(+++) A HEAPING HELPING OF MAGYK

Septimus Heap: Book One—Magyk; Book Two—Flyte; Book Three—Physik; Book Four—Queste. By Angie Sage. KatherineTegen/HarperCollins. $17.99 each.

     A land filled with magic, created by a British woman author, where a young boy finds out at age 10 that he is born to be a wizard; where an evil magician from the past seeks to return and assume supreme power; where a feisty girl and ever-helpful boy are companions of the young wizard as he comes into his powers; where there are issues of family bonds and invisible rooms and a building filled with nooks, crannies and dark secrets… No, this is not J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series but Angie Sage’s 2,200-page saga of Septimus Heap, seventh son of a seventh son and therefore (by a longstanding tradition in arcane lore) possessor of astonishing magical (here spelled “magykal”) powers. Sage is no Rowling, although Magyk was Sage’s first novel – just as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (“Sorcerer’s Stone” in the U.S.) was Rowling’s. The Septimus Heap tales are fun to read and have many commendable elements, and if they had not been written when Rowling’s novels are still fresh in so many minds – and had not contained so many parallel elements – they would seem more innovative than they in fact do. As is, they come across as a sort of “Harry Potter Lite,” highly enjoyable for readers ages 8-12 but unlikely to develop an audience among older lovers of fantasy.

     The matters that make this tetralogy both easy to read and easy to dismiss as suitable only for preteens have to do with consistency, characterization and motivation. This is one of those tales in which evildoers do bad things because…well, that’s what evildoers do. Good characters are so good that they are utterly naïve – to the point of stupidity (this is particularly clear in Flyte, in which Septimus’ evil oldest brother, Simon, commits a kidnapping right under everyone’s nose, but everyone except Septimus refuses to believe the evidence of his or her eyes because, well, Simon couldn’t possibly be a bad guy, could he?). Furthermore, Sage seems to think her young readers will take longer to figure things out than they in fact will. At the start of Magyk, it is thought that Septimus has died right after being born, but of course readers know that cannot possibly be true; yet when a boy of exactly the right age turns up, who has been given a number instead of a name (the number 412, with 4+1+2 adding up to, yes, seven), it is not until hundreds of pages later that the boy is revealed to be – yes! – Septimus.

     To be fair to Sage, it has to be noted that after Magyk (2005), the other books, produced at the rate of one a year (2006-8), become increasingly self-assured and stylistically more appealing. And even in Magyk, the two most interesting characteristics of Sage’s writing are already present: forays into humor (often broad humor) and end-of-book chapters that tell, in very pithy form, what happened after the book’s events (Magyk), what set them in motion (Flyte), what the main narrative has not revealed about some characters (Physik), and how some things ended and others began (Queste). Each of the books is largely self-contained, although the tetralogy can perhaps best be looked at as two two-book series: in the first two books, Septimus comes into his magykal inheritance and starts learning the extent of his powers; in the second two, he and his friends go on an adventure in Time. By the end of the final book, when ExtraOrdinary Wizard Marcia Overstrand rescues all the principal characters from the House of Foryx, where all Time meets, humor has assumed a much larger role in the narrative; and even the forces of darkness (such as the dead Queen Etheldredda, who is seeking eternal life, and the evil ghost, Tertius Fume) have their wry moments – as is emphatically not the case with the evildoers of the first two books, Simon and the dark (here, Darke), blustering but largely feckless wizard, DomDaniel.

     A number of the subsidiary characters tend to steal the scenes in which they appear: the Dragon Boat, a half-living creature; Spit Fyre, an actual dragon hatched by and bonded to Septimus and often to be found pooping in inconvenient places; Alther, a dead former ExtraOrdinary Wizard who now, as a ghost, helps the living to the extent possible (which is a greater extent than you might expect); the Message Rat, who has to be properly commanded before he will talk and is then nearly impossible to shut up; and the Port Witch Coven, a sort of Keystone Kops of magyk. Septimus himself tends to be less interesting than those around him – one way in which this series is quite different from the Harry Potter tales. Yet Septimus is the linchpin of all the action, and as he grows and matures, so does the story and, happily, so does Sage’s ability to tell it. The result is that this very handsome matched four-volume set of Septimus’ adventures will be an excellent addition to the bookshelves of readers in the target age range, even if they are likely to tire of it by the time they become teenagers.

(++++) SERIES OF PLEASURES

Ives: Songs, Volume 4. Lielle Berman, Patrick Carfizzi, Jennifer Casey Cabot, Michael Cavalieri, Robert Gardner, Ian Howell, Sara Jakubiak, Sumi Kittelberger, Ryan MacPherson, Tamara Mumford, Mary Philips, David Pittsinger, Matthew Plenk, Kenneth Tarver and Leah Wool, vocalists; Enrico Sartori, flute; Douglas Dickson, Laura Garritson, J.J. Penna and Eric Trudel, piano. Naxos. $8.99.

Anderson: Orchestral Music, Volume 4—Irish Suite; Edward MacDowell: To a Wild Rose; Summer Skies; Scottish Suite; Blue Tango; Forgotten Dreams; Belle of the Ball; Alma Mater; A Christmas Festival. Kim Criswell, soprano; William Dazeley, baritone; BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin. Naxos. $8.99.

Johann Strauss I Edition, Volume 12. Slovak Sinfonietta Žilina conducted by Ernst Märzendorfer. Marco Polo. $9.99.

Buxtehude: Harpsichord Music, Volume 3—Suite in A major; Canzonetta in D minor; Suite in F major; Prelude in G major; Aria: “La Capricciosa” in G major. Lars Ulrik Mortensen, harpsichord. Naxos. $8.99.

     There is a certain joy to be had in collecting an entire series of CDs – provided that both the music and the performances are exemplary. Not all these series-in-progress will appeal to all listeners; but if you enjoy the composers’ music, you will find these latest high-quality entries to be every bit as good as earlier ones, and are likely to find yourself looking forward to the next volumes as well.

     The complete set of some 200 Ives songs is being released by Naxos in six volumes, with a large number of young performers handling the material. The oddest thing about the set is its alphabetical arrangement – Volume 4 runs from “Majority” to “Over All the Treetops.” Since the songs’ titles bear no relationship to their dates of composition or their musical interest level, each volume is a hodgepodge. But that, in a way, is one charm of this series: “Naught That Country Needeth,” an extended and fairly traditional song from 1898, is immediately followed by “The New River,” a pithy and environmentally provocative one from 1921 – merely because they occur next to each other alphabetically. This particular volume – again, simply for alphabetical reasons – contains an unusual number of early Ives songs: 21 of the 32 were written in 1903 or earlier; that is, before Ives turned 30. But despite the preponderance of early songs in Volume 4, there are outstanding late works as well, ranging from the very extended exposition of personal philosophy in “Majority” (1921) and the indignation of “Nov. 2, 1920 (An Election)” (1921) to the ultra-modern complexity of “On the Antipodes” (1923).

