally matched – with each element making the other more enjoyable. Karl Kruszelnicki (who is called “Dr.” but whose form of doctorate is never identified) provides “the science behind the myths” on 52 topics, from dirty desks (which have more bacteria per square inch than a toilet seat does) to the tallest mountain on Earth (which, if “tallest” refers to the mountain whose top is farthest away from the center of the Earth, is Mt. Chimborazo in Ecuador – because the Earth bulges outward toward the equator). Kruszelnicki tosses some really fascinating factual tidbits into his explanations, such as one about how the word “pencil” ultimately derives from the Latin word “penis,” which originally meant “tail.” Along the way, he debunks some persistent myths. For instance, the famed dirigible Hindenburg did not burn because of its hydrogen fuel – the culprit was its flammable skin, which was coated with chemicals that burned when static electricity from the mooring ropes reached it. Kruszelnicki includes references at the end of each item, so interested readers – and there should be a lot of them – can check on the facts themselves.
Stephan Juan is also called “Dr.” on the cover of his book, The Odd Brain, and his form of degree is also never explained. His book, a successor to The Odd Body, is more for fun than for factual enlightenment and gets a (+++) rating. There are plenty of facts here, but Juan’s format undercuts the seriousness of his explanations, as in a chapter called, “Cacodemonomania: When You Believe You Are Possessed by a Demon or Devil or Don’t Know ‘Witch.’” The main narrative of this book is punctuated by small fact boxes at various places on the pages – some of which add interesting elements to the discussion and some of which don’t. There are 35 chapters here, starting with “The Antiseptic Brain” and ending with “The TV Brain,” so there’s plenty to read and plenty of interesting material. But Juan does have a tendency to throw in information that begs for elucidation – without providing any. For instance, a Chicago woman has “three small but fully formed and functioning brains in her skull. She lives a normal life as a grocery clerk.” If you want to know more, you’ll have to find it on your own (Juan does provide footnotes) – the approach here is mostly once-over-lightly.
The canine brain is quite different from the human one, and that can make interactions of the two species both fascinating and frustrating. Sue Warwick tries to bridge the gap with the entertaining board book, See Spot Smell, which she designates “A Scratch & Sniff Book for Dogs.” Give this a (+++) rating for being both very clever and very paltry in its contents: a mere six illustrations of items, each with a scratch-and-sniff spot that humans and canines can presumably enjoy together. If you really want to read to your dog, this is a good way to do so – but don’t be surprised if that smell of cheese leads your canine companion to try to eat the book (which is emphatically not edible).
The Odd Brain. By Stephan Juan. Andrews McMeel. $10.95.
See Spot Smell. By Sue Warwick. Andrews McMeel. $7.95.
Sometimes an author gets the balance in what are colloquially called “fun facts” just right. Great Mythconceptions is one of those books in which the fun and the facts are just about equally matched – with each element making the other more enjoyable. Karl Kruszelnicki (who is called “Dr.” but whose form of doctorate is never identified) provides “the science behind the myths” on 52 topics, from dirty desks (which have more bacteria per square inch than a toilet seat does) to the tallest mountain on Earth (which, if “tallest” refers to the mountain whose top is farthest away from the center of the Earth, is Mt. Chimborazo in Ecuador – because the Earth bulges outward toward the equator). Kruszelnicki tosses some really fascinating factual tidbits into his explanations, such as one about how the word “pencil” ultimately derives from the Latin word “penis,” which originally meant “tail.” Along the way, he debunks some persistent myths. For instance, the famed dirigible Hindenburg did not burn because of its hydrogen fuel – the culprit was its flammable skin, which was coated with chemicals that burned when static electricity from the mooring ropes reached it. Kruszelnicki includes references at the end of each item, so interested readers – and there should be a lot of them – can check on the facts themselves.
Stephan Juan is also called “Dr.” on the cover of his book, The Odd Brain, and his form of degree is also never explained. His book, a successor to The Odd Body, is more for fun than for factual enlightenment and gets a (+++) rating. There are plenty of facts here, but Juan’s format undercuts the seriousness of his explanations, as in a chapter called, “Cacodemonomania: When You Believe You Are Possessed by a Demon or Devil or Don’t Know ‘Witch.’” The main narrative of this book is punctuated by small fact boxes at various places on the pages – some of which add interesting elements to the discussion and some of which don’t. There are 35 chapters here, starting with “The Antiseptic Brain” and ending with “The TV Brain,” so there’s plenty to read and plenty of interesting material. But Juan does have a tendency to throw in information that begs for elucidation – without providing any. For instance, a Chicago woman has “three small but fully formed and functioning brains in her skull. She lives a normal life as a grocery clerk.” If you want to know more, you’ll have to find it on your own (Juan does provide footnotes) – the approach here is mostly once-over-lightly.
The canine brain is quite different from the human one, and that can make interactions of the two species both fascinating and frustrating. Sue Warwick tries to bridge the gap with the entertaining board book, See Spot Smell, which she designates “A Scratch & Sniff Book for Dogs.” Give this a (+++) rating for being both very clever and very paltry in its contents: a mere six illustrations of items, each with a scratch-and-sniff spot that humans and canines can presumably enjoy together. If you really want to read to your dog, this is a good way to do so – but don’t be surprised if that smell of cheese leads your canine companion to try to eat the book (which is emphatically not edible).
(++++) RAISING KIDS IN GOOD TIMES AND BAD
Touchpoints: Birth to Three, 2nd Edition. By T. Berry Brazelton, M.D., with Joshua D. Sparrow, M.D. Da Capo. $17.95.
Your Child’s Divorce: What to Expect – What You Can Do. By Marsha Temlock, M.A. Impact Publishers. $17.95.
Touchpoints is one book that fully lives up to its subtitle: “Your Child’s Emotional and Behavioral Development.” T. Berry Brazelton and Joshua Sparrow present an even 500 pages of advice on almost every topic likely to affect parents during the first years of a child’s life in the second edition of Touchpoints: Birth to Three. Much that is here has been kept unchanged since the first edition more than a decade ago: there is month-by-month (and even week-by-week) developmental information, and there are considerations of typical developmental difficulties (or “challenges,” as the authors put it) – ranging from allergies and asthma to television and toilet training. Within the sections, though, there have been a variety of updates, with new discussions on families sleeping together, obesity prevention and more. You simply won’t find more thorough, no-nonsense guides to a child’s early years than Drs. Brazelton and Sparrow. A typical comment, in a section on self-esteem, reads, “The pressure on a small child to learn to read, write, or perform tasks that may not be appropriate for his age and stage of development is a danger if it overwhelms the child’s own sense of competence.” On feeding, the authors remark, “If you give [an eight-month-old] two or three soft bits of table food when you sit her down – to finger, to pick up, to smear, and finally to put into her mouth – you’ll find she is absolutely enthralled.” Even these two brief quotations show the viewpoint of Touchpoints: babies will develop at their own pace, and that is the best way to let them develop – even when some messiness and parental worries are involved. Above all, Brazelton and Sparrow urge parents (though not in so many words) to take it easy – things will be fine, and if they are not fine (the authors explore developmental difficulties level-headedly), there are things that parents and doctors can do. There has always been something highly empowering about Touchpoints. The new edition brings its success up to date.
Once children are well past the “baby” stage and have themselves become adults, parents of those now-grown kids face all sorts of new challenges. Some are distinctly unpleasant, such as what to do when an adult child is getting a divorce. Marsha Temlock, who helped her own two adult children handle difficult divorces, says it is important to strengthen your relationship with your child during this troubled time – while being a role model for him/her and for any grandchildren. This is a very tall order indeed, especially when Temlock urges parents of adult children to do things that sound straightforward on paper but that are extraordinarily difficult to implement in the real world. For example, Temlock recommends helping with the legal and financial issues of divorce and also helping grandchildren deal with their feelings. That is a lot to ask of parents/grandparents who may not live anywhere near their adult children’s families – as is increasingly likely nowadays. “Feelings of guilt will linger for parents who cannot be there face-to-face to answer the call for help.” Well, yes – and so? Temlock suggests phone, E-mail, fax and other long-distance contact, but of course these are not likely to be enough for anyone suffering emotional turmoil. On other subjects, Temlock says what to do when your values clash with those of a divorcing child; how to handle his/her request to come home; what to do if your child needs ongoing financial support; what to tell other children if you are giving extra help to one who is divorcing; and much more. Temlock’s solutions are a touch too pat, and sometimes a trifle too simplified, to give the book a (++++) rating, but it deserves a solid (+++) for its plainspokenness and the well-meaning and loving way it tries to tackle an extraordinarily difficult time in the lives of three separate but interdependent generations.
Your Child’s Divorce: What to Expect – What You Can Do. By Marsha Temlock, M.A. Impact Publishers. $17.95.
Touchpoints is one book that fully lives up to its subtitle: “Your Child’s Emotional and Behavioral Development.” T. Berry Brazelton and Joshua Sparrow present an even 500 pages of advice on almost every topic likely to affect parents during the first years of a child’s life in the second edition of Touchpoints: Birth to Three. Much that is here has been kept unchanged since the first edition more than a decade ago: there is month-by-month (and even week-by-week) developmental information, and there are considerations of typical developmental difficulties (or “challenges,” as the authors put it) – ranging from allergies and asthma to television and toilet training. Within the sections, though, there have been a variety of updates, with new discussions on families sleeping together, obesity prevention and more. You simply won’t find more thorough, no-nonsense guides to a child’s early years than Drs. Brazelton and Sparrow. A typical comment, in a section on self-esteem, reads, “The pressure on a small child to learn to read, write, or perform tasks that may not be appropriate for his age and stage of development is a danger if it overwhelms the child’s own sense of competence.” On feeding, the authors remark, “If you give [an eight-month-old] two or three soft bits of table food when you sit her down – to finger, to pick up, to smear, and finally to put into her mouth – you’ll find she is absolutely enthralled.” Even these two brief quotations show the viewpoint of Touchpoints: babies will develop at their own pace, and that is the best way to let them develop – even when some messiness and parental worries are involved. Above all, Brazelton and Sparrow urge parents (though not in so many words) to take it easy – things will be fine, and if they are not fine (the authors explore developmental difficulties level-headedly), there are things that parents and doctors can do. There has always been something highly empowering about Touchpoints. The new edition brings its success up to date.
Once children are well past the “baby” stage and have themselves become adults, parents of those now-grown kids face all sorts of new challenges. Some are distinctly unpleasant, such as what to do when an adult child is getting a divorce. Marsha Temlock, who helped her own two adult children handle difficult divorces, says it is important to strengthen your relationship with your child during this troubled time – while being a role model for him/her and for any grandchildren. This is a very tall order indeed, especially when Temlock urges parents of adult children to do things that sound straightforward on paper but that are extraordinarily difficult to implement in the real world. For example, Temlock recommends helping with the legal and financial issues of divorce and also helping grandchildren deal with their feelings. That is a lot to ask of parents/grandparents who may not live anywhere near their adult children’s families – as is increasingly likely nowadays. “Feelings of guilt will linger for parents who cannot be there face-to-face to answer the call for help.” Well, yes – and so? Temlock suggests phone, E-mail, fax and other long-distance contact, but of course these are not likely to be enough for anyone suffering emotional turmoil. On other subjects, Temlock says what to do when your values clash with those of a divorcing child; how to handle his/her request to come home; what to do if your child needs ongoing financial support; what to tell other children if you are giving extra help to one who is divorcing; and much more. Temlock’s solutions are a touch too pat, and sometimes a trifle too simplified, to give the book a (++++) rating, but it deserves a solid (+++) for its plainspokenness and the well-meaning and loving way it tries to tackle an extraordinarily difficult time in the lives of three separate but interdependent generations.
(+++) FACING THE FACTS
Saving the Buffalo. By Albert Marrin. Scholastic. $18.99.
Our World: A Country-by-Country Guide. By Millie Miller. Scholastic. $16.99.
Scholastic Book of World Records 2007. By Jenifer Corr Morse. Scholastic. $9.99.
Strictly factual books for young people fall into two broad categories: narrative and lookup. The narrative books take information and present it in story format, providing, at their best, much of the pacing and intensity of good fiction. The lookup books, not intended to be read straight through, offer informational snippets, to be looked up when needed or glanced at a little bit at a time.
Saving the Buffalo is a narrative, and a good one. It is the story of the great herds of bison that once thundered through the United States midsection – since long before there was a United States – and of how the young nation’s westward expansion nearly brought these once-common large land animals to extinction. It is also the story of their return from the brink – a tale of a conservation effort that succeeded. The story is somewhat marred by political correctness and the modern tendency to take a Rousseauian view of life before mechanization: the railroad and the white settlers who rode it west are the bad guys here, supplanting the far more collegial (if scarcely trouble-free) life of the Indian tribes in the days before European settlement. Still, if Albert Marrin tends to overdo the demonization of white settlers, he has reason: it was their massive hunts, often organized by the railroads themselves, that virtually wiped out the great bison herds. It puts the heroes of the Old West into perspective when Marrin points out, in the context of conservation, that Buffalo Bill Cody once shot 4,280 buffalo in 18 months. The final part of this book, the story of the survival of the buffalo – thanks to conservation efforts initially led by white people, if that matters – is truly inspirational, indicating the importance of bison not only ecologically but also for the spiritual renewal of many Indian tribes.