     Leroy Anderson’s music is just as American as that of Ives, but it exists on a different plane. Anderson is best known for his very short, light works, many of them designed to fit on a single side of a 78-rpm record. The fourth volume of his complete orchestral music, though, focuses mainly on longer compositions, including the 20-minute Irish Suite and 10-minute Scottish Suite – both of them, to be sure, made up of shorter pieces, but also having cohesion at their full length. Also included here are another of Anderson’s Christmas collections, A Christmas Festival (which, like those in previous volumes, is well constructed but does not really show the composer at his best), and a late work called Alma Mater that dates to 1964 and is a reworking of the composer’s Harvard Sketches of 1939. The shorter pieces on this CD, mostly arrangements or alternative versions, are pleasant discoveries if not especially distinguished ones: Summer Skies and an orchestration of Edward MacDowell: To a Wild Rose have pleasant lilt, while vocal versions of Blue Tango, Forgotten Dreams and especially the two-voice and cleverly rhymed Belle of the Ball are out-and-out curiosities. As in previous volumes, Leonard Slatkin and the BBC Concert Orchestra play the music with verve and apparent affection, and without looking down on it in any way.

     Some 19^th-century composers and critics looked down on, or at least askance at, the works of Johann Strauss Sr., believing that the Strauss-crazed Viennese had turned their backs on serious music in order to dance the nights away. Certainly the ongoing series of releases of Strauss Sr.’s music shows why the dances were so much fun. Strauss himself was pretty down-to-earth about his works, frequently using them to comment on or exploit topical matters. For example, Taglioni-Walzer is a tribute to an 1839 performance by the great ballerina Marie Taglioni, while Rosenblätter was first played as accompaniment to a Taglioni appearance. Other lovely inspirations on this CD are Tanz-Recepte (“Dance Prescriptions”), written for a medical group and said to be so lively as to be able to cure hypochondria, and Myrthen (“Myrtles”), written in 1840 to celebrate the marriage of Britain’s Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Also on this very well-played CD are Wiener Gemüths-Walzer, one of the composer’s happiest inspirations, plus Londoner Saison-Walzer, Der Berggeister and the very bouncy Mode-Quadrille, all of them thoroughly charming and quite suitable for dancing even some 170 years after they were composed.

     The Naxos rerelease of Lars Ulrik Mortensen’s performances of Dietrich Buxtehude’s harpsichord music – recorded a decade ago and originally made available by Dacapo – takes listeners back to a time when dance music was quite different from what it would become in the 19^th century. There is plenty of spirit in these suites and variations, and Mortensen brings all of it out with skill and understanding. But it is the lilt of a time before Bach, having much of the court and church about it. The third volume in this series again offers very well-constructed and interestingly developed dance suites – and its featured work, Aria: “La Capricciosa,” is quite impressive. Lasting nearly half an hour, this elaborate and brilliant set of variations includes no fewer than 32 movements called “Partitas,” most only half a minute long and none lasting as much as two minutes. They range from minuets to gigues to sarabandes and provide, in totality, a marvelous tour of the major dance forms of Buxtehude’s time; a considerable challenge to a harpsichordist; and a great deal of delight to any listener interested in music of the 17^th century.

(++++) CLEVER CURIOSITIES

John Corigliano: Mr. Tambourine Man—Seven Poems of Bob Dylan; Three Hallucinations (from Altered States). Hila Plitmann, amplified soprano; Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta. Naxos. $8.99.

Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (orchestrations compiled by Leonard Slatkin); Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1; Rob Mathes: Arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Peng Peng, piano; Nashville Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Leonard Slatkin. Naxos. $8.99.

     John Corigliano has done something amazing with Bob Dylan’s words: he has created a cycle of seven “art songs” that plumb the depths of Dylan’s poetry to a greater extent than does Dylan himself – although without any of the catchy melodies and folksong-like repetition characterizing Dylan’s music and making it popular and readily accessible. Corigliano says, in his booklet notes, that he had never heard Dylan’s songs when he obtained their words and got permission to create Mr. Tambourine Man. The cycle is the better for the composer’s lack of prior knowledge: it is unlikely that Corigliano could have made the title song (which he uses as a prelude) so portentous, or “Forever Young” (which he casts as a postlude) so ethereal, if he had known Dylan’s own musical settings. The five songs making up the central portion of the cycle – “Clothes Line,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Masters of War,” “All Along the Watchtower” and “Chimes of Freedom” – are all set in highly impressive concert-hall style, with (for example) “Blowin’ in the Wind” gaining a bleakness and “Masters of War” an intense anger well beyond anything in Dylan’s own music. Corigliano wrote the cycle in 2000 for voice and piano and created the orchestral version in 2003 – with Hila Plitmann giving the latter its first performance. Plitmann’s amplified voice is strong and a touch strident, and she fully communicates the words’ meanings as Corigliano has interpreted and expanded them. Mr. Tambourine Man is a considerable achievement on all levels – and the Buffalo Philharmonic under JoAnn Falletta plays it with an entirely appropriate mixture of strength and subtlety.

     Three Hallucinations (1981) is comparatively minor Corigliano, although it has its own surface-level appeal. The work is based on music written for the 1980 film Altered States, and consists of “Sacrifice,” “Hymn” and “Ritual.” The structure is clever – elements of one movement become prominent motifs in a later one – but the music sounds self-consciously modernistic (plenty of brass glissandi) and, in the concluding “Ritual,” seems to be channeling Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring so closely as to be just shy of plagiaristic. The ending is certainly rousing, but then, so is Stravinsky’s.

     It is hard to make Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition into something fresh and unusual, but conductor Leonard Slatkin figured out a way: his performance incorporates orchestrations of the composer’s original piano version by no fewer than 15 people, some of whom used Rimsky-Korsakov’s imperfect edition (which was, for a time, the only one available) and others of whom used more-modern, more-accurate versions. The famous 1922 Ravel orchestration appears only in “Con mortuis in lingua mortua.” The remaining orchestrations are frequently subtle, sometimes not significantly different from Ravel’s familiar one, but often strikingly dissimilar, as in Vladimir Ashkenazy’s “Bydlo,” which opens fortissimo with four horns (Rimsky-Korsakov had the oxcart approaching from a distance, but newer editions revert to Mussorgsky’s desire for high volume from the start). The last two orchestrations are the most overdone: Leopold Stokowski’s The Hut on Fowl’s Legs uses four trumpets, eight horns and an ending quite different from Mussorgsky’s, while film-score composer Douglas Gamley makes The Bogatyr (Heroes’) Gate at Kiev into a huge conclusion that includes chorus and organ as well as the inevitable bells. There is something exhilarating in Slatkin’s compilation, which he conducts with considerable enthusiasm, but it seems fair to suspect that it will not (and is probably not intended to) replace Ravel’s more urbane and thoroughly thought-through orchestration.