The narrative tale of bison in the U.S. stands in contrast to the lots-of-facts-per-page approach of Our World: A Country-by-Country Guide, in which the United States gets a few pages of facts – and so do France, Germany, India, China, the Philippines, Japan, New Zealand and even Antarctica. This book is scarcely comprehensive – there are nearly 200 countries in the world, and no attempt is made to discuss all of them. The idea is to give some interesting facts about individual nations and the areas where they are located. The pages on Oceania, for instance, show a Samoan using a conch shell as a trumpet, a Northern Australian frilled lizard, and the white sand beaches of Bora Bora. The book indicates that the Near East includes Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, and that “most people…are Muslims who follow the Islamic religion.” Clearly, this is not an in-depth book or one fraught with political insight: the discussion of Afghanistan and Pakistan mentions the Khyber Pass and tea drinking, but says nothing about war. As a generic once-over-lightly look at a number of countries, the book can be helpful to young children just starting to learn about the world.
Scholastic Book of World Records is designed less for learning than for amazement. The 2007 edition contains a number of items that are not likely to change (world’s longest ship canal, world’s highest city) and a number that, at some point, probably will (runner with the world’s fastest mile, NBA player with the highest salary). The book’s pop-culture emphasis is pervasive: there are 64 pages of sports records, 29 relating to popular culture other than sports, but just 18 on money and business. The net result is a book that is not to be taken too seriously: the information is accurate, and some entries can be fun to read (the world’s top-grossing movie for children is still the 1937 Disney Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), but the data are highly selective and presented in a way that emphasizes visual impact without too much distracting in-depth backup.
Our World: A Country-by-Country Guide. By Millie Miller. Scholastic. $16.99.
Scholastic Book of World Records 2007. By Jenifer Corr Morse. Scholastic. $9.99.
Strictly factual books for young people fall into two broad categories: narrative and lookup. The narrative books take information and present it in story format, providing, at their best, much of the pacing and intensity of good fiction. The lookup books, not intended to be read straight through, offer informational snippets, to be looked up when needed or glanced at a little bit at a time.
Saving the Buffalo is a narrative, and a good one. It is the story of the great herds of bison that once thundered through the United States midsection – since long before there was a United States – and of how the young nation’s westward expansion nearly brought these once-common large land animals to extinction. It is also the story of their return from the brink – a tale of a conservation effort that succeeded. The story is somewhat marred by political correctness and the modern tendency to take a Rousseauian view of life before mechanization: the railroad and the white settlers who rode it west are the bad guys here, supplanting the far more collegial (if scarcely trouble-free) life of the Indian tribes in the days before European settlement. Still, if Albert Marrin tends to overdo the demonization of white settlers, he has reason: it was their massive hunts, often organized by the railroads themselves, that virtually wiped out the great bison herds. It puts the heroes of the Old West into perspective when Marrin points out, in the context of conservation, that Buffalo Bill Cody once shot 4,280 buffalo in 18 months. The final part of this book, the story of the survival of the buffalo – thanks to conservation efforts initially led by white people, if that matters – is truly inspirational, indicating the importance of bison not only ecologically but also for the spiritual renewal of many Indian tribes.
The narrative tale of bison in the U.S. stands in contrast to the lots-of-facts-per-page approach of Our World: A Country-by-Country Guide, in which the United States gets a few pages of facts – and so do France, Germany, India, China, the Philippines, Japan, New Zealand and even Antarctica. This book is scarcely comprehensive – there are nearly 200 countries in the world, and no attempt is made to discuss all of them. The idea is to give some interesting facts about individual nations and the areas where they are located. The pages on Oceania, for instance, show a Samoan using a conch shell as a trumpet, a Northern Australian frilled lizard, and the white sand beaches of Bora Bora. The book indicates that the Near East includes Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, and that “most people…are Muslims who follow the Islamic religion.” Clearly, this is not an in-depth book or one fraught with political insight: the discussion of Afghanistan and Pakistan mentions the Khyber Pass and tea drinking, but says nothing about war. As a generic once-over-lightly look at a number of countries, the book can be helpful to young children just starting to learn about the world.
Scholastic Book of World Records is designed less for learning than for amazement. The 2007 edition contains a number of items that are not likely to change (world’s longest ship canal, world’s highest city) and a number that, at some point, probably will (runner with the world’s fastest mile, NBA player with the highest salary). The book’s pop-culture emphasis is pervasive: there are 64 pages of sports records, 29 relating to popular culture other than sports, but just 18 on money and business. The net result is a book that is not to be taken too seriously: the information is accurate, and some entries can be fun to read (the world’s top-grossing movie for children is still the 1937 Disney Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), but the data are highly selective and presented in a way that emphasizes visual impact without too much distracting in-depth backup.
(+++) FUTURE IMPERFECT
The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life. By John Maeda. MIT Press. $20.
The Future of Europe: Reform or Decline. By Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi. MIT Press. $24.95.
John Maeda has some simple, elegant ideas about product design, the interface between technology and the real world, and the Zen of white space (although he does not put it quite that way). He also has a maddening tendency to undercut his own powerful arguments for simplicity through, alas, over-complicating them – and through some cutesy presentation that is less simple than it is gimmicky. Maeda is a graphic designer, visual artist and computer scientist, and he is founder of the SIMPLICITY Consortium at the MIT Media Lab. Applied strictly to technology projects, his ideas are remarkably lucid. For example, in one chapter, he sets against each other the questions, “How can you make the wait shorter?” and “How can you make the wait more tolerable?” That is an excellent, to-the-point formulation of two different (and ultimately complementary) approaches to the same problem. Similarly, in another chapter, he positions side by side the tradeoff questions, “How directed can I stand to feel?” and “How directionless can I afford to be?” Set against these elegant constructs are such elements as the blank page marked “don’t write on this page,” the two Japanese characters for “love” and “fit,” and Maeda’s explanation of those characters: “There can be a natural emotional attachment to the object’s life force that is a kind of deep, hidden ornamentation known to only those who feel it.” Maeda offers 10 Laws of simplicity, plus three Keys, and specifically tells readers that “basic simplicity (1 to 3) is immediately applicable,” while “intermediate simplicity (4 to 6) is more subtle in meaning” and “deep simplicity (7 to 9) ventures into thoughts that are still ripening on the vine.” As the book moves from the practical toward the philosophical, it becomes more self-consciously self-important and self-referential – but there are still some valuable and interesting insights here.
If Maeda is trying to get a handle on the future of technology and of the thought processes that go into creating it, Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi are trying to get a handle on something more everyday, though scarcely less complex. The Future of Europe is an argument, from an economic and econometric perspective, that Europe’s wealthiest nations will become increasingly irrelevant economically and politically if they do not tackle and reform a system that focuses on security and relaxation more than on productivity and innovation. This is scarcely a new viewpoint, but Alesina (Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economics at Harvard University) and Giavazzi (Professor of Economics at Bocconi University and a Visiting Professor at MIT) make it cogently – and with much reference to financial markets, the costs of doing business, the Euro and other factors. They can and do point out that there are a number of special-interest groups opposed to economic liberalization, which is what the authors call the idea of introducing more American-style competitiveness into European economies. But they do not say – probably because there is no way to say – how to manage the political realities of taking on those groups. The recent disastrous French experiment that would have allowed young, recently hired workers to be dismissed without cause far more easily than others – a plan that sparked riots and was eventually withdrawn – shows just how hard it would be to change European econopolitical culture. There is no current European leader who bestrides the continent like the colossus that would be required to shake up the region’s economies significantly. Meanwhile, there is a counter-current building in the U.S., with some interest groups seeking more comfort and leisure time – and greater government involvement in the economy – along with higher taxes. It seems unlikely that Europe can or will move significantly toward the U.S.-focused model that Alesina and Giavazzi favor. Whether that failure to change does indeed lead to the region’s decline is something that observers are likely to discover in the not-too-distant future.
The Future of Europe: Reform or Decline. By Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi. MIT Press. $24.95.
John Maeda has some simple, elegant ideas about product design, the interface between technology and the real world, and the Zen of white space (although he does not put it quite that way). He also has a maddening tendency to undercut his own powerful arguments for simplicity through, alas, over-complicating them – and through some cutesy presentation that is less simple than it is gimmicky. Maeda is a graphic designer, visual artist and computer scientist, and he is founder of the SIMPLICITY Consortium at the MIT Media Lab. Applied strictly to technology projects, his ideas are remarkably lucid. For example, in one chapter, he sets against each other the questions, “How can you make the wait shorter?” and “How can you make the wait more tolerable?” That is an excellent, to-the-point formulation of two different (and ultimately complementary) approaches to the same problem. Similarly, in another chapter, he positions side by side the tradeoff questions, “How directed can I stand to feel?” and “How directionless can I afford to be?” Set against these elegant constructs are such elements as the blank page marked “don’t write on this page,” the two Japanese characters for “love” and “fit,” and Maeda’s explanation of those characters: “There can be a natural emotional attachment to the object’s life force that is a kind of deep, hidden ornamentation known to only those who feel it.” Maeda offers 10 Laws of simplicity, plus three Keys, and specifically tells readers that “basic simplicity (1 to 3) is immediately applicable,” while “intermediate simplicity (4 to 6) is more subtle in meaning” and “deep simplicity (7 to 9) ventures into thoughts that are still ripening on the vine.” As the book moves from the practical toward the philosophical, it becomes more self-consciously self-important and self-referential – but there are still some valuable and interesting insights here.
If Maeda is trying to get a handle on the future of technology and of the thought processes that go into creating it, Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi are trying to get a handle on something more everyday, though scarcely less complex. The Future of Europe is an argument, from an economic and econometric perspective, that Europe’s wealthiest nations will become increasingly irrelevant economically and politically if they do not tackle and reform a system that focuses on security and relaxation more than on productivity and innovation. This is scarcely a new viewpoint, but Alesina (Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economics at Harvard University) and Giavazzi (Professor of Economics at Bocconi University and a Visiting Professor at MIT) make it cogently – and with much reference to financial markets, the costs of doing business, the Euro and other factors. They can and do point out that there are a number of special-interest groups opposed to economic liberalization, which is what the authors call the idea of introducing more American-style competitiveness into European economies. But they do not say – probably because there is no way to say – how to manage the political realities of taking on those groups. The recent disastrous French experiment that would have allowed young, recently hired workers to be dismissed without cause far more easily than others – a plan that sparked riots and was eventually withdrawn – shows just how hard it would be to change European econopolitical culture. There is no current European leader who bestrides the continent like the colossus that would be required to shake up the region’s economies significantly. Meanwhile, there is a counter-current building in the U.S., with some interest groups seeking more comfort and leisure time – and greater government involvement in the economy – along with higher taxes. It seems unlikely that Europe can or will move significantly toward the U.S.-focused model that Alesina and Giavazzi favor. Whether that failure to change does indeed lead to the region’s decline is something that observers are likely to discover in the not-too-distant future.
November 02, 2006
(++++) NUMEROUS ENJOYMENTS
The Red Lemon. By Bob Staake. Golden Books. $14.95.
The 39 Apartments of Ludwig van Beethoven. By Jonah Winter. Pictures by Barry Blitt. Schwartz & Wade. $15.95.
Alphabet Explosion! Search and Count from Alien to Zebra. By John Nickle. Schwartz & Wade. $16.95.
There’s lots of fun with and about numbers in all three of these books – none of which is a counting book. Maybe that’s their numerological secret.
Bob Staake’s delicious The Red Lemon is about a farmer (his body drawn as a huge circle, his head as a smaller one, his nose a still smaller one) who grows hundreds and hundreds and thousands and thousands of wonderful lemons (on trees shaped like huge circles on trunks). “Bright yellow lemons for miles and miles!” exults Farmer McPhee, thinking of all the delicious things people can do with them: pie, sherbet, muffins, lemon chiffon cream cake, and other mouthwatering goodies. But THEN…Farmer McPhee spots a single RED lemon. Impossible! Absurd! Not to be tolerated! He picks it, and the two pages describing his reactions are themselves drawn entirely in red. The farmer tosses the lemon away, and it lands on a small island nearby – an island that, over time, attracts people and commerce, and on which red-lemon trees sprout “in a grove of near twenty.” Furthermore, “if yellow lemons/ were always a treat,/ the red lemon versions/ were six times as sweet!” It’s a delightful tale, told by the numbers – the most important being the number one, as in that one original “wrongly colored” red lemon.
Numbers show up right in the title of The 39 Apartments of Ludwig van Beethoven, which spins a silly fantasy around the fact that Beethoven did indeed live in 39 apartments in and around Vienna. No one knows why he moved so often; no one knows much about the apartments; but it is known that Beethoven, growing increasingly deaf, pounded more and more loudly on the piano while composing – and since he owned five legless pianos, that pounding must have been very hard on the ears of the downstairs neighbors. Jonah Winter takes the little that is known about Beethoven’s apartments and makes up reasons for his frequent moves: one had a hideous stinky cheese smell; one was palace-like, filled with light and air, but the neighbors kept telling the composer to shut up; one was tiny and in an attic, and a neighbor kept filing complaints with the local magistrate; and so on. Winter also has fun with the idea of how Beethoven’s pianos were moved – Barry Blitt’s pictures are especially amusing in these scenes. For instance, Winter suggests that one piano was lowered from a balcony, taken through the streets, pushed through a grand hall displaying suits of armor, then carried through a dentist’s office and through a hole in the wall of Beethoven’s next apartment. The whole book is written in good fun – although Winter does take some things too far, since young readers probably will not know he is kidding when he says that Beethoven wrote 10 violin sonatas, two symphonies and a string quartet in a single day.
Alphabet Explosion! is playful in a different way. It’s a bit like those books that ask you to find hard-to-detect objects within a scattering of other items. John Nickle creates silly juxtapositions of pictures, then invites readers to find, in each picture, a certain number of items beginning with a particular letter. There are, for example, 25 G’s in a picture in which a giraffe plays a guitar while a goat gives a gift to a groundhog wearing a golf tee. The number of objects varies quite a bit from letter to letter: 15 O’s, 47 S’s, 8 U’s, 7 Z’s. Kids (and parents) who find their eyes glazing over as they search for all the objects, or who simply cannot locate as many as Nickle says are in a picture, can simply turn to the back of the book, where answers are thoughtfully provided. This is an unusual, and unusually creative, approach to the alphabet – you can count on it.
The 39 Apartments of Ludwig van Beethoven. By Jonah Winter. Pictures by Barry Blitt. Schwartz & Wade. $15.95.
Alphabet Explosion! Search and Count from Alien to Zebra. By John Nickle. Schwartz & Wade. $16.95.
There’s lots of fun with and about numbers in all three of these books – none of which is a counting book. Maybe that’s their numerological secret.
Bob Staake’s delicious The Red Lemon is about a farmer (his body drawn as a huge circle, his head as a smaller one, his nose a still smaller one) who grows hundreds and hundreds and thousands and thousands of wonderful lemons (on trees shaped like huge circles on trunks). “Bright yellow lemons for miles and miles!” exults Farmer McPhee, thinking of all the delicious things people can do with them: pie, sherbet, muffins, lemon chiffon cream cake, and other mouthwatering goodies. But THEN…Farmer McPhee spots a single RED lemon. Impossible! Absurd! Not to be tolerated! He picks it, and the two pages describing his reactions are themselves drawn entirely in red. The farmer tosses the lemon away, and it lands on a small island nearby – an island that, over time, attracts people and commerce, and on which red-lemon trees sprout “in a grove of near twenty.” Furthermore, “if yellow lemons/ were always a treat,/ the red lemon versions/ were six times as sweet!” It’s a delightful tale, told by the numbers – the most important being the number one, as in that one original “wrongly colored” red lemon.
Numbers show up right in the title of The 39 Apartments of Ludwig van Beethoven, which spins a silly fantasy around the fact that Beethoven did indeed live in 39 apartments in and around Vienna. No one knows why he moved so often; no one knows much about the apartments; but it is known that Beethoven, growing increasingly deaf, pounded more and more loudly on the piano while composing – and since he owned five legless pianos, that pounding must have been very hard on the ears of the downstairs neighbors. Jonah Winter takes the little that is known about Beethoven’s apartments and makes up reasons for his frequent moves: one had a hideous stinky cheese smell; one was palace-like, filled with light and air, but the neighbors kept telling the composer to shut up; one was tiny and in an attic, and a neighbor kept filing complaints with the local magistrate; and so on. Winter also has fun with the idea of how Beethoven’s pianos were moved – Barry Blitt’s pictures are especially amusing in these scenes. For instance, Winter suggests that one piano was lowered from a balcony, taken through the streets, pushed through a grand hall displaying suits of armor, then carried through a dentist’s office and through a hole in the wall of Beethoven’s next apartment. The whole book is written in good fun – although Winter does take some things too far, since young readers probably will not know he is kidding when he says that Beethoven wrote 10 violin sonatas, two symphonies and a string quartet in a single day.
Alphabet Explosion! is playful in a different way. It’s a bit like those books that ask you to find hard-to-detect objects within a scattering of other items. John Nickle creates silly juxtapositions of pictures, then invites readers to find, in each picture, a certain number of items beginning with a particular letter. There are, for example, 25 G’s in a picture in which a giraffe plays a guitar while a goat gives a gift to a groundhog wearing a golf tee. The number of objects varies quite a bit from letter to letter: 15 O’s, 47 S’s, 8 U’s, 7 Z’s. Kids (and parents) who find their eyes glazing over as they search for all the objects, or who simply cannot locate as many as Nickle says are in a picture, can simply turn to the back of the book, where answers are thoughtfully provided. This is an unusual, and unusually creative, approach to the alphabet – you can count on it.
(++++) SIMPLE AND LESS-SIMPLE PLEASURES
Over the Moon: A Collection of First Books. By Margaret Wise Brown. Pictures by Clement Hurd. HarperCollins. $19.99.
Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant and Other Poems. By Jack Prelutsky. Illustrations by Carin Berger. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $16.99.
Even the youngest children can and do delight in Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown’s wonderful 1947 story of a little bunny falling gently asleep while saying goodnight to everything in his room and his world. Simple in language, lovingly illustrated by Clement Hurd, it is a book that continues to charm children and parents alike after 60 years. In Over the Moon, it is joined by a little-known Brown/Hurd companion volume and a well-known book in which they use a bunny very differently. That well-known one is The Runaway Bunny, a supreme charmer in its own right – and a double pleasure to find in combination with Goodnight Moon and in a size that small as well as adult hands can manage: the hardcover volume measures 8½ x 7 inches. The Runaway Bunny features a little bunny who is so determined to leave home that he tells his mother all the things he will change into so he can escape. His mother replies with all the things she will do to catch him anyway: she will be a fisherman to his fish, a mountain climber to his rock, a tree in which his bird will roost. The idea that there is no getting away – because love will always find you – is another that has resonated for many decades: The Runaway Bunny dates all the way back to 1942. The third book within Over the Moon is the least known and least successful: My World, written in 1949 and specifically called “A Companion to Goodnight Moon.” Like the more famous, earlier book, it is an at-home story of the bunny family, but it is not quite as charming and seems a little forced: “My dog./ Daddy’s dog./ Daddy’s dog/ Once caught a frog.” The color scenes of family life, interspersed with black-and-white close-ups of everyday items (toothbrush, comb, spoon, etc.), are warm and pleasant, and if the book is not quite at the level of the two others here, it must be said that few children’s books are.
Jack Prelutsky’s level is largely set by Prelutsky himself: he is his own primary competition, having created more than 40 books of poetic word play. Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant is one his most absurdist romps, and one of his best. As the title and cover illustration indicate, this is a book in which animals are combined with inanimate objects, then described in verse. Among the denizens of this uniquely Prelutskian zoo – all amusingly illustrated by Carin Berger – are the Alarmadillos: “You’d imagine they’d be calmer,/ No one means them any harm,/ And besides, they’re thickly armored,/ Yet they’re always in alarm.” Or consider the Ballpoint Penguins: “Although they’ve nothing much to say,/ They write and write it anyway.” Or the Pop-up Toadsters, whose perfectly prepared bread slices are promptly snapped up by the Toasterns. Or the Clocktopus: “It moves with slow precision/ At a never-changing pace,/ Its tentacles in tempo/ With the clock upon its face.” The Circular Sawtoise, Limber Bulboa, Zipperpotamus and many more are to be found in a book that is intended for kids ages four and up – but whose combinatorial cleverness should appeal to all ages.
Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant and Other Poems. By Jack Prelutsky. Illustrations by Carin Berger. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $16.99.
Even the youngest children can and do delight in Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown’s wonderful 1947 story of a little bunny falling gently asleep while saying goodnight to everything in his room and his world. Simple in language, lovingly illustrated by Clement Hurd, it is a book that continues to charm children and parents alike after 60 years. In Over the Moon, it is joined by a little-known Brown/Hurd companion volume and a well-known book in which they use a bunny very differently. That well-known one is The Runaway Bunny, a supreme charmer in its own right – and a double pleasure to find in combination with Goodnight Moon and in a size that small as well as adult hands can manage: the hardcover volume measures 8½ x 7 inches. The Runaway Bunny features a little bunny who is so determined to leave home that he tells his mother all the things he will change into so he can escape. His mother replies with all the things she will do to catch him anyway: she will be a fisherman to his fish, a mountain climber to his rock, a tree in which his bird will roost. The idea that there is no getting away – because love will always find you – is another that has resonated for many decades: The Runaway Bunny dates all the way back to 1942. The third book within Over the Moon is the least known and least successful: My World, written in 1949 and specifically called “A Companion to Goodnight Moon.” Like the more famous, earlier book, it is an at-home story of the bunny family, but it is not quite as charming and seems a little forced: “My dog./ Daddy’s dog./ Daddy’s dog/ Once caught a frog.” The color scenes of family life, interspersed with black-and-white close-ups of everyday items (toothbrush, comb, spoon, etc.), are warm and pleasant, and if the book is not quite at the level of the two others here, it must be said that few children’s books are.
Jack Prelutsky’s level is largely set by Prelutsky himself: he is his own primary competition, having created more than 40 books of poetic word play. Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant is one his most absurdist romps, and one of his best. As the title and cover illustration indicate, this is a book in which animals are combined with inanimate objects, then described in verse. Among the denizens of this uniquely Prelutskian zoo – all amusingly illustrated by Carin Berger – are the Alarmadillos: “You’d imagine they’d be calmer,/ No one means them any harm,/ And besides, they’re thickly armored,/ Yet they’re always in alarm.” Or consider the Ballpoint Penguins: “Although they’ve nothing much to say,/ They write and write it anyway.” Or the Pop-up Toadsters, whose perfectly prepared bread slices are promptly snapped up by the Toasterns. Or the Clocktopus: “It moves with slow precision/ At a never-changing pace,/ Its tentacles in tempo/ With the clock upon its face.” The Circular Sawtoise, Limber Bulboa, Zipperpotamus and many more are to be found in a book that is intended for kids ages four and up – but whose combinatorial cleverness should appeal to all ages.
(++++) ADVENTURES IN REALITY
The Adventures of Marco Polo. By Russell Freedman. Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic. $17.99.
Dino Poop. By Jane Hammerslough. Illustrated by Andrea Morandi. Scholastic. $9.99.
Quincy the Hobby Photographer: The Complete Guide to Do-It-Yourself Dog Photography. By J. Otto Seibold. Harcourt. $14.95.
Books can take young readers on real-world journeys as fascinating as anything in fantasy – and, in some cases, on adventures in which readers can participate themselves. These three books offer one adventure in the past, one in the deep past with modern-day participatory elements, and one in which kids can get involved anytime.
In the case of Marco Polo, the amount of fantasy and the amount of real-world adventure remain in question after 700 years. Polo is famous as the greatest explorer of his time, perhaps of any time – unless he was one of the world’s greatest liars. Polo certainly journeyed out of 13th-century Venice, his home, into what are now Turkey and Iran – places well known to Venetian traders. The questions about his travels arise based on what he said he saw as he pressed onward toward and into China – a land then unknown to Europeans. The Adventures of Marco Polo is a fascinating account of Polo’s report of his journey, and a book that makes doubts about his observations clear. Polo, for example, said that bandits he encountered used spells to turn day into night. More likely, they waited for naturally occurring sandstorms and then attacked – but Polo’s certainty about magic has caused some of his other apparently fantastic observations to be called into question. On the basis of what we know now, Polo’s journey to China – which covered 8,000 miles, including detours – does seem genuine. But it is hard to doubt that Polo may have exaggerated at times, as when he says that a huge lion brought into the presence of the Great Khan immediately flung itself down at the Khan’s feet, acknowledging the Khan as its lord, and then remained lying placidly, unchained, in the throne room. Readers of The Adventures of Marco Polo can try to unravel the mysteries of his travels themselves – and imagine what it must have been like to go to a land so different from one’s own that it seemed truly magical.
There is magic of a different, humbler sort in the oddly titled Dino Poop, which actually comes with a small coprolite – fossilized dinosaur dung. Jane Hammerslough’s title may be off-putting to parents (though probably not to kids), but families willing to look beyond what the book is called will find some truly fascinating information about very, very ancient times. The importance of dinosaur dung for plant propagation (a role dung still fills today), the sheer amount of the stuff (some dinosaurs may have produced a ton a day), even the possibility that methane produced by dinosaurs may have damaged Earth’s ozone layer in prehistoric times – these are just some of the subjects considered in this fascinating book. Chapters on amber (“Tree Spit” – Hammerslough is obviously going for a gross-is-cool factor) and the remains of mammoths and other extinct mammals are also highly interesting. And the book tells modern-day kids how to make their own coprolite-like sculptures, where to see some amazing fossils, and more.
For a much more everyday sort of adventure – but an adventure nevertheless – Quincy the Hobby Photographer shows kids the ins and outs of taking interesting photos of their canine pals. J. Otto Seibold’s book is odd in some ways: the illustrations of equipment are realistically done, the actual photos included as examples are attractive, but the pictures of Quincy and other make-believe characters range from silly to somewhat unpleasant. It’s also a little difficult to know the age range at which Seibold’s book is directed: many instructions are simple enough for even young children to follow, but when Seibold includes a page called “Keep This Chart in Your Head” that includes 11 interconnected elements of photography, he is likely to go over the heads of many kids and more than a few parents. Despite the high quality of the advice in the book, its odd presentation gives it a (+++) rating rather than a higher one. Also, kids may want an explanation of what that thing called “film” is: this is a book about traditional photography, not the increasingly common digital type. The best things here are the actual dog photos, including some that Seibold modified in a darkroom rather than on a computer. Suggestion: skim well before buying.
Dino Poop. By Jane Hammerslough. Illustrated by Andrea Morandi. Scholastic. $9.99.
Quincy the Hobby Photographer: The Complete Guide to Do-It-Yourself Dog Photography. By J. Otto Seibold. Harcourt. $14.95.
Books can take young readers on real-world journeys as fascinating as anything in fantasy – and, in some cases, on adventures in which readers can participate themselves. These three books offer one adventure in the past, one in the deep past with modern-day participatory elements, and one in which kids can get involved anytime.