     The pairing of the Mussorgsky with Peng Peng’s performance of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is a curiosity in itself. The pianist was 14 when this CD was recorded live (in June 2007), and he certainly has plenty of technique, but equally certainly has no sense of the subtleties of the music (and it is subtle, although often played unsubtly). This is a bright and brassy performance, a crowd-pleasing rendition of a crowd-pleasing work, but it is entirely one-dimensional. The Liszt appears first on this CD. Rob Mathes’ arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner, placed last, simply sounds peculiar after the grandiosity of Gamley’s version of the end of Pictures. Written as a eulogy after the terrorist mass murders of September 11, 2001, Mathes’ work brings all that comes before down to earth in a vaguely (or perhaps not so vaguely) unsettling way.

(++++) NOT JUST FOR LAUGHS

Frazz 3.1416. By Jef Mallett. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

Macho Macho Animals: A “Pearls Before Swine” Collection. By Stephan Pastis. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

Brevity 3. By Guy Endore-Kaiser and Rodd Perry. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

     Philo T. Farnsworth and the other early creators of television saw it as a magnificent tool for education and enlightenment. We all know what happened to that dream. Comics, on the other hand, were not created to be intellectual – more of the opposite. Richard Outcault’s Yellow Kid (hence “yellow journalism”) was moronic-looking (Alfred E. Newman of Mad fame was cast in the same mold half a century later), and the Kid was designed largely to appeal to newspaper buyers for whom actually reading the articles was a bit of a chore. Nowadays, though, there are comics that really do educate as well as entertain, and one of the most notable is Jef Mallett’s Frazz. The neat thing about this strip is Mallett’s willingness to mix cheap laughs with complex punchlines that many readers may not get at all – as when Frazz and his chief student foil, brilliant but easily distracted Caulfield (think The Catcher in the Rye), make a Halloween costume based on Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, and Frazz says he wished he knew earlier that he would be the fish, because “I could have spent the last 84 days avoiding you.” Mallett seems blissfully oblivious to the confusion that line will cause many readers; nor does he care about dialogue in which Caulfield tells battleaxe teacher Mrs. Olsen that she is looking “diaphanous,” and she replies that he is “a veritable prince of palter.” Mallett clearly wants to send readers to the dictionary and library. It is important to ignore the underlying absurdity of the strip’s premise – super-successful songwriter chooses to work as the janitor at an elementary school – in order to focus on enjoying the characters’ antics. And there are antics – many strips are simply there for fun (as when kids play hockey using a pink urinal deodorizer as a puck, and a group gets to play the banned “battleball” by renaming it politically correctly as “friendlyhappykindnessball”). If there is any significant criticism of Mallett, it is that he sometimes tries too hard to be cute: the book’s title, for example, is actually “Frazz pi,” with the first 60 or so digits on the cover and pizza pies on front and back (plus a math formula on the front); and after a while, the use of such words as “diaphoresis” and “mitochondria” starts to seem a tad affected. Still, Frazz is almost always hilarious and is consistently uplifting, both in mood and in its expectations of readers.

     Stephan Pastis makes no claims to erudition in Pearls Before Swine, but he keeps coming up, almost offhandedly, with strips that actually make readers think (when they’re neither laughing uproariously nor writing letters of complaint to their local newspapers). In Pastis’ new collection, Macho Macho Animals, one strip features a “man-sheep” who is angry: “The man part has freedom of will, but the sheep part just follows the herd. This creates internal conflict…thus, the anger.” In several strips, Pastis plays with the notion of comic-strip layout: one strip is tilted and consists of only partial panels, with the characters discussing what readers cannot see; several others include random panels from Darby Conley’s Get Fuzzy, mixed in with Pearls panels, because of a supposed layout error; and then there’s a series in which all comic strips are required to age their characters realistically, which results in Family Circus kids drinking and smoking and Dagwood and Blondie talking to each other from beneath their side-by-side tombstones. Pearls is dark humor, but if you go for the offbeat, it is very, very funny – never more so than when Pastis puts a caricature of himself into the strip and interacts with his creations (for example, when Pig brings a non-anthropomorphic duck into the strip and Pastis-in-the-strip says that violates the rules).

     Guy Endore-Kaiser and Rodd Perry, who sign themselves “guy and rOdd” to be sure you understand their odd take on life, often make readers think, too. Their single-panel Brevity cartoons can be really offbeat: The Hulk walks happily out of a store called “Bob’s House of Elastic Wear”; a cereal company’s head of athlete recruitment is fired after signing the “world champion pig-lifter”; a Nobel Prize winner can’t figure out how to build a shelf to display his award; a male peacock with black-and-white feathers gains female admiration for being “so subtle, so confident”; people line up to play $1 carnival games at which they can win stuffed animals, oblivious to the nearby stand selling the animals for 50 cents each; a toothpick, about to be used, thinks sadly, “800 years, and this is how it all ends.” Many Brevity panels are less than laugh-out-loud funny, precisely because they force readers to take a moment to understand just what is going on and what point the cartoonists are trying to make. There’s the woman with her shopping cart filled to the brim with copies of “Compulsive Shoppers Quarterly”; the dustpan telling the broom, “You’re nothing without me, and you know it”; the restaurant in which one table is labeled “reserved” while other have signs saying “gregarious,” “avuncular,” “shy” and “anxious”; and so on. Comics that make you think? What will they think of next?

(++++) NAMES AND POWER

The Unnameables. By Ellen Booraem. Harcourt. $16.

Flora’s Dare. By Ysabeau S. Wilce. Harcourt. $17.

     Names have power – this is a notion as old as magic. These two books take the notion of naming into new and fascinating realms, with intensity and underlying meaningfulness made all the more impressive by the fact that The Unnameables is Ellen Booraem’s first book and Flora’s Dare is Ysabeau S. Wilce’s second.