In the case of Marco Polo, the amount of fantasy and the amount of real-world adventure remain in question after 700 years. Polo is famous as the greatest explorer of his time, perhaps of any time – unless he was one of the world’s greatest liars. Polo certainly journeyed out of 13th-century Venice, his home, into what are now Turkey and Iran – places well known to Venetian traders. The questions about his travels arise based on what he said he saw as he pressed onward toward and into China – a land then unknown to Europeans. The Adventures of Marco Polo is a fascinating account of Polo’s report of his journey, and a book that makes doubts about his observations clear. Polo, for example, said that bandits he encountered used spells to turn day into night. More likely, they waited for naturally occurring sandstorms and then attacked – but Polo’s certainty about magic has caused some of his other apparently fantastic observations to be called into question. On the basis of what we know now, Polo’s journey to China – which covered 8,000 miles, including detours – does seem genuine. But it is hard to doubt that Polo may have exaggerated at times, as when he says that a huge lion brought into the presence of the Great Khan immediately flung itself down at the Khan’s feet, acknowledging the Khan as its lord, and then remained lying placidly, unchained, in the throne room. Readers of The Adventures of Marco Polo can try to unravel the mysteries of his travels themselves – and imagine what it must have been like to go to a land so different from one’s own that it seemed truly magical.
There is magic of a different, humbler sort in the oddly titled Dino Poop, which actually comes with a small coprolite – fossilized dinosaur dung. Jane Hammerslough’s title may be off-putting to parents (though probably not to kids), but families willing to look beyond what the book is called will find some truly fascinating information about very, very ancient times. The importance of dinosaur dung for plant propagation (a role dung still fills today), the sheer amount of the stuff (some dinosaurs may have produced a ton a day), even the possibility that methane produced by dinosaurs may have damaged Earth’s ozone layer in prehistoric times – these are just some of the subjects considered in this fascinating book. Chapters on amber (“Tree Spit” – Hammerslough is obviously going for a gross-is-cool factor) and the remains of mammoths and other extinct mammals are also highly interesting. And the book tells modern-day kids how to make their own coprolite-like sculptures, where to see some amazing fossils, and more.
For a much more everyday sort of adventure – but an adventure nevertheless – Quincy the Hobby Photographer shows kids the ins and outs of taking interesting photos of their canine pals. J. Otto Seibold’s book is odd in some ways: the illustrations of equipment are realistically done, the actual photos included as examples are attractive, but the pictures of Quincy and other make-believe characters range from silly to somewhat unpleasant. It’s also a little difficult to know the age range at which Seibold’s book is directed: many instructions are simple enough for even young children to follow, but when Seibold includes a page called “Keep This Chart in Your Head” that includes 11 interconnected elements of photography, he is likely to go over the heads of many kids and more than a few parents. Despite the high quality of the advice in the book, its odd presentation gives it a (+++) rating rather than a higher one. Also, kids may want an explanation of what that thing called “film” is: this is a book about traditional photography, not the increasingly common digital type. The best things here are the actual dog photos, including some that Seibold modified in a darkroom rather than on a computer. Suggestion: skim well before buying.
(++++) COMICS: UP AND UP-AND-COMING
Scrum Bums: A “Get Fuzzy” Collection. By Darby Conley. Andrews McMeel. $10.95.
Brevity. By Guy Endore-Kaiser and Rodd Perry. Andrews McMeel. $10.95.
Darby Conley’s Get Fuzzy has become something of a phenomenon, even though Conley still has some very strange habits. One is cartoonist “in” jokes: the latest Get Fuzzy is dedicated to Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine) and features a cover in which Bucky Katt and Satchel Pooch are scrimmaging over a rugby ball marked “Dilbert.” A little of this goes a long way. So does a little of Rob Wilco, the human in Bucky’s and Satchel’s life, who is drawn in a genuinely ugly style and frequently made to appear as if he is one step from being deranged: in one panel, a slice of pizza fills his entire mouth as he talks about Bucky and stares at nothing with popped eyes…and that’s only one example. So why does Conley’s work earn a (++++) rating? Because much of it is genuinely clever, and much of it appears to be intentionally strange – in addition to the parts that seem to be strange because Conley doesn’t seem able to help it. Conley gets the byplay between aggressive (and aggressively stupid) Bucky and overly nice, thoroughly self-unaware Satchel just right – maybe this cartoonist just has problems with humans. For instance, Bucky becomes fascinated with Garfield in this collection, thinking that the strip may be an unauthorized Bucky biography. Rob takes the cat and dog to visit Canada, where Satchel was born, with predictable (and some unpredictable) weirdness. Satchel, in one of his unending misunderstandings of language and of Rob, determines that Napoleon was a monkey. Bucky continues his campaign against the ferret living in a nearby apartment – and continues to lose out every time. Get Fuzzy is an odd sort of strip: part funny-animal comic, part standup-comedian shtick, part pets-and-humans story (Bucky and Satchel speak to people all the time, and the people understand them and talk with them), part character comedy (Chubby Huggs, a cat that hugs everyone, is introduced in this volume, to good effect). Maybe someday, Conley will do as well with the humans in the strips as with the animals – or maybe the point is that he simply can’t, or simply doesn’t want to.
What Guy Endore-Kaiser and Rodd Perry, who sign themselves “Guy & Rodd,” want is clear enough: to create another single-panel hit along the lines of Close to Home. That is one of the cartoon series that Brevity resembles, although it also draws on everything from Non Sequitur (which is occasionally in single-panel format) to The Far Side. It is a derivative strip, although it is clever enough to earn a (+++) rating. There is no particular pattern to Guy & Rodd’s panels, and there are no particular recurring characters. The best panels are genuinely funny, such as a machine with the warning “CAUTION! DO NOT TOUCH! Extreme danger of electric shock!!!” – repeated below the words in Braille. But most panels are not at that lofty level. “Newton discovers anti-gravity” has an apple rising from the ground to hit him. Parents tell their daughter, “Now that you’re 10, we can tell you the truth: beauty isn’t actually in the eye of the beholder. There are international standards – and you haven’t met them.” One young woman tells another, “I’m looking for a man who enjoys long walks on the beach – so he has something to do while I’m shopping.” Most of the jokes are rather blah, and so is most of the drawing (Guy is the writer, Rodd the artist). There is potential here, because some of the panels require a moment’s thought: crew members of an ocean liner look into the water ahead of the ship and say, “Oh no! Loose lips!” But for now, Guy & Rodd take the easy way out too much of the time. In brief, Brevity can be better.
Brevity. By Guy Endore-Kaiser and Rodd Perry. Andrews McMeel. $10.95.
Darby Conley’s Get Fuzzy has become something of a phenomenon, even though Conley still has some very strange habits. One is cartoonist “in” jokes: the latest Get Fuzzy is dedicated to Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine) and features a cover in which Bucky Katt and Satchel Pooch are scrimmaging over a rugby ball marked “Dilbert.” A little of this goes a long way. So does a little of Rob Wilco, the human in Bucky’s and Satchel’s life, who is drawn in a genuinely ugly style and frequently made to appear as if he is one step from being deranged: in one panel, a slice of pizza fills his entire mouth as he talks about Bucky and stares at nothing with popped eyes…and that’s only one example. So why does Conley’s work earn a (++++) rating? Because much of it is genuinely clever, and much of it appears to be intentionally strange – in addition to the parts that seem to be strange because Conley doesn’t seem able to help it. Conley gets the byplay between aggressive (and aggressively stupid) Bucky and overly nice, thoroughly self-unaware Satchel just right – maybe this cartoonist just has problems with humans. For instance, Bucky becomes fascinated with Garfield in this collection, thinking that the strip may be an unauthorized Bucky biography. Rob takes the cat and dog to visit Canada, where Satchel was born, with predictable (and some unpredictable) weirdness. Satchel, in one of his unending misunderstandings of language and of Rob, determines that Napoleon was a monkey. Bucky continues his campaign against the ferret living in a nearby apartment – and continues to lose out every time. Get Fuzzy is an odd sort of strip: part funny-animal comic, part standup-comedian shtick, part pets-and-humans story (Bucky and Satchel speak to people all the time, and the people understand them and talk with them), part character comedy (Chubby Huggs, a cat that hugs everyone, is introduced in this volume, to good effect). Maybe someday, Conley will do as well with the humans in the strips as with the animals – or maybe the point is that he simply can’t, or simply doesn’t want to.
What Guy Endore-Kaiser and Rodd Perry, who sign themselves “Guy & Rodd,” want is clear enough: to create another single-panel hit along the lines of Close to Home. That is one of the cartoon series that Brevity resembles, although it also draws on everything from Non Sequitur (which is occasionally in single-panel format) to The Far Side. It is a derivative strip, although it is clever enough to earn a (+++) rating. There is no particular pattern to Guy & Rodd’s panels, and there are no particular recurring characters. The best panels are genuinely funny, such as a machine with the warning “CAUTION! DO NOT TOUCH! Extreme danger of electric shock!!!” – repeated below the words in Braille. But most panels are not at that lofty level. “Newton discovers anti-gravity” has an apple rising from the ground to hit him. Parents tell their daughter, “Now that you’re 10, we can tell you the truth: beauty isn’t actually in the eye of the beholder. There are international standards – and you haven’t met them.” One young woman tells another, “I’m looking for a man who enjoys long walks on the beach – so he has something to do while I’m shopping.” Most of the jokes are rather blah, and so is most of the drawing (Guy is the writer, Rodd the artist). There is potential here, because some of the panels require a moment’s thought: crew members of an ocean liner look into the water ahead of the ship and say, “Oh no! Loose lips!” But for now, Guy & Rodd take the easy way out too much of the time. In brief, Brevity can be better.
(+++) THE MANY USES OF HELL
Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones. By Robert Greenfield. Da Capo. $24.
The Strange Case of Hellish Nell: The Story of Helen Duncan and the Witch Trial of World War II. By Nina Shandler. Da Capo. $25.
The Patient from Hell: How I Worked with My Doctors to Get the Best of Modern Medicine and How You Can Too. By Stephen H. Schneider, Ph.D., with Janica Lane. Da Capo. $15.95.
How have the mighty forces of Hell fallen. The word still has power in some circles, but it has been largely overshadowed as a curse by words redolent of bodily functions; and it is now used figuratively – sometimes even in a positive sense – by writers trying to make a point.
Thus, Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones has the second part of its title specifically to remind fans that the Stones’ 1971 double album, Exile on Main Street, resulted from a time when Mick Jagger fled England (and its confiscatory tax rates) while Keith Richards settled down in a mansion in France to make a very strong effort to kill himself with pretty much any drug that came within arm’s reach – especially favoring heroin. The fact that Jagger and Richards are still around and still performing 35 years later – both are grandparents now – inevitably robs Exile on Main Street of some power and forces it to speak almost entirely to the baby boomers who remember the Rolling Stones’ implosion after the violence at Altamont but who nevertheless consider Exile on Main Street the Stones’ last great album. Robert Greenfield, who also wrote of the Stones’ 1972 tour and penned biographies of Timothy Leary and Jerry Garcia, knows exactly what sort of audience he is after. He is no music critic, he points out, but someone who wants to show “how relentless it was” to be part of the sex-drugs-and-rock ‘n’ roll scene in (or near) the Stones’ heyday. This is a top-notch gossip book for those whose gossiping is focused three decades in the past.
Go back even further, and give “Hell” something closer to its traditional meaning, and you find The Strange Case of Hellish Nell, which is about a witchcraft trial, of all things, during World War II. “Nell” was Helen Duncan, a mother of six and grandmother of four who was tried in 1944 under the Witchcraft Act of 1735. Winston Churchill himself thought the trial was “tomfoolery,” but Nell was found guilty and jailed until the war’s end. For what? For holding séances at which she claimed to channel spirits that seemed to know a little too much about British ship movements. Unable to muster enough evidence to try Nell as a spy, prosecutors decided (in the name of national security) to try her as a witch. This is a strange story, one of those byways of war that are unlikely to find a wide audience but that will fascinate people immersed in the era. Nina Shandler tells the tale well, having done a great deal of primary research in diaries, personal papers and formerly classified documents. But readers seeking an answer to the mysteries of Nell’s séances will be disappointed: no one is quite sure if Nell was a victim, a charlatan or a real medium.
To see to what extent the word “Hell” has been transformed in the present, one need only turn to The Patient from Hell, in which Stephen H. Schneider urges readers to become just that. Yes, you want to be the patient from Hell, he argues, because if you are not, you will receive only average treatment, suitable for statistically average patients but probably not for you as an individual. Schneider’s railing against the depersonalization of modern medicine is nothing new, but his approach to improving care has much to recommend it. Schneider had a potentially fatal illness – mantle cell lymphoma, a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma – so he had no intention of simply listening to doctors and doing whatever they told him to do. It was his own life for which he was fighting, and he was not going to be pleasant and cooperative if that resulted in anything less than the absolute best care. Schneider urges patients to create partnerships with their doctors, seek experimental and unconventional treatments, and convince specialists to create individualized treatment protocols – not just to use standard approaches. This is, on one level, simply an argument to treat the patient, not the disease – something the best doctors already do. And it is an argument to take control of your own health, however dire your condition seems to be – not a new idea, but one that bears repeating. Schneider’s cancer is fully in remission, so this plan clearly worked for him, and his self-praise is justified. But that does not mean it will work for everyone: neither Schneider nor the by-the-book doctors he reviles can succeed in every patient by taking the same approach all the time.
The Strange Case of Hellish Nell: The Story of Helen Duncan and the Witch Trial of World War II. By Nina Shandler. Da Capo. $25.
The Patient from Hell: How I Worked with My Doctors to Get the Best of Modern Medicine and How You Can Too. By Stephen H. Schneider, Ph.D., with Janica Lane. Da Capo. $15.95.
How have the mighty forces of Hell fallen. The word still has power in some circles, but it has been largely overshadowed as a curse by words redolent of bodily functions; and it is now used figuratively – sometimes even in a positive sense – by writers trying to make a point.
Thus, Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones has the second part of its title specifically to remind fans that the Stones’ 1971 double album, Exile on Main Street, resulted from a time when Mick Jagger fled England (and its confiscatory tax rates) while Keith Richards settled down in a mansion in France to make a very strong effort to kill himself with pretty much any drug that came within arm’s reach – especially favoring heroin. The fact that Jagger and Richards are still around and still performing 35 years later – both are grandparents now – inevitably robs Exile on Main Street of some power and forces it to speak almost entirely to the baby boomers who remember the Rolling Stones’ implosion after the violence at Altamont but who nevertheless consider Exile on Main Street the Stones’ last great album. Robert Greenfield, who also wrote of the Stones’ 1972 tour and penned biographies of Timothy Leary and Jerry Garcia, knows exactly what sort of audience he is after. He is no music critic, he points out, but someone who wants to show “how relentless it was” to be part of the sex-drugs-and-rock ‘n’ roll scene in (or near) the Stones’ heyday. This is a top-notch gossip book for those whose gossiping is focused three decades in the past.
Go back even further, and give “Hell” something closer to its traditional meaning, and you find The Strange Case of Hellish Nell, which is about a witchcraft trial, of all things, during World War II. “Nell” was Helen Duncan, a mother of six and grandmother of four who was tried in 1944 under the Witchcraft Act of 1735. Winston Churchill himself thought the trial was “tomfoolery,” but Nell was found guilty and jailed until the war’s end. For what? For holding séances at which she claimed to channel spirits that seemed to know a little too much about British ship movements. Unable to muster enough evidence to try Nell as a spy, prosecutors decided (in the name of national security) to try her as a witch. This is a strange story, one of those byways of war that are unlikely to find a wide audience but that will fascinate people immersed in the era. Nina Shandler tells the tale well, having done a great deal of primary research in diaries, personal papers and formerly classified documents. But readers seeking an answer to the mysteries of Nell’s séances will be disappointed: no one is quite sure if Nell was a victim, a charlatan or a real medium.
To see to what extent the word “Hell” has been transformed in the present, one need only turn to The Patient from Hell, in which Stephen H. Schneider urges readers to become just that. Yes, you want to be the patient from Hell, he argues, because if you are not, you will receive only average treatment, suitable for statistically average patients but probably not for you as an individual. Schneider’s railing against the depersonalization of modern medicine is nothing new, but his approach to improving care has much to recommend it. Schneider had a potentially fatal illness – mantle cell lymphoma, a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma – so he had no intention of simply listening to doctors and doing whatever they told him to do. It was his own life for which he was fighting, and he was not going to be pleasant and cooperative if that resulted in anything less than the absolute best care. Schneider urges patients to create partnerships with their doctors, seek experimental and unconventional treatments, and convince specialists to create individualized treatment protocols – not just to use standard approaches. This is, on one level, simply an argument to treat the patient, not the disease – something the best doctors already do. And it is an argument to take control of your own health, however dire your condition seems to be – not a new idea, but one that bears repeating. Schneider’s cancer is fully in remission, so this plan clearly worked for him, and his self-praise is justified. But that does not mean it will work for everyone: neither Schneider nor the by-the-book doctors he reviles can succeed in every patient by taking the same approach all the time.
(++++) SYMPHONIES, GREATER AND LESSER
Bruckner: Symphony No. 4, “Romantic.” Klaus Tennstedt conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. LPO. $16.99.
Gounod: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2. Patrick Gallois conducting Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä. Naxos. $8.99.
Only a couple of decades separate Anton Bruckner’s Fourth from Charles Gounod’s two symphonies, but the works might as well have been composed on different planets. In a sense, they were: Gounod’s, from 1855, were written by an opera and church composer along classical lines; Bruckner’s, first written in 1874 and revised in 1877-8, was structured under strong Wagnerian influence (Bruckner’s previous symphony quotes directly from Wagner operas) by a master symphonist whose strong religious belief was reflected mostly in his instrumental music. And of course, Gounod’s works fall in the French tradition (his first symphony influenced the Symphony in C by his pupil, Georges Bizet), while Bruckner’s are distinctly and distinctively Germanic.
It is easy, even facile, to call Bruckner’s Fourth the greatest of these three works and simply to dismiss Gounod’s symphonies. The Bruckner is great music, and the Gounod works are not, but when well played and well conducted, they have charm and a direct emotional appeal that is quite different from the lofty sentiments of the much vaster Bruckner work.
This Klaus Tennstedt performance of the Bruckner Fourth, recorded live in 1989, is an exceptional one. Tennstedt, originally from East Germany, had a visceral feeling for Mahler, and he turned the London Philharmonic Orchestra into a very fine Mahler orchestra, if never a wholly intuitive one. But Tennstedt was not identified with Bruckner as much as with Mahler – and, on the basis of this CD, that may have been a mistake. Tennstedt here shows tremendous sensitivity to the innards of Bruckner’s Fourth, the interrelatedness of its themes, the way in which the parts of each movement fit together and the parts of all movements are assembled to create a stunning entirety. Tennstedt takes chances: he zips through the Scherzo, usually an 11½-to-12-minute movement of some stolidity, in a mere 10½ minutes, making the outer sections nearly breathless and the central Trio a region of genuine respite. The overall feeling of this performance is one of forward motion, building inexorably toward the overwhelming climax of the finale. But in fact there is nothing inexorable in this work, as many other performances show. This Tennstedt reading, which has the added advantage of a very fine sound recording by BBC Radio, is one to cherish.
It is doubtful that anyone will cherish the new CD of Gounod’s symphonies: they are built on a much smaller scale, ask less of the listener, and deliver a smaller experience in a straightforwardly effective manner. Patrick Gallois, better known as a flautist than a conductor, leads Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä with clarity and a fine sense of pacing. The first symphony will be more interesting for many listeners, both because of the Bizet influence and because it is a simpler, more straightforward, significantly shorter work. The second has aspirations to greater grandeur (calling them “delusions of grandeur” would be unkind), with a first-movement Adagio introduction that sets the scene for something broad – only to switch to fairly commonplace gaiety in the main section, marked “Allegro agitato.” Gounod’s theatricality and interest in wide appeal seem to conflict with his desire for depth: he marks the slow movement “Larghetto (non troppo),” as if wanting to be sure it isn’t taken too seriously, then produces a slow, involving theme that he soon proceeds to contrast with jaunty dotted rhythms. The finale is jaunty, too, with delicacy and fleetness and a triumphant conclusion. No, Gounod’s symphonies are not great music, but there is a place in the concert hall for pleasant music, too. Or there ought to be.
Gounod: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2. Patrick Gallois conducting Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä. Naxos. $8.99.
Only a couple of decades separate Anton Bruckner’s Fourth from Charles Gounod’s two symphonies, but the works might as well have been composed on different planets. In a sense, they were: Gounod’s, from 1855, were written by an opera and church composer along classical lines; Bruckner’s, first written in 1874 and revised in 1877-8, was structured under strong Wagnerian influence (Bruckner’s previous symphony quotes directly from Wagner operas) by a master symphonist whose strong religious belief was reflected mostly in his instrumental music. And of course, Gounod’s works fall in the French tradition (his first symphony influenced the Symphony in C by his pupil, Georges Bizet), while Bruckner’s are distinctly and distinctively Germanic.
It is easy, even facile, to call Bruckner’s Fourth the greatest of these three works and simply to dismiss Gounod’s symphonies. The Bruckner is great music, and the Gounod works are not, but when well played and well conducted, they have charm and a direct emotional appeal that is quite different from the lofty sentiments of the much vaster Bruckner work.
This Klaus Tennstedt performance of the Bruckner Fourth, recorded live in 1989, is an exceptional one. Tennstedt, originally from East Germany, had a visceral feeling for Mahler, and he turned the London Philharmonic Orchestra into a very fine Mahler orchestra, if never a wholly intuitive one. But Tennstedt was not identified with Bruckner as much as with Mahler – and, on the basis of this CD, that may have been a mistake. Tennstedt here shows tremendous sensitivity to the innards of Bruckner’s Fourth, the interrelatedness of its themes, the way in which the parts of each movement fit together and the parts of all movements are assembled to create a stunning entirety. Tennstedt takes chances: he zips through the Scherzo, usually an 11½-to-12-minute movement of some stolidity, in a mere 10½ minutes, making the outer sections nearly breathless and the central Trio a region of genuine respite. The overall feeling of this performance is one of forward motion, building inexorably toward the overwhelming climax of the finale. But in fact there is nothing inexorable in this work, as many other performances show. This Tennstedt reading, which has the added advantage of a very fine sound recording by BBC Radio, is one to cherish.
It is doubtful that anyone will cherish the new CD of Gounod’s symphonies: they are built on a much smaller scale, ask less of the listener, and deliver a smaller experience in a straightforwardly effective manner. Patrick Gallois, better known as a flautist than a conductor, leads Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä with clarity and a fine sense of pacing. The first symphony will be more interesting for many listeners, both because of the Bizet influence and because it is a simpler, more straightforward, significantly shorter work. The second has aspirations to greater grandeur (calling them “delusions of grandeur” would be unkind), with a first-movement Adagio introduction that sets the scene for something broad – only to switch to fairly commonplace gaiety in the main section, marked “Allegro agitato.” Gounod’s theatricality and interest in wide appeal seem to conflict with his desire for depth: he marks the slow movement “Larghetto (non troppo),” as if wanting to be sure it isn’t taken too seriously, then produces a slow, involving theme that he soon proceeds to contrast with jaunty dotted rhythms. The finale is jaunty, too, with delicacy and fleetness and a triumphant conclusion. No, Gounod’s symphonies are not great music, but there is a place in the concert hall for pleasant music, too. Or there ought to be.
October 26, 2006
(++++) TONS OF TOP-NOTCH TEEN TALES
Are We Out of the Driveway Yet? “Zits” Sketchbook 11. By Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman. Andrews McMeel. $10.95.
Luann 3: Sixteen Isn’t Pretty. By Greg Evans. Andrews McMeel. $10.95.
She’s Turning into One of Them! A “For Better or For Worse” Collection. By Lynn Johnston. Andrews McMeel. $10.95.
Nowadays there’s more solid information on what it’s like to be a teenager, or live with one, in comic strips than in news stories, books or movies, or on TV. Many of the best cartoonists working today endow their teenage characters with depth, warmth, intelligence and real-world problems and concerns far beyond what you’ll find in most other media. The very best strips make teenage angst and uncertainty amusing even as they explore some of its more serous sides.
The funniest and best-drawn teenage comic strip around is Zits, which combines the wit and cleverness of Jerry Scott (who also writes Baby Blues) with the surrealistic sensibilities and talent for exaggeration of Jim Borgman, who is also an outstanding editorial cartoonist. The 11th Zits sketchbook (there have also been five oversize “Treasury” volumes) features slices of modern teen life: everyone in the movie audiences sending and receiving text messages to enhance the experience of watching a big-budget film. It includes brilliant depictions of how teens see their parents’ concern: Jeremy Duncan, 15, cast as Gulliver, tied down by multiple Lilliputian versions of his parents, Walt and Connie, who are using strings marked “curfew,” “chaperones” and “no parties.” Parents’ feelings get their turn, too, as when Connie literally unzips teenage Jeremy to get to the little boy inside, with whom she always had such a good time. Then there’s Jeremy portrayed as actually being in the center of his own universe…letting all the knowledge drain out of his ears after finals are over…and remembering to compliment his girlfriend’s shoes – when she is barefoot. It all adds up to a near-perfect portrait of modern teenagerdom – except that Scott and Borgman make it more enjoyable than most real-life families find it to be.
Greg Evans goes more intensely into real life and real-world troubles in Luann than do the creators of Zits. Evans has, for example, dealt with teenage drinking and had a character survive cancer. But the stock-in-trade of Luann is relationships, or the lack thereof, and that is the focus of Luann 3: Sixteen Isn’t Pretty. This is actually far more than the third Luann collection – it’s just the third from Andrews McMeel. And it continues the stories of Luann, who manages to be lovable despite lengthy bouts of superficiality, and her best friends, Bernice and Delta. Luann’s slug of an older brother, Brad, surprises himself (and his family, and readers) with some genuine growth in this volume, where his story becomes intertwined with the romance of Bernice and Zane – an older, wheelchair-bound hunk who works with Bernice in a bookstore where a near-tragedy is averted by Brad’s brave action. Also in this volume, Luann’s nemesis, Tiffany – a manipulative, gold-digging, flirtatious cheerleader who is the most stereotyped character in the comic strip – gives a makeover to “nice guy” Gunther, in whom Luann really ought to be interested but never is, quite. The results are intriguing – as are all the ongoing stories here.