     The basic setting of The Unnameables is not unusual for a book about growing up and “finding oneself” in an isolated and difficult location: the story takes place on an island called Island, populated entirely by people whose names reflect their purposes in life – Farmer, Spinner, Butcher, Shepherd, and so on. Into this insular (in both senses of the word) community comes Medford Runyuin, whose origin is unknown (he washed ashore as an infant) and whose name clearly refers to no practical function. This makes him anathema to the puritanical townspeople, who still speak old-fashioned English (“I think there be hope,” “Wouldst thou take a pen?”). The story takes place when Medford is 13 and about to be responsible for big changes on Island, although of course he does not know this. As in other novels about growing up and becoming self-aware, the protagonist has a Secret (you can almost hear the capital letter) that will Shake Up Society. Island is governed by The Book, excerpts from which begin many chapters and use the work’s full title: A Frugall Compendium of Home Arts and Farme Chores by Capability C. Craft (1680), as Amended and Annotated by the Island Council of Names (1718-1809). This particular Good Book – perhaps Booraem intends a comparison with literal reading of the Bible, although she never says so explicitly – guides Island’s people through simple and orderly lives, and all works well as long as no Outside Influences intrude. Indeed, Island residents who create Unnameables (things of no use, such as poetry or art) are forced to leave for the Mainland and are never heard from again: “Just what is its Use, boy?” one character asks Medford after the boy carves a stick. “Do not do that again. …This is serious, a banishing thing, Medford.” But the appearance on Island of a strange character called Goatman proves more serious still, as Medford and the newcomer share feelings, thoughts and ideas, and it soon turns out that Island has its share of Secrets beneath its apparently placid exterior. Few individual elements of the story are unusual, but Booraem knits the various threads together effectively and well, and she creates characters (Medford, Goatman, Medford’s friend Prudy Carpenter, and others) about whom readers will really care. The book eventually moves into questions of what sort of Use is worthwhile, inviting readers to think about (among other things) whether art and storytelling, for example, are useful – a refreshingly philosophical approach to a coming-of-age tale that stands well above the pack.

     Flora Segunda, Wilce’s first novel, was also a standout, and so is its sequel, Flora’s Dare, in which the genuinely bizarre settings and characters of Flora’s world become even stranger than before – and the question of names, and what they say about who Flora really is and what she shall become, turns out to be crucial. “The courage must be the Fyrdraaca in you, but the pragmatism is all Hadraada,” an enemy tells Flora just before trying to kill her – which he fails to do, because she kills herself. But not permanently (issues of life and death are very complex in Wilce’s book); and by novel’s end, Flora has actually decided that she should be known by a different name altogether. Why that is so, and what the other name signifies, are important elements of this story. Yet they are only two among many, as outlandish characters change shape, form and (apparently) motivation again and again while Flora tries to learn about the dangerous “magickal” language called Gramatica: she needs it in order to become a Ranger and protect the city of Califa, which is being shaken apart by earthquakes. Wilce does not flinch from frightening images: “Georgina Segunda was a ghoul. Her Anima remained trapped in her corpse, in a kind of living death. I couldn’t imagine a worse fate. Your body decaying while your mind stayed active. Lying like that for years. Stuck in a coffin, while the worms nibbled at you and your entrails congealed into goo – it made me sick just thinking about it. …In a blur of motion, she was almost upon us, clawlike hands outstretched, mouth a gaping maw of rotting black teeth.” But Flora’s Dare is no mere horror book: it is a journey toward self-awareness. A letter that Flora receives from one of her mothers at a critical time proves to be one key; an actual Key also proves crucial as Flora labors to save Califa. Characters and revelations fly quickly through this very fast-paced book, which needs to be read slowly both to keep all the plot strands straight and to maximize the enjoyment of a particularly well-wrought tale – which, readers will be happy to learn at the end, is sure to lead to another Wilce novel about Flora (or whoever she has now become) in the future.

(+++) BOYS AND GIRLS AND BOY-GIRLS

The Debs. By Susan McBride. Delacorte Press. $8.99.

Hell Week. By Rosemary Clement-Moore. Delacorte Press. $16.99.

Cycler. By Lauren McLaughlin. Random House. $17.99.

     There are all sorts of hells in novels for teens – the hell of interpersonal rivalry, the hell of internal confusion, even the hell of demon-spawn type. Take your pick among these three books for ages 14 and up. Pick Susan McBride’s The Debs for the good-girl-bad-girl-confused-girl mixture that seems the traditional approach to “how High Society lives” in books for teenagers. There has to be a super-attractive witch who is out to get those of lesser class and/or appearance; here, that would be Jo Lynn Bidwill. There has to be a token bookish type – that would be Michelle “Mac” MacKenzie. There has to be a slightly far-out character who is not in the typical mold for her social class – Ginger Fore, an environmentalist with an unfortunate involvement with a college guy. And there has to be someone who doesn’t quite fit in – here, Laura Delacroix Bell, whose family’s wealth is in her favor but whose size 14 figure raises some eyebrows. It is debutante season in Houston, one of those cities frequently used as a hotbed of passions and rich people behaving badly, and there are sure to be fireworks at the Glass Slipper Club as these four girls and assorted hangers-on drive around in Escalades, Corvettes and BMWs while developing aphorisms for their privileged but oh-so-competitive lives (“It’s impossible to fight fair against someone who plays dirty” – Ginger Fore). Absolutely nothing in The Debs ought to be taken seriously, but if you’re looking for a tour of largely self-made hell, this book is a pretty good guide.

     For a truly hellish sort of story, there’s Hell Week, Rosemary Clement-Moore’s sequel to Prom Dates from Hell, in which Maggie Quinn encountered an entire set of cheerleaders named Jessica, a chemistry experiment that called up a thing called the Shadow, and various stinky otherworldly minions. Maggie has now made it to college, and in Hell Week – Clement-Moore’s second book for young readers – Maggie, formerly a high-school journalist, has become a college reporter writing an exposé of Sorority Rush. To do that, she has to get close to the sororities by trying to pledge – and sure enough, she gets a bid from Sigma Alpha Xi. The only problem is that there’s something not quite right about the sorority and the people in it. And Maggie has family issues to deal with, too: her mother is pregnant, and Maggie fears (with reason) that both mom and baby are under threat from the SAXes, as the girls of Sigma Alpha Xi are called. With the help of her friend, Lisa, Maggie works out what to do: “The logical parts were all Lisa. The insane parts were mine.” Maggie’s eventual confrontation with a sorority-leading demon summoner walks the line between scary and silly; and if this book isn’t really up to the quality of its predecessor, maybe the next one will be. For this is now part of a series called Maggie Quinn: Girl vs. Evil.

     Ultimately, though, the worst hell of all is the one inside oneself, and in the case of Lauren McLaughlin’s Cycler, it is not so much a matter of girl vs. evil as girl vs. boy – with both in the same body. Jack and Jill McTeague are the same person in Cycler, with Jill being a more-or-less ordinary high-school student who disappears for four days a month, supposedly for blood transfusions but in reality because she transforms without volition into Jack – who is, yes, anatomically complete as a male. The Jack and Jill personas tell this story in alternating chapters, with Jill being more of a Dr. Jekyll and Jack being more of a Mr. Hyde (perhaps not surprising, since he is usually confined to Jill’s room for his four days of existence per month). “My life is a disaster on so many levels, I can hardly keep track of it all,” writes Jill at one point. Well, yes. She and Jack write notes to each other so they can communicate across their “phases,” and Jack is gaining strength somehow, and he is making a play for Jill’s best friend, Ramie; and on top of everything, prom is coming up, and it’s getting to such a point that Jill isn’t sure who she’ll be when the big night arrives. By the time Jill and Jack turn 18, there is so much bad blood between (within?) them that his/her/their parents lock Jack in Jill’s room after having given him increasing freedom for a while; and Jack takes revenge on Jill by cutting off a lot of her (his) hair; and things get even worse and more complicated after that – until eventually, inevitably, Jill (who has the last word in the book) realizes she has to tell both her best friends, the girl Ramie and the boy Tommy, what she is. As science fiction and a novel of self-discovery, Cycler is ludicrous in the extreme; but it is saved from constant unintentional hilarity by McLaughlin’s often-effective attempts to give Jill and Jack different voices and different motivations. Cycler is, finally, an odd book and far from a totally successful one, but it certainly stands out from run-of-the-mill teen-oriented novels about self-discovery and sexual exploration.

(+++) OUTLANDISH ADVENTURES

Bringing the Boy Home. By N.A. Nelson. HarperCollins. $15.99.

Troll Blood. By Katherine Langrish. Eos. $16.99.

The Secret Circle: The Initiation and The Captive Part I. By L.J. Smith. HarperTeen. $8.99.

Vamps. By Nancy A. Collins. HarperTeen. $8.99.

     These books take young readers to worlds far different from their own – but in varying ways. Bringing the Boy Home has the strongest sense of the real but exotic about it. First-time novelist N.A. Nelson, who has personally explored the Amazon, sets this book for ages 8-12 there, focusing it on two boys of the Takunami tribe who are on the verge of manhood but are coming to it from very different directions. Both boys must go on vision quests to mark their 13^th birthdays and the end of their childhoods. For Luka, this seems a straightforward, if hardly easy, thing to do, since his mother has been overseeing his training for years (the family’s future success depends on how well Luka handles himself). For Tirio, though, even the notion of a Takunami vision quest seems strange, since the boy, who has a disabled foot, was cast out of the tribe when he was very young – and has been adopted by an American woman and living a life very different from that of the tribes of the Amazon. Still, as Tirio nears the age of 13, he starts hearing voices and having visions that tell him he must return to his original homeland. It turns out, unsurprisingly, that Luka and Tirio share a destiny and that each needs the other in order to come through the sixth-sense test, the soche seche tente. But it is the revelations that come after the test that truly bring the boys into manhood, for “Takunami males are born three times: once out of their mahas’ bodies into the world, once out of their boyhood bodies into manhood, and once out of their physical bodies into the spirit world.” Nelson’s interconnection of the last of these, the spirit world, with the world of the Takunami tribe, provides much of the outré feeling of the book, a fantasy that takes place in a real-world setting.

     The world of Troll Blood is pure fantasy from the start, and even before the start: this novel follows Troll Fell and Troll Mill and concludes Katherine Langrish’s trilogy for ages 10 and up. Yet there are tribal touches here, too: the book mixes elements of Native American tales with Viking myths. Langrish pulls in the various legends throughout the narrative, for instance during Peer and Hilde’s crossing to North America, which they know as Vinland: “The draug: the fearsome sea spirit that roamed the seas in half a boat, with a crew of drowned corpses. He’d caught a glimpse of it one wild, stormy morning last summer – a tattered sail and a dark hull, manned by stiff silhouettes. He looked nervously out across the heaving water, beginning to understand why sailors didn’t like talking about such things.” Life gets more complicated after landfall, as Gunnar One-Hand establishes a settlement and Peer settles in with a Native American tribe nearby that bears the Vikings a mortal grudge. Breaking the cycle of revenge proves no easier in Vinland than anywhere else, but Peer eventually finds a way, bringing the book and the trilogy to a satisfying conclusion.

     Trolls are not actual characters in Troll Blood, appearing only in legends, but supernatural characters are the lifeblood (so to speak) of many novels for teenagers – the witches in The Secret Circle and the vampires in Vamps, for example. Neither book aspires to be more than genre literature, but both provide the sorts of interpersonal rivalries and frights that many teens enjoy. The Secret Circle is the first of two books about Cassie Blake, unwilling transplant from California to the New England town of New Salem; the second book will be subtitled The Captive Part II and The Power. Oddities of titling notwithstanding, the book follows established norms for the genre, as Cassie tries to handle everyday woes (misery because of the climate, worry about her mother and sick grandmother) as well as extraordinary ones (the school-ruling girls are more than mean – they are real witches, and Cassie is initiated into their coven for potentially deadly reasons). The most interesting aspect of The Secret Circle is the way L.J. Smith, author of The Vampire Diaries, interweaves “ordinary” concerns with spooky ones: Cassie comes to see that her mother and grandmother are somehow involved with the coven; and when she falls for a boy named Adam, who gives her a chalcedony rose as a good-luck charm that readers will immediately know is more than that, it turns out that he too is deeply involved in supernatural matters…and may be Cassie’s soulmate…but is in love with someone else as well as with Cassie…and everything just gets so complicated. But there’s nothing truly unexpected here.

     Nor is there in Vamps, which Nancy A. Collins sets at an elite school for upper-crust vampires called Bathory Academy – after the infamous noblewoman who killed young servant girls and bathed in their blood to try to keep herself youthful. The primary rivalry here is between Lilith Todd, who rules the school, and Cally Monture, who is newly enrolled and proving to be more of a rival than Lilith would have thought possible. One of the neatest elements in Vamps is the notion that there are vampire hunters constantly on the prowl – called Van Helsings, after Dracula’s nemesis in Bram Stoker’s novel. Another interesting part of the book is the classroom instruction – for example, in “scrivening,” which means properly writing important documents by hand, in languages unknown to humans, so as to “protect ourselves from those who would eradicate us from the face of the earth” (this, even though the vampires do use computers and have their own software letting them communicate over the Internet). It is the little touches rather than the ordinary-for-the-genre plot that are of most interest in Vamps, which is the first book of a series that is likely to be bloody good fun even if not blood-chilling.

(++++) ROMANTICS ALL

Strauss: Don Juan; Tod und Verklärung; Till Eulenspiegel; Träumerei am Kamin. Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg conducted by Marc Albrecht. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

Brahms: Symphony No. 4; Hungarian Dances Nos. 1, 3, 10, 17-21. Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marek Janowski. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

Brahms: Violin Concerto; Schumann: Violin Concerto. Ilya Kaler, violin; Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen. Naxos. $8.99.