The best-developed of all ongoing family stories in the comics are those of the Pattersons in Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse. Here too are people – and they really seem like people – facing the everyday vicissitudes of life and handling them with understandable difficulty but with good humor, family solidity and a strong sense of ethics. Johnston’s juggling act with her large cast of characters is almost as impressive as Garry Trudeau’s in Doonesbury. But Johnston has none of Trudeau’s cynicism and none of his preoccupation with politics – hers is a “family values” strip par excellence. This can sometimes become a bit cloying – everyone is just so well-intentioned and well-mannered – but Johnston always stays true to the personalities she has created for her characters. She’s Turning into One of Them! focuses in large part on April, the Pattersons’ “bonus baby,” who is now 13. But there are other kids here: for example, the Pattersons’ first child, Michael, already a father, is about to become one again. And then there is the “mentally challenged” Shannon, who takes some classes with April – and who, although 15 years old, is academically and socially slow. April’s affinity for Shannon, and her increasing distance from boy-chasing best friend Becky, is exactly what Johnston’s strip is all about. It is only when Becky shows vulnerability and suffers pain that she and April become closer again – a bit treacly, perhaps, but still far more realistic than most of what passes for family life in the comics…and far more uplifting.
Luann 3: Sixteen Isn’t Pretty. By Greg Evans. Andrews McMeel. $10.95.
She’s Turning into One of Them! A “For Better or For Worse” Collection. By Lynn Johnston. Andrews McMeel. $10.95.
Nowadays there’s more solid information on what it’s like to be a teenager, or live with one, in comic strips than in news stories, books or movies, or on TV. Many of the best cartoonists working today endow their teenage characters with depth, warmth, intelligence and real-world problems and concerns far beyond what you’ll find in most other media. The very best strips make teenage angst and uncertainty amusing even as they explore some of its more serous sides.
The funniest and best-drawn teenage comic strip around is Zits, which combines the wit and cleverness of Jerry Scott (who also writes Baby Blues) with the surrealistic sensibilities and talent for exaggeration of Jim Borgman, who is also an outstanding editorial cartoonist. The 11th Zits sketchbook (there have also been five oversize “Treasury” volumes) features slices of modern teen life: everyone in the movie audiences sending and receiving text messages to enhance the experience of watching a big-budget film. It includes brilliant depictions of how teens see their parents’ concern: Jeremy Duncan, 15, cast as Gulliver, tied down by multiple Lilliputian versions of his parents, Walt and Connie, who are using strings marked “curfew,” “chaperones” and “no parties.” Parents’ feelings get their turn, too, as when Connie literally unzips teenage Jeremy to get to the little boy inside, with whom she always had such a good time. Then there’s Jeremy portrayed as actually being in the center of his own universe…letting all the knowledge drain out of his ears after finals are over…and remembering to compliment his girlfriend’s shoes – when she is barefoot. It all adds up to a near-perfect portrait of modern teenagerdom – except that Scott and Borgman make it more enjoyable than most real-life families find it to be.
Greg Evans goes more intensely into real life and real-world troubles in Luann than do the creators of Zits. Evans has, for example, dealt with teenage drinking and had a character survive cancer. But the stock-in-trade of Luann is relationships, or the lack thereof, and that is the focus of Luann 3: Sixteen Isn’t Pretty. This is actually far more than the third Luann collection – it’s just the third from Andrews McMeel. And it continues the stories of Luann, who manages to be lovable despite lengthy bouts of superficiality, and her best friends, Bernice and Delta. Luann’s slug of an older brother, Brad, surprises himself (and his family, and readers) with some genuine growth in this volume, where his story becomes intertwined with the romance of Bernice and Zane – an older, wheelchair-bound hunk who works with Bernice in a bookstore where a near-tragedy is averted by Brad’s brave action. Also in this volume, Luann’s nemesis, Tiffany – a manipulative, gold-digging, flirtatious cheerleader who is the most stereotyped character in the comic strip – gives a makeover to “nice guy” Gunther, in whom Luann really ought to be interested but never is, quite. The results are intriguing – as are all the ongoing stories here.
The best-developed of all ongoing family stories in the comics are those of the Pattersons in Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse. Here too are people – and they really seem like people – facing the everyday vicissitudes of life and handling them with understandable difficulty but with good humor, family solidity and a strong sense of ethics. Johnston’s juggling act with her large cast of characters is almost as impressive as Garry Trudeau’s in Doonesbury. But Johnston has none of Trudeau’s cynicism and none of his preoccupation with politics – hers is a “family values” strip par excellence. This can sometimes become a bit cloying – everyone is just so well-intentioned and well-mannered – but Johnston always stays true to the personalities she has created for her characters. She’s Turning into One of Them! focuses in large part on April, the Pattersons’ “bonus baby,” who is now 13. But there are other kids here: for example, the Pattersons’ first child, Michael, already a father, is about to become one again. And then there is the “mentally challenged” Shannon, who takes some classes with April – and who, although 15 years old, is academically and socially slow. April’s affinity for Shannon, and her increasing distance from boy-chasing best friend Becky, is exactly what Johnston’s strip is all about. It is only when Becky shows vulnerability and suffers pain that she and April become closer again – a bit treacly, perhaps, but still far more realistic than most of what passes for family life in the comics…and far more uplifting.
(++++) GIFTS FOR THIS (OR ANY) SEASON
Journals: Frank Lloyd Wright Pocket Journal; New York Times Traveler’s Journal. Pomegranate. $14.95 each.
Postcards: Charles Addams; R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural. Pomegranate. $9.95 each.
Knowledge Cards: What Do You Know About Golf?; What Do You Know About Jazz?; Hey Bartender! Pomegranate. $9.95 each.
Holiday Cards: Charles Addams; Frank Lloyd Wright Decorative Elements. Pomegranate. $15 each.
Have you noticed how close we are getting to Christmas and the generalized winter gift-giving season? Are you feeling the hot breath of incipient craziness breathing down your neck as you contemplate all the people for whom you want to buy things, when you haven’t got a clue what things to buy? Fear not: frantic times are not here yet, and you can head them off very nicely indeed with some of the thoughtful, well-made offerings of an unusually artistic California company called Pomegranate Communications.
What makes the company unusually artistic is the way it brings genuine art into everyday life in unexpected ways. Take the humble journal. The Frank Lloyd Wright Pocket Journal features a beautifully embossed geometric cover design by the famed architect, plus pages with squares – one of Wright’s oft-used shapes – as background, plus a size (less than four by six inches) that makes it easy to carry anywhere. It’s a blank book, suitable for jotting down your own artistic (or other) thoughts. Or try the slightly larger New York Times Traveler’s Journal if peregrination is one of your preferences – or a preference of a gift recipient. The blank pages here have standard horizontal lines, but they are far from the only feature: this journal contains itinerary pages, checklists of items to be sure to take on a trip, temperature and measurement conversions, time zones, tipping suggestions – even a dozen crossword puzzles to pass the time while stuck in an airport, at a train station or on llama back.
Travelers looking to send home something other than scenic postcards – or people simply looking for offbeat ways to communicate a few words through the mail – can try a book of postcards by Charles Addams or a box of them by underground cartoonist R. (for Robert) Crumb. The Addams cards, which are bound together and perforated to tear out easily, range from the seasonally touching (a valentine slipped under a door that is quintuple-bolted to keep the world out), to the gently macabre (a color portrait of the Addams Family), to the slightly weird (an orchestra with one member standing ready to push a plunger and blow the stage up). These are certainly nontraditional greetings. So are the Mr. Natural cards, which come boxed and which feature four color Crumb drawings and six in black-and-white. These range from Mr. Natural doing the dishes to a card in which one of Crumb’s typical big-and-buxom babes is sitting on Mr. Natural, holding him down, while saying, “Just tell me real quick what the secret of the universe is.” No, these are not for everybody. Don’t ask anyone on your gift list if he or she would like these – if you have to ask, the answer is no.
Some things that are a little more mainstream, and that make very nice stocking stuffers, are Pomegranate’s Knowledge Card decks. They really are decks of cards – 48 per box – featuring interesting and/or little-known facts about a wide variety of subjects. Pomegranate makes a lot of these decks. Some new and attractive ones are What Do You Know About Golf? by William Rogin and What Do You Know About Jazz? by Michael Ehlers. Find someone who thinks he or she knows golf and try out these questions: Who were the cleekmakers? Who was the first Olympic golf medalist? Then find a self-proclaimed jazz expert and try these: Whose primary instrument is bagpipes? Who wrote (not performed) “Lullaby of Birdland”? Each card gives questions on one side, answers on the other – and the jazz set includes listening suggestions, too.
A third Knowledge Cards set could have been called “What Do You Know About Mixed Drinks?” – but Jeff Burkhart’s deck is actually called Hey Bartender! Anyone who partakes of exotic drinks will appreciate this one, in which Burkhart (who really is a bartender) asks how a particular drink is made, then gives the recipe on the back…along with background information and mixing hints.
Now, what sort of seasonal greeting cards might you give people along with these many and various gifts? Pomegranate has plenty of possibilities, some of which use the same artists who appear in the gift items – but in different ways. Thus, the Charles Addams assortment – 20 cards, five each of four designs – features more amusingly heartwarming work than you would expect from Addams. True, “Snowman March” could be a little spooky – all those snowmen heading in the same direction – but the snow guys don’t really look sinister. “Inside Snowman” (who is in an apartment looking out) is wistful, “Snow Family” (including a snow dog) is cute, and “Lone Brownstone” (nicely decorated, standing amid faceless skyscrapers) is actually touching.
If you prefer something more abstract but equally seasonal, Frank Lloyd Wright Decorative Elements presents four of Wright’s geometric shapes (five cards of each design) colored mostly in seasonal reds and greens. Although none of the designs was created for seasonal purposes, they certainly seem right for Christmas and winter – “Oak Park Home and Studio,” for example, has a churchlike feel, while “Marin County Civic Center” looks like a tree ornament. It’s enough to make you welcome the season instead of dreading its pressures.
Postcards: Charles Addams; R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural. Pomegranate. $9.95 each.
Knowledge Cards: What Do You Know About Golf?; What Do You Know About Jazz?; Hey Bartender! Pomegranate. $9.95 each.
Holiday Cards: Charles Addams; Frank Lloyd Wright Decorative Elements. Pomegranate. $15 each.
Have you noticed how close we are getting to Christmas and the generalized winter gift-giving season? Are you feeling the hot breath of incipient craziness breathing down your neck as you contemplate all the people for whom you want to buy things, when you haven’t got a clue what things to buy? Fear not: frantic times are not here yet, and you can head them off very nicely indeed with some of the thoughtful, well-made offerings of an unusually artistic California company called Pomegranate Communications.
What makes the company unusually artistic is the way it brings genuine art into everyday life in unexpected ways. Take the humble journal. The Frank Lloyd Wright Pocket Journal features a beautifully embossed geometric cover design by the famed architect, plus pages with squares – one of Wright’s oft-used shapes – as background, plus a size (less than four by six inches) that makes it easy to carry anywhere. It’s a blank book, suitable for jotting down your own artistic (or other) thoughts. Or try the slightly larger New York Times Traveler’s Journal if peregrination is one of your preferences – or a preference of a gift recipient. The blank pages here have standard horizontal lines, but they are far from the only feature: this journal contains itinerary pages, checklists of items to be sure to take on a trip, temperature and measurement conversions, time zones, tipping suggestions – even a dozen crossword puzzles to pass the time while stuck in an airport, at a train station or on llama back.
Travelers looking to send home something other than scenic postcards – or people simply looking for offbeat ways to communicate a few words through the mail – can try a book of postcards by Charles Addams or a box of them by underground cartoonist R. (for Robert) Crumb. The Addams cards, which are bound together and perforated to tear out easily, range from the seasonally touching (a valentine slipped under a door that is quintuple-bolted to keep the world out), to the gently macabre (a color portrait of the Addams Family), to the slightly weird (an orchestra with one member standing ready to push a plunger and blow the stage up). These are certainly nontraditional greetings. So are the Mr. Natural cards, which come boxed and which feature four color Crumb drawings and six in black-and-white. These range from Mr. Natural doing the dishes to a card in which one of Crumb’s typical big-and-buxom babes is sitting on Mr. Natural, holding him down, while saying, “Just tell me real quick what the secret of the universe is.” No, these are not for everybody. Don’t ask anyone on your gift list if he or she would like these – if you have to ask, the answer is no.
Some things that are a little more mainstream, and that make very nice stocking stuffers, are Pomegranate’s Knowledge Card decks. They really are decks of cards – 48 per box – featuring interesting and/or little-known facts about a wide variety of subjects. Pomegranate makes a lot of these decks. Some new and attractive ones are What Do You Know About Golf? by William Rogin and What Do You Know About Jazz? by Michael Ehlers. Find someone who thinks he or she knows golf and try out these questions: Who were the cleekmakers? Who was the first Olympic golf medalist? Then find a self-proclaimed jazz expert and try these: Whose primary instrument is bagpipes? Who wrote (not performed) “Lullaby of Birdland”? Each card gives questions on one side, answers on the other – and the jazz set includes listening suggestions, too.
A third Knowledge Cards set could have been called “What Do You Know About Mixed Drinks?” – but Jeff Burkhart’s deck is actually called Hey Bartender! Anyone who partakes of exotic drinks will appreciate this one, in which Burkhart (who really is a bartender) asks how a particular drink is made, then gives the recipe on the back…along with background information and mixing hints.
Now, what sort of seasonal greeting cards might you give people along with these many and various gifts? Pomegranate has plenty of possibilities, some of which use the same artists who appear in the gift items – but in different ways. Thus, the Charles Addams assortment – 20 cards, five each of four designs – features more amusingly heartwarming work than you would expect from Addams. True, “Snowman March” could be a little spooky – all those snowmen heading in the same direction – but the snow guys don’t really look sinister. “Inside Snowman” (who is in an apartment looking out) is wistful, “Snow Family” (including a snow dog) is cute, and “Lone Brownstone” (nicely decorated, standing amid faceless skyscrapers) is actually touching.