     Say what you will about Romantic music’s excesses – it still, a century after the ostensible end of its era, has power and emotional sweep that connect with audiences directly, in a way that the generally more intellectual post-Romantics rarely do. Marc Albrecht gets that emotional connection just right in an outstanding SACD of mostly familiar music by Richard Strauss. The Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg may not be quite in the first tier of world (or even European) orchestras, but it plays superbly for Albrecht, who has clearly thought through the Strauss tone poems and knows just how he wants them paced, with emphasis placed just so within the instrumental fabric. Albrecht extracts details from Strauss where other conductors are all too often content to let the composer’s huge orchestra overwhelm the audience with the sheer volume of its sound. Thus, the very end of Don Juan, which dies away as the roué’s life ebbs, is every bit as effective (and affecting) as the more upbeat, powerful, striding themes earlier in the piece. Till Eulenspiegel remains a romp but gains a sly undercurrent of sarcasm. And Tod und Verklärung, one of the composer’s early self-referential works (the dying man, an artist, completes his grand vision only after death), really is transformative here, with the “recollection” sections in stark and brilliant contrast to those of the work’s hero’s inevitable succumbing to his mortality. The least-known piece on the recording, the interlude Träumerei am Kamin (“Dreaming by the Fireside”) from the opera Intermezzo, is more self-referential Strauss, drawn as it is from a work that is a domestic comedy-drama. Brief and lovely, it ends the SACD with warmth and makes an unusual and effective encore.

     Also highly effective, and also boasting excellent PentaTone SACD sound, is the final entry in Marek Janowski’s Brahms cycle with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Brahms’ Fourth is the least played of his symphonies and in many ways the mightiest – but those are ways of the intellect rather than ones of the emotions, as in the first three symphonies. In the wrong hands, the Fourth can sound dry, especially in its final chaconne, whose theme Brahms adapted from Bach's cantata, Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich. With flavors of Beethoven as well as the Baroque, but a thoroughly Brahmsian use of the orchestra, this is a difficult symphony to conduct effectively; but Janowski proves more than up to the task, and the orchestra (including the brass, which is crucial) gives him plenty of warmth and accuracy. The SACD also contains eight of Brahms’ Hungarian Dances – Nos. 1, 3 and 10 orchestrated by the composer and Nos. 17-21 by Dvořák. Here too the orchestra and conductor are very well attuned to each other, and if the performances break no new ground (which is a difficult thing to do with these miniatures), they are robust, heartfelt and emotionally satisfying.

     Brahms’ Violin Concerto is an emotional success, too, in the excellent new Naxos recording featuring violinist Ilya Kaler. Kaler is an exceptionally skilled player, never seeming to reach for or barely manage passages that can (and do) trip up other performers; in this respect, in some ways, Kaler’s playing is reminiscent of that of Jascha Heifetz. But Kaler also brings warmth to his performances – the huge first movement of the Brahms concerto simply grows and grows, becoming increasingly intense, while the Adagio offers respite while at the same time offering beauty and intimacy. Kaler cuts loose in the finale, handling the dance rhythms with aplomb and providing the work with a rousing conclusion. Pietari Inkinen’s conducting of the Bournemouth Symphony is mostly workmanlike: Inkinen is clearly content to have the orchestra take a back seat to Kaler, supporting him without ever seeming to come into competition. The approach works, although a greater sense of intensity would have made it work better. Orchestra and soloist do in fact play more effectively off each other in Schumann’s Violin Concerto, a Romantic work as underplayed as the Brahms is overplayed. Schumann’s concerto is poetic rather than supremely virtuosic (although the finale does have its moments); this may explain why it has relatively few advocates among first-rate violinists. But Kaler shows what a top-notch player can do with this music: he does not overwhelm it or blow it out of proportion, nor does he try to put it on the same plane as the later Brahms concerto. Instead, he lets the work unfold naturally, accepting its beauties as well as its limitations, putting his skill at the service of the music rather than trying to inflate it – with the result that the concerto ends up sounding as if other violinists underrate or simply do not fully understand it. Not a great concerto, perhaps, but in Kaler’s interpretation, the Schumann is a far worthier one than it has sometimes been thought to be.

(++++) MUSICAL GEOGRAPHY

Dvořák: Symphony No. 9, “From the New World”; Schumann: Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra. David Guerrier, Antoine Dreyfuss, Emmanuel Padieu and Bernard Schirrer, horns; Le Chambre Philharmonique conducted by Emmanuel Krivine. Naïve. $16.99.

The Pyongyang Concert—Wagner: Prelude to Act III of “Lohengrin”; Dvořák: Symphony No. 9, “From the New World”; Gershwin: An American in Paris; Bizet: Farandole from “L’Arlésienne Suite No. 2”; Bernstein: Overture to “Candide”; Traditional: Arirang. New York Philharmonic conducted by Lorin Maazel. Medici Arts DVD. $24.99.

     Location, location, location: it can matter as much for the creation of a musical work, and for the audience that hears it, as it does in real estate. Here are two recordings featuring the same ultra-popular Dvořák symphony, both offering excellent playing and fine interpretative nuances, but having a very different effect because of the circumstances under which the recordings were made.

     Le Chambre Philharmonique under Emmanuel Krivine offers a studio recording that is well paced, well played and thoroughly musicianly – and is distinguished by the use of period instruments. This may seem odder to listeners than it would in a recording of, say, Bach; but the fact is that Victorian symphonic instruments did differ in various respects (use of gut strings, being constructed of different materials) from those in common use today. The result of the period-instrument use is to present Dvořák’s final symphony much as it must have sounded at its 1893 premiere; the distinctive timpani sound is a particular pleasure. Interestingly, this recording makes it easy to put the work – which is from the New World but not of it – in a more-balanced perspective. The prominence of American tunes – including what were then called Negro spirituals – is balanced by the distinctly Slavonic dance rhythms of which Dvořák was so fond. The result is a performance that de-Americanizes the symphony without making it seem wholly Czech. It is hard to escape the idea that this is the way the composer probably wanted his work to be heard.

     The original-instrument approach makes an even bigger difference in Schumann’s Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra than in the Dvořák, since the Schumann was written nearly half a century earlier and there were major horn developments as the 19^th century progressed. The four fine soloists cannot conceal the fact that this piece is a stretch for the instruments of its time – indeed, Schumann seems to have wanted to explore the furthest reaches of which the horns of his time, when the valved horn was still fairly new, were capable. The Konzertstück is mostly bright and upbeat, its positive sentiments quite at odds with the difficulties the soloists must have in playing it. On this CD, it both contrasts with the Dvořák and makes an effective encore to it.