If you prefer something more abstract but equally seasonal, Frank Lloyd Wright Decorative Elements presents four of Wright’s geometric shapes (five cards of each design) colored mostly in seasonal reds and greens. Although none of the designs was created for seasonal purposes, they certainly seem right for Christmas and winter – “Oak Park Home and Studio,” for example, has a churchlike feel, while “Marin County Civic Center” looks like a tree ornament. It’s enough to make you welcome the season instead of dreading its pressures.
(+++) FRIGHTS FOR ALL AGES
The Midnight Library: Voices; Blood and Sand; End Game. By Damien Graves. Scholastic. $5.99 each.
Epossumondas Saves the Day. By Colleen Salley. Illustrated by Janet Stevens. Harcourt. $16.
This is trick-or-treat season, and one way of giving kids a treat is by giving them a book that tricks them – preferably a little scarily. Of course, the fright has to be matched to each child’s age to avoid giving little ones nightmares or making sleep difficult – and to prevent older kids from dismissing stories as, well, “kid stuff.”
The Midnight Library is for ages 8-12, and will work especially well at the younger end of that age range. “Damien Graves” is a suitably silly/spooky pseudonym: Voices is by Shaun Hutson; Blood and Sand by David Savage (itself a pretty good name for an author of books like these); and End Game by Ben Jeapes and Robin Wasserman. Each volume – there will be others in the series – contains three easy-to-read stories in which kids in the target age group get into shivery trouble because of supernatural happenings. The title story in Voices has to do with the blessing – or is it a curse? – of being able to hear people everywhere talking, even when they are not talking to you. “A Perfect Fit” is a tale of shoes possessed by some sort of evil creature – a fairy-tale theme updated to the age of high-priced sneakers. “An Apple a Day” is about a boy’s unpleasant neighbor and his very unusual apple orchard – how unusual, the boy finds out only when it is too late. Bad things happen to kids in all these stories – they’re not terribly frightening, but are not for squeamish or overly sensitive children. In Blood and Sand, the title story is about two children who probe a bit too closely into the reason some sand sculptures are ultra-realistic. “Man’s Best Friend,” one of the best stories in these books, is about a parrot that talks about death and seems capable of causing it – and a boy who figures out what is going on and is able to save his family…he thinks. “Stranger in the House,” among the worst of these tales, is a cliché-filled story of demonic possession that has no ending except a girl’s determination – it is likely to disappoint most readers. In End Game, the title story is about a boy who thinks how cool it would be to play “a game that manipulated reality,” but who discovers it is not so cool after all. “The Other Sister” is about a kindhearted girl who picks the wrong person to befriend. “Is Anybody There?” is a story of mysterious text messages that seem to be coming from a cell phone that isn’t connected. None of these stories is especially well written or creative, but all have some chilling moments – and two more books in the series are planned.
The danger in Epossumondas Saves the Day is more comical than real – even children ages 3-7, the target age group, will likely realize that the bad things that happen will be reversed by the end of the book. This is Colleen Salley’s third update of the old Southern tales of Epaminondas – here transformed to a lovable possum. It is not quite as freewheeling or fun-filled as Epossumondas or Why Epossumondas Has No Hair on His Tail, because it is significantly more repetitious – which means it will appeal mostly to kids at the lower end of the target age range. Janet Stevens’ exaggerated illustrations, though, are as roguishly charming as ever. The story is about Epossumondas’ birthday cake, for which his Mama needs some sody sallyraytus – the old Southern term for baking soda. But various characters’ attempts to get the sody all end in a confrontation with a “GREAT, HUGE, UGLY LOUISIANA SNAPPING TURTLE,” until Epossumondas himself figures out how to save everyone (well, except the turtle) and get the sody back home, too. The huge size of the turtle may startle or scare some younger readers, but after their initial shock, they should quickly realize that big bad turtles, like big bad wolves, get what they deserve in the end.
Epossumondas Saves the Day. By Colleen Salley. Illustrated by Janet Stevens. Harcourt. $16.
This is trick-or-treat season, and one way of giving kids a treat is by giving them a book that tricks them – preferably a little scarily. Of course, the fright has to be matched to each child’s age to avoid giving little ones nightmares or making sleep difficult – and to prevent older kids from dismissing stories as, well, “kid stuff.”
The Midnight Library is for ages 8-12, and will work especially well at the younger end of that age range. “Damien Graves” is a suitably silly/spooky pseudonym: Voices is by Shaun Hutson; Blood and Sand by David Savage (itself a pretty good name for an author of books like these); and End Game by Ben Jeapes and Robin Wasserman. Each volume – there will be others in the series – contains three easy-to-read stories in which kids in the target age group get into shivery trouble because of supernatural happenings. The title story in Voices has to do with the blessing – or is it a curse? – of being able to hear people everywhere talking, even when they are not talking to you. “A Perfect Fit” is a tale of shoes possessed by some sort of evil creature – a fairy-tale theme updated to the age of high-priced sneakers. “An Apple a Day” is about a boy’s unpleasant neighbor and his very unusual apple orchard – how unusual, the boy finds out only when it is too late. Bad things happen to kids in all these stories – they’re not terribly frightening, but are not for squeamish or overly sensitive children. In Blood and Sand, the title story is about two children who probe a bit too closely into the reason some sand sculptures are ultra-realistic. “Man’s Best Friend,” one of the best stories in these books, is about a parrot that talks about death and seems capable of causing it – and a boy who figures out what is going on and is able to save his family…he thinks. “Stranger in the House,” among the worst of these tales, is a cliché-filled story of demonic possession that has no ending except a girl’s determination – it is likely to disappoint most readers. In End Game, the title story is about a boy who thinks how cool it would be to play “a game that manipulated reality,” but who discovers it is not so cool after all. “The Other Sister” is about a kindhearted girl who picks the wrong person to befriend. “Is Anybody There?” is a story of mysterious text messages that seem to be coming from a cell phone that isn’t connected. None of these stories is especially well written or creative, but all have some chilling moments – and two more books in the series are planned.
The danger in Epossumondas Saves the Day is more comical than real – even children ages 3-7, the target age group, will likely realize that the bad things that happen will be reversed by the end of the book. This is Colleen Salley’s third update of the old Southern tales of Epaminondas – here transformed to a lovable possum. It is not quite as freewheeling or fun-filled as Epossumondas or Why Epossumondas Has No Hair on His Tail, because it is significantly more repetitious – which means it will appeal mostly to kids at the lower end of the target age range. Janet Stevens’ exaggerated illustrations, though, are as roguishly charming as ever. The story is about Epossumondas’ birthday cake, for which his Mama needs some sody sallyraytus – the old Southern term for baking soda. But various characters’ attempts to get the sody all end in a confrontation with a “GREAT, HUGE, UGLY LOUISIANA SNAPPING TURTLE,” until Epossumondas himself figures out how to save everyone (well, except the turtle) and get the sody back home, too. The huge size of the turtle may startle or scare some younger readers, but after their initial shock, they should quickly realize that big bad turtles, like big bad wolves, get what they deserve in the end.
(+++) TALES OF TIMES LONG GONE
Penny from Heaven. By Jennifer L. Holm. Random House. $15.95.
House of the Red Fish. By Graham Salisbury. Wendy Lamb Books. $16.95.
Jennifer Holm’s semi-autobiographical tale of the 1950s and Graham Salisbury’s family-experience-based story of the 1940s are both well written and both effective, each in its own way. The fog of nostalgia, though, seems to have settled over the authors to such an extent that their plots are not quite as strong here as in their other works.
Penny from Heaven is set in 1953, a time that inspires this sort of prose: “Every year the uncles get me a big gift. Last year we went to the circus and then for a lobster dinner afterward. The year before that I got a fancy dollhouse. Frankie gets presents from the uncles on his birthday, too, but not as big as mine.” The setting is not entirely idyllic – Penny gets those big gifts in part because her father is dead – but there is a sense that the family issues on which this book rests are far from unsolvable and all part of learning and growing up. Penny, who is 11, isn’t allowed to go swimming because her mother thinks she will catch polio at the pool; the two sides of her family are not speaking to each other; and everyone in the Italian-American family is aware that World War II happened only a few years ago, and that Italians were America’s enemies then. Here is a typical musing of Penny about getting older: “Twelve has always seemed pretty old to me. The girls who are twelve are in seventh grade and worry about their hair and are always trying to borrow their older sisters’ bras.” If these worries seem petty in comparison with preteen worries 50-plus years later, that is part of the point: every generation sees itself deluged with its own set of problems, but even rain (as the old song says) can bring pennies from heaven. If that message seems a little too sappily sweet, so will this entire book of reminiscences. If the message makes you think happily of a simpler time and an apparently easier life, Jennifer Holm’s somewhat rose-colored glasses will fit you quite well.
Graham Salisbury’s House of the Red Fish is set 10 years earlier than Holm’s book, during rather than after World War II, and it is a story of people who are considered enemies during the book – not ones thought of that way in the past. House of the Red Fish is a companion to Under the Blood-Red Sun, and is set in 1943 – a year later. It continues and expands the story of Tomi Nakaji, Japanese-American resident of Honolulu and, in this book, the 13-year-old man of the house. So soon after Pearl Harbor, and so close to the scene of the disaster, Tomi is (understandably) viewed with suspicion by many, and with outright hatred by Keet Wilson – son of the family for which Tomi’s mother works as a maid. Tomi’s father is gone, arrested after Pearl Harbor, his fishing boat sunk by the U.S. Army. Tomi does have friends as well as enemies, and he has a project: raising and repairing that boat, and symbolically raising and repairing the image of his family and of all loyal Japanese-Americans. There is a great deal here about honor and its difficult intersection with reality, and the way large conflicts such as wars are mirrored in small feuds. This is territory that has often been explored before, but readers interested in a particular time and place – Salisbury’s family has lived in the Hawaiian Islands since the early 1800s – will find it interestingly atmospheric.
House of the Red Fish. By Graham Salisbury. Wendy Lamb Books. $16.95.
Jennifer Holm’s semi-autobiographical tale of the 1950s and Graham Salisbury’s family-experience-based story of the 1940s are both well written and both effective, each in its own way. The fog of nostalgia, though, seems to have settled over the authors to such an extent that their plots are not quite as strong here as in their other works.
Penny from Heaven is set in 1953, a time that inspires this sort of prose: “Every year the uncles get me a big gift. Last year we went to the circus and then for a lobster dinner afterward. The year before that I got a fancy dollhouse. Frankie gets presents from the uncles on his birthday, too, but not as big as mine.” The setting is not entirely idyllic – Penny gets those big gifts in part because her father is dead – but there is a sense that the family issues on which this book rests are far from unsolvable and all part of learning and growing up. Penny, who is 11, isn’t allowed to go swimming because her mother thinks she will catch polio at the pool; the two sides of her family are not speaking to each other; and everyone in the Italian-American family is aware that World War II happened only a few years ago, and that Italians were America’s enemies then. Here is a typical musing of Penny about getting older: “Twelve has always seemed pretty old to me. The girls who are twelve are in seventh grade and worry about their hair and are always trying to borrow their older sisters’ bras.” If these worries seem petty in comparison with preteen worries 50-plus years later, that is part of the point: every generation sees itself deluged with its own set of problems, but even rain (as the old song says) can bring pennies from heaven. If that message seems a little too sappily sweet, so will this entire book of reminiscences. If the message makes you think happily of a simpler time and an apparently easier life, Jennifer Holm’s somewhat rose-colored glasses will fit you quite well.
Graham Salisbury’s House of the Red Fish is set 10 years earlier than Holm’s book, during rather than after World War II, and it is a story of people who are considered enemies during the book – not ones thought of that way in the past. House of the Red Fish is a companion to Under the Blood-Red Sun, and is set in 1943 – a year later. It continues and expands the story of Tomi Nakaji, Japanese-American resident of Honolulu and, in this book, the 13-year-old man of the house. So soon after Pearl Harbor, and so close to the scene of the disaster, Tomi is (understandably) viewed with suspicion by many, and with outright hatred by Keet Wilson – son of the family for which Tomi’s mother works as a maid. Tomi’s father is gone, arrested after Pearl Harbor, his fishing boat sunk by the U.S. Army. Tomi does have friends as well as enemies, and he has a project: raising and repairing that boat, and symbolically raising and repairing the image of his family and of all loyal Japanese-Americans. There is a great deal here about honor and its difficult intersection with reality, and the way large conflicts such as wars are mirrored in small feuds. This is territory that has often been explored before, but readers interested in a particular time and place – Salisbury’s family has lived in the Hawaiian Islands since the early 1800s – will find it interestingly atmospheric.
(+++) REVISITS
The Temple Bombing. By Melissa Fay Greene. Da Capo. $15.95.
Praying for Sheetrock. By Melissa Fay Greene. Da Capo. $15.95.
Darker Than the Deepest Sea: The Search for Nick Drake. By Trevor Dann. Da Capo. $16.95.
How many times must we go back to the same scenes, the same places, the same stories? It depends, of course, on both the story and the storyteller. Some events are so indelibly imprinted on some groups’ and individuals’ consciousness – the Holocaust on Jews, for example – that it seems inevitable for people from those groups to return to those occurrences again and again, trying to make sense of them and understand why they occurred and what they meant, even many decades afterwards.
A similar sense of inevitable return pervades Melissa Fay Greene’s books about the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and its aftermath. The Temple Bombing (originally published in 1996) focuses on 1958, Praying for Sheetrock (originally published in 1991) on what happened after the struggles of the 1960s. These new editions show that both books are heartfelt and well written, both explore an important era in American history – and both, like the umpteen books still being written about the Holocaust, raise two unsettling issues: how much discussion of an era is enough, and how much relevance the books’ subjects have to people for whom the stories are only dim entries in history texts.
Greene certainly does an excellent job of humanizing large-scale events. The Temple Bombing focuses on the dynamiting of Atlanta’s oldest and richest synagogue on October 12, 1958, by white supremacists and unreconstructed segregationists – whose hatred was inflamed after Rabbi Jacob Rothschild spoke out in public to defend the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision that “separate but equal is inherently unequal.” On the grand scale, this is a story of how Jews and African Americans became partners in the civil rights movement, and of how court cases were tried and mistried at a time of major social upheaval. On a smaller scale, it is the story of Rothschild himself, his supporters and opponents, his faith and his doubt. Similarly, Praying for Sheetrock is the story of McIntosh County, Georgia, in the 1970s, when a corrupt old-style sheriff and his cronies largely ignored the civil rights movement and ruled with impunity – until an unemployed black man named Thurnell Alston stood up to them. Again, the larger issues are played out on one level while the smaller personal stories of Alston, Sheriff Tom Popell and various individuals on both sides are sensitively explored. There is no question that the subjects of both these lengthy books (900 pages between them) are of immense importance to Greene, and that she spins her stories eloquently. There is, however, a question of whether the books reach out to anyone not already imbued with Greene’s own spirit and temperament – and whether that matters.
There is a somewhat analogous question about Darker Than the Deepest Sea, Trevor Dann’s thorough biography of a moderately popular musician who, like many others in the business, died of a drug overdose when very young. This is the story of Nick Drake (1948-1974), who made only three albums and who has attained more fame posthumously than during his life. The quality of that fame is arguable – the title track of one Drake album became a Volkswagen commercial’s soundtrack – and so are the qualities of Drake and his music. Dann, a British music executive, is clearly knowledgeable about the field, and his research is impressive. We learn of Drake’s well-to-do upbringing, his personal relationships, his professional ones (notably with producer Joe Boyd), and his brief performance for none other than the Rolling Stones. We have actually learned much of this before – this is the second biography of Drake, and the better of the two. But how many more doctors talking about a musician’s depression do readers want to hear? How many more interviews with university tutors are needed to explain a part of a young man’s life? Dann sheds a great deal of light on his subject – but the question remains: does Drake have a large enough fan base to justify this book, or is it supposed to reach out in some way to people who know little or nothing about its 30-years-gone subject?
Praying for Sheetrock. By Melissa Fay Greene. Da Capo. $15.95.
Darker Than the Deepest Sea: The Search for Nick Drake. By Trevor Dann. Da Capo. $16.95.
How many times must we go back to the same scenes, the same places, the same stories? It depends, of course, on both the story and the storyteller. Some events are so indelibly imprinted on some groups’ and individuals’ consciousness – the Holocaust on Jews, for example – that it seems inevitable for people from those groups to return to those occurrences again and again, trying to make sense of them and understand why they occurred and what they meant, even many decades afterwards.
A similar sense of inevitable return pervades Melissa Fay Greene’s books about the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and its aftermath. The Temple Bombing (originally published in 1996) focuses on 1958, Praying for Sheetrock (originally published in 1991) on what happened after the struggles of the 1960s. These new editions show that both books are heartfelt and well written, both explore an important era in American history – and both, like the umpteen books still being written about the Holocaust, raise two unsettling issues: how much discussion of an era is enough, and how much relevance the books’ subjects have to people for whom the stories are only dim entries in history texts.
Greene certainly does an excellent job of humanizing large-scale events. The Temple Bombing focuses on the dynamiting of Atlanta’s oldest and richest synagogue on October 12, 1958, by white supremacists and unreconstructed segregationists – whose hatred was inflamed after Rabbi Jacob Rothschild spoke out in public to defend the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision that “separate but equal is inherently unequal.” On the grand scale, this is a story of how Jews and African Americans became partners in the civil rights movement, and of how court cases were tried and mistried at a time of major social upheaval. On a smaller scale, it is the story of Rothschild himself, his supporters and opponents, his faith and his doubt. Similarly, Praying for Sheetrock is the story of McIntosh County, Georgia, in the 1970s, when a corrupt old-style sheriff and his cronies largely ignored the civil rights movement and ruled with impunity – until an unemployed black man named Thurnell Alston stood up to them. Again, the larger issues are played out on one level while the smaller personal stories of Alston, Sheriff Tom Popell and various individuals on both sides are sensitively explored. There is no question that the subjects of both these lengthy books (900 pages between them) are of immense importance to Greene, and that she spins her stories eloquently. There is, however, a question of whether the books reach out to anyone not already imbued with Greene’s own spirit and temperament – and whether that matters.
There is a somewhat analogous question about Darker Than the Deepest Sea, Trevor Dann’s thorough biography of a moderately popular musician who, like many others in the business, died of a drug overdose when very young. This is the story of Nick Drake (1948-1974), who made only three albums and who has attained more fame posthumously than during his life. The quality of that fame is arguable – the title track of one Drake album became a Volkswagen commercial’s soundtrack – and so are the qualities of Drake and his music. Dann, a British music executive, is clearly knowledgeable about the field, and his research is impressive. We learn of Drake’s well-to-do upbringing, his personal relationships, his professional ones (notably with producer Joe Boyd), and his brief performance for none other than the Rolling Stones. We have actually learned much of this before – this is the second biography of Drake, and the better of the two. But how many more doctors talking about a musician’s depression do readers want to hear? How many more interviews with university tutors are needed to explain a part of a young man’s life? Dann sheds a great deal of light on his subject – but the question remains: does Drake have a large enough fan base to justify this book, or is it supposed to reach out in some way to people who know little or nothing about its 30-years-gone subject?
(++++) AN ALL-TOO-HUMAN MYTH
Wagner: Die Walküre. Robert Gambill (Siegmund), Attila Jun (Hunding), Jan-Hendrik Rootering (Wotan), Angela Denoke (Sieglinde), Renate Behle (Brünnhilde), Tichina Vaughn (Fricka). Staatsoper Stuttgart and Staatsorchester Stuttgart conducted by Lothar Zagrosek. Naxos. $26.99 (3 CDs).
It is only in the second of its four operas that Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung becomes a fully human story. In fact, it is only in the second opera that humans show up: there aren’t any in Das Rheingold. That first opera requires the audience to see the larger-than-life gods, dwarves, giants and other characters as driven by all-too-human impulses – but a direct human connection is missing (although skilled singing actors in the role of Alberich can make one).
Die Walküre, though, is the most human-focused opera in the cycle, and the one in which the gods themselves seem to be turning into vulnerable and doomed humans – something that really does happen to Brünnhilde at the end, when Wotan strips her of her powers as a Valkyrie and abandons her on the fire-surrounded rock to whatever man shall be bold enough to win her.
Aside from containing the most popular music in the Ring cycle – the “Ride of the Valkyries,” which is even more astonishing and effective in context than as a concert piece – Die Walküre contains the most famous (or infamous) incest ever set to music. The love music of Siegmund and his sister-bride, Sieglinde, is so soaring that it caused famed classical-music parodist Anna Russell to remark, “You can do anything in grand opera as long as you sing it.” And “sing it” with great fervor is just what Robert Gambill and Angela Denoke do, as the former’s search for his father (Wotan, who is also Sieglinde’s father) collides with the latter’s bitter unhappiness in her life with her husband, Hunding. The intensely human emotions swirling around the marital triangle are mirrored among the gods, with Wotan favoring Siegmund as the potential savior of the gods from the curse of Alberich’s ring; Fricka, his much-wronged wife and the guardian of marriage, favoring Hunding, the cuckold; and Brünnhilde, the rash and impetuous daughter, determined to do what Wotan wants even when Wotan commands her to do the opposite.
What a family drama this is! Wotan has fathered not only Siegmund and Sieglinde but also all the Valkyries – no wonder Fricka, a shrew if there ever was one, is determined to force Wotan to acknowledge some shred of sanctimony in marriage (even if not in his). Wotan can feel his doom, the doom of all the gods, approaching inexorably, and he knows that his craven theft of the Ring (in Das Rheingold) has set events in motion that even he cannot stop. Wotan’s role affords the most difficult acting job in Die Walküre, and if Jan-Hendrik Rootering does not quite plumb the depths of the part, he certainly sings it well. Tichina Vaughn never makes Fricka much more than a shrill conniver, but this is a particularly difficult role in which to try to garner any sympathy – and Vaughn’s vocal prowess certainly makes her a fine foil for Rootering. As Brünnhilde, Renate Behle has plenty of pluck and a voice that, if not perfectly suited to Wagner, is nevertheless effective and dramatically deployed. And in the thankless role of Hunding, so contemptuously swatted to death by Wotan immediately after Wotan allows him to kill Siegmund, Attila Jun is appropriately sly and unpleasant.
Lothar Zagrosek paces the choral and orchestral forces exceptionally well: the performance runs nearly four hours but never flags. There are multiple climaxes in this work – Siegmund and Sieglinde’s consummation of their love, Siegmund’s death, Wotan’s pursuit of Brünnhilde – but everything builds to the final scene, in which the opera ends quietly as the doomed Wotan abandons his most-loved Valkyrie daughter to the fate he has himself imposed on her. Zagrosek paces all the climaxes, including the final one, very well, drawing out the emotion of both the words and the music.
The one major flaw in this release is the lack of a dual-language libretto – not only in the box (that is understandable) but also online. Naxos does make a libretto available through its Web site – but in German only. This puts English speakers at a major disadvantage in a work whose words are every bit as important as its music: Wagner did not call his works “music dramas” for nothing. It’s worth the effort to track down a translation of the libretto – following it adds a lot to hearing this performance. It’s a shame, though, that the effort needs to be made.
It is only in the second of its four operas that Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung becomes a fully human story. In fact, it is only in the second opera that humans show up: there aren’t any in Das Rheingold. That first opera requires the audience to see the larger-than-life gods, dwarves, giants and other characters as driven by all-too-human impulses – but a direct human connection is missing (although skilled singing actors in the role of Alberich can make one).
Die Walküre, though, is the most human-focused opera in the cycle, and the one in which the gods themselves seem to be turning into vulnerable and doomed humans – something that really does happen to Brünnhilde at the end, when Wotan strips her of her powers as a Valkyrie and abandons her on the fire-surrounded rock to whatever man shall be bold enough to win her.
Aside from containing the most popular music in the Ring cycle – the “Ride of the Valkyries,” which is even more astonishing and effective in context than as a concert piece – Die Walküre contains the most famous (or infamous) incest ever set to music. The love music of Siegmund and his sister-bride, Sieglinde, is so soaring that it caused famed classical-music parodist Anna Russell to remark, “You can do anything in grand opera as long as you sing it.” And “sing it” with great fervor is just what Robert Gambill and Angela Denoke do, as the former’s search for his father (Wotan, who is also Sieglinde’s father) collides with the latter’s bitter unhappiness in her life with her husband, Hunding. The intensely human emotions swirling around the marital triangle are mirrored among the gods, with Wotan favoring Siegmund as the potential savior of the gods from the curse of Alberich’s ring; Fricka, his much-wronged wife and the guardian of marriage, favoring Hunding, the cuckold; and Brünnhilde, the rash and impetuous daughter, determined to do what Wotan wants even when Wotan commands her to do the opposite.
What a family drama this is! Wotan has fathered not only Siegmund and Sieglinde but also all the Valkyries – no wonder Fricka, a shrew if there ever was one, is determined to force Wotan to acknowledge some shred of sanctimony in marriage (even if not in his). Wotan can feel his doom, the doom of all the gods, approaching inexorably, and he knows that his craven theft of the Ring (in Das Rheingold) has set events in motion that even he cannot stop. Wotan’s role affords the most difficult acting job in Die Walküre, and if Jan-Hendrik Rootering does not quite plumb the depths of the part, he certainly sings it well. Tichina Vaughn never makes Fricka much more than a shrill conniver, but this is a particularly difficult role in which to try to garner any sympathy – and Vaughn’s vocal prowess certainly makes her a fine foil for Rootering. As Brünnhilde, Renate Behle has plenty of pluck and a voice that, if not perfectly suited to Wagner, is nevertheless effective and dramatically deployed. And in the thankless role of Hunding, so contemptuously swatted to death by Wotan immediately after Wotan allows him to kill Siegmund, Attila Jun is appropriately sly and unpleasant.
Lothar Zagrosek paces the choral and orchestral forces exceptionally well: the performance runs nearly four hours but never flags. There are multiple climaxes in this work – Siegmund and Sieglinde’s consummation of their love, Siegmund’s death, Wotan’s pursuit of Brünnhilde – but everything builds to the final scene, in which the opera ends quietly as the doomed Wotan abandons his most-loved Valkyrie daughter to the fate he has himself imposed on her. Zagrosek paces all the climaxes, including the final one, very well, drawing out the emotion of both the words and the music.
The one major flaw in this release is the lack of a dual-language libretto – not only in the box (that is understandable) but also online. Naxos does make a libretto available through its Web site – but in German only. This puts English speakers at a major disadvantage in a work whose words are every bit as important as its music: Wagner did not call his works “music dramas” for nothing. It’s worth the effort to track down a translation of the libretto – following it adds a lot to hearing this performance. It’s a shame, though, that the effort needs to be made.
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