     What is especially effective in The Pyongyang Concert is not the instruments used or even the quality of the playing – although that is excellent, with the New York Philharmonic rising above its sometimes-pedestrian sound to give Lorin Maazel all the delicacy and power he could wish. What matters most is the venue: North Korea. This is the famous (some would say notorious) concert that either opened the secretive, repressive Communist regime to the Western world in an important way or legitimized that regime to an unfortunate extent. Despite the divergent political views connected with the concert, it is a wonderful musical experience with especially well-chosen repertoire. Although the Dvořák symphony is the longest work and the centerpiece of the performance, it is the inclusion of two works that really are American through and through that makes a strong statement from and about the musicians. Gershwin’s An American in Paris and Bernstein’s overture to Candide both use the orchestra in ways about as different from socialist realism as possible – yet both works are catchy, accessible and easy to enjoy without regard to political content. The Wagner and Bizet selections, also upbeat, reflect bits of Europe and provide a level of internationalism to the orchestra’s appearance. And the concluding Arirang, a bow to the host country, neatly buttons up a concert that starts with the dual national anthems of North Korea and the United States. It is far too soon to know whether this concert was a one-off or an early opening into a closed society. The documentary included as a bonus on the DVD, “Americans in Pyongyang,” attempts to be balanced but, perhaps not surprisingly, is mostly positive in tone. The one thing that is sure about this performance is that the music-making itself is of very high quality, even if Maazel’s comment that the February 26, 2008 concert created “a new-found spirit of understanding” may be somewhat overstating the geopolitical success of the New York Philharmonic’s trip.

(++++) BOARD BOOKS FOR ADULTS

The Book of Sexy Games. By Chris Stone. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

Bizarro Buccaneers: Nuttin’ but Pirate Cartoons. By Dan Piraro. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

Da Crockydile Book o’ Frendsheep: A “Pearls Before Swine” Gift Book. By Stephan Pastis. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

     There goes one of the last bastions of innocence: the small, hard-cardboard board book, intended for the youngest children and filled with pretty pictures, cute poems and lots of love. Probably no pirates. Certainly no lust.

     It would be easier to mourn the passing of this for-kids-only format if the new adult versions weren’t so much fun. The Book of Sexy Games, from its front-cover spinner to help you decide which game to play to its slightly risqué descriptions of moderately sexy but not really raunchy party games, is certainly adult – but nowhere near as “adult” as you would find, say, in the phrase “adult film.” Each game – “Breathless,” “Horny House of Cards,” “Sexy Charades” and so on – gets a “sexy rating” on a 10-point scale, with all of them rating between 7 and 10. “Daring Dice” (8 out of 10), for example, involves three different dice, one with an action (kiss, caress, lick, etc.), one with a body part and one whose numbers represent the players’ names; rolling all three determines which action you must do to which part of another player’s body. “Getting Fruity” (9 out of 10) requires getting together fruit and other food that resembles body parts, blindfolding someone and having him or her identify produce by touch – and, if correct, getting a small sexual favor involving the body part that the item resembles. Illustrated with pictures of multicultural twentysomethings in various stages of (always modest) undress, Chris Stone’s book is just silly enough, and just amusing enough, to be fun at get-togethers where friends are looking for something beyond movies or video games. The Book of Sexy Games looks like a board book but is decidedly not for children.

     Neither is Don Piraro’s Bizarro Buccaneers, which isn’t sexy but which features humor a little too…well…bizarre for kids. This board book – a six-inch square – contains cartoons from the single-panel strip dating from its early days in the 1980s right through to today. Piraro’s humor is not for everyone, and his pirate humor is definitely not for everyone, as in the cartoon showing a woman at a bar, dressed in full pirate regalia, with hook hand and peg leg, telling a man, “It seems to make people less uncomfortable with my disabilities.” How politically incorrect can you get? Well, there are a couple of cartoons in which pirates look forward to docking their ships in handicapped slips. Then there’s the not -really-pirate-themed panel showing two people finding a message in a bottle: “Help me, I’m a diabetic stranded on a dessert island.” There’s the onboard pirate exercise program, “Pilates of the Caribbean.” And there are two separate versions of a panel in which the pirate captain, whose men are shooting at an approaching small boat, tells them, “Hold yer fire! It’s a prosthetics salesman!” Again, not much child-friendly humor here, despite the board-book format.

     And then there are all those adorable little animals drawn by Stephan Pastis for Pearls Before Swine: cute pink Pig, adorable striped Zebra, cuddly green crocodiles – just right for the kiddies, yes? Maybe, if you want them to grow up to be hypersarcastic lapsed lawyers (like Pastis himself). Otherwise, this little gift book – which is bound in traditional hardback form rather than as a board book, but whose smiling crocodiles on the cover make it look as if it is meant to appeal to kids – is a pit of corruption that you should under no circumstances allow near anyone under the age of 21, or many people over that age. Pastis’ sense of humor is about as skewed as they come, and his comics are hilarious – if you have the mindset to enjoy them. Otherwise, they are crude, mean-spirited and thoroughly unfunny (a point Pastis often makes himself in various strips). The vicious but inept crocodiles, always trying to catch and eat their next-door neighbor, Zebra, seem unlikely characters for a book on friendship. They are not even friendly to each other – Pastis kills them off with startling regularity, inevitably because of their own self-centeredness and stupidity. And of course, that is exactly the point of Da Crockydile Book o’ Frendsheep: it’s a kind of anti-friendship book. We watch a crocodile swallow a zebra whole, encouraged by two others, above the words, “Frends eet ded tings togedder.” We see one crocodile demonstrate his prowess with a spear gun by accidentally killing another crocodile: “Frends sumtime shoots you.” We see a delighted Pig meeting one of Santa’s elves, which gets eaten by a crocodile while Pig goes to get his Christmas list: “Elves is taste like gud chicken (not reely have to do wid ‘frendsheep’ theme).” We see two crocodiles trying to frighten a computer into assembling itself and working: “Frends help you scare applyances.” And we get several strips that simply show the crocs’ lack of intelligence and common sense, with notes from them saying those strips do not belong in the book. This is a gift book only for a frend…err, friend who really loves Pastis’ humor – or for someone you would rather not have as a friend anymore.

(++++) SHORT-STORY STARS

Oddest of All. By Bruce Coville. Harcourt. $16.

Jim Copp, Will You Tell Me a Story? By Jim Copp. Illustrated by Lindsay duPont. Harcourt. $17.95.

     Bruce Coville is finally starting to think of himself as a short-story writer. It’s about time. Oddest of All is his third nine-story collection, after Oddly Enough and Odder Than Ever, and it is every bit as clever, varied, pointed, whimsical and thoughtful as the other two – and frequently more so than his novels, as enjoyable as they are. In fact, some of the stories here take place in the same worlds as Coville’s novels: “The Mask of Eamonn Tiyado,” its title a groaner of a pun on Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” is a Magic Shop tale, while “The Boy with Silver Eyes” is set in the world of The Unicorn Chronicles. These stories are self-contained, though, and as effective as the other tales here. Coville’s variety is quite impressive: “In Our Own Hands” poses a real-world question in a fictional setting and then refuses to answer it, forcing the reader to think; “In the Frog King’s Court” is a very silly story with a serious undertone about pollution; “The Thing in Auntie Alma’s Pond” is genuinely scary; “The Hardest, Kindest Gift” is genuinely strange, and also quite moving; and “Herbert Hutchison in the Underworld” is about a box that must not be opened – the same subject Coville addressed in the first tale within the first of his short-story collections, although the outcome here is quite different. Neither this story’s repeated theme nor the progression of the collections’ titles (odd to odder to oddest) should be taken to mean that Coville will stop writing short stories – at least, one hopes not. He has real and consistent talent in this form.

     Jim Copp (1913-1999) was a well-known storyteller for children from the late 1950s into the 1970s, with nine records (the vinyl kind) to his credit, all on his own label. His stories have a rather dated charm to them, being more effective in recorded form than on the printed page. Jim Copp, Will You Tell Me a Story? includes three tales both in print and on a CD, and it is the CD – Copp’s original recordings in one of today’s formats – that is the main attraction here. Still, the stories remain rather thin and fall a bit flat, despite Copp’s enthusiasm in delivering them. And within the 56 pages of the book, they are thinner still, even with the charming, period-feel illustrations by Lindsay duPont. This book-plus-CD package gets a (+++) rating, mostly for the CD and the illustrations. One story, “Kate Higgins,” is about a girl who is sick but refuses to take her medicine – and ends up feeling worse (but it is told more amusingly than the bare outline would indicate). The second, “Miss Goggins and the Gorilla,” is the funniest – it is about a super-strict fourth-grade teacher and the gorilla that visits her classroom. The third, “Martha Matilda O’Toole,” is about a girl who realizes as she heads for school that she has forgotten this, that and the other thing, and keeps having to go home to get what is missing. Copp’s tale-telling is the real draw here – the tales themselves have not worn particularly well.

(++++) GOOD THINGS IN BIG PACKAGES

Born to Read. By Judy Sierra. Pictures by Marc Brown. Knopf. $16.99.

Ghost Files: The Haunting Truth. By The Ghost Society. HarperCollins. $19.99.

     Here are two books that will barely fit on a bookshelf – not because they are weighty but because each is more than a foot tall. Born to Read deserves to be oversize, because it puts forth the basic message that “readers win and winners read.” It is the story of a boy named Sam who is literally born to read: he knows his name from the start (and although he never says “Sam I Am,” there is a Dr. Seuss book – The Cat in the Hat – shown on several pages). By the time Sam is almost four, he is better at reading medical books than the doctor is – leading Sam to diagnose his own rash correctly as harmless “Play-dough-osis” rather than dangerous “Martian Mustard-ation.” Judy Sierra’s story, abetted by Marc Brown’s amusing illustrations, takes Sam further and further toward success in life as a result of his increasingly complex reading. First, such books as Pat the Bunny and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom appear around him, but as he gets older, he reads “Sea Monsters” in the tub, “Bike Repair” while preparing for a cycle race, and so on. Sam’s reading eventually helps him save the town from “the baby giant, Grundaloon,” who stomps around, grabbing kids’ toys, with parents unable to stop him. Sam brings Grundaloon some of his own favorite books from earlier in life, such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Arthur, and while Grundaloon is distracted, Sam gets a cargo jet to pick the baby giant up and bring him home to “his mommy giantess.” Where will reading eventually take Sam? That is the unanswered question at the end of the book – but Sierra makes it clear that “readers can go anyplace,” and that is about as uplifting a message as anyone can hope to find in a book for ages 4-8.

     Ghost Files is for older kids – ages 10 and up – and is one of those books whose format is as attractive as its content. On every page there are tabs to pull, flaps to open, or books-within-the-book to read, as well as a combination of straightforward information with a heaping helping of items not to be taken seriously. There is, for example, a discussion of doppelgängers, plus some very interesting information on the ghosts of Japan: “Be careful between two and three in the morning. That’s when the yurei come out. A yurei has one purpose: to seek revenge for a wrong done to it in life.” But there are also statements such as, “If you hear a bloodcurdling howl on a stormy night, prepare to see the phantom black hound,” and there is a “Captain’s Log” for the fictional “S.S. Phantom,” which sights a ghost ship – after which the log breaks off, of course, in mid-sentence. The combination of genuine ghost lore with put-ons is a bit off-putting, and the blurring of the line between reports of actual ghostly visitations and pure superstition is not always clear. Ghost Files gets a (+++) rating for its fine design and the highly interesting information it provides; but it is hard to tell whether the book wants to be informative or entertaining. Actually, it seems to want to be both, and this occasionally works – the two-page spread of a house containing a poltergeist, with tabs to pull to show what poltergeists are reputed to do, is quite an accomplishment. But much of the time, the juxtaposition of fact (or real-world reports) and fiction is merely silly – for instance, the pages on mediums mention times when spirits have reportedly materialized during séances, but the pull tab underneath this item says, “Many ghosts grumble about ectoplasm. ‘It smacks of charlatanism and gives us ghosts a bad name.’” Ghost Files is, in the final analysis, neither all here nor all there.

(+++) AFTER SUMMER’S END

The Loser’s Guide to Life and Love. By A.E. Cannon. HarperTeen. $16.99.

Stealing Heaven. By Elizabeth Scott. HarperTeen. $16.99.

Bird Lake Moon. By Kevin Henkes. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $15.99.

     If you go by the solstice, summer has been over for only a short while, but the feeling of summer is, for most people, long gone, its pleasures only a memory. Some of these summer-themed books may bring back a few pleasant thoughts, at least for a little while, if read as the escapism that they are during a chilly autumn day.

     The Loser’s Guide to Life and Love is the cleverest of them, being based by A.E. Cannon – very loosely – on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Cannon writes a humor column for a Utah newspaper, and she has a deft hand at plotting and a clever way with words. Thus, it is not enough for her to place her protagonist, Ed, in a real loser of a summer job, shelving DVDs at a store called Reel Life Movies (and a good store name that is). She also arranges that Ed cannot have his own name tag and is stuck with one that says Sergio – thus raising the usual teen-novel questions of identity in an amusing way while also recalling Shakespeare’s many mistaken-identity jokes in his play. Cannon has Ed meet the girl of his (midsummer night’s) dreams, Ellie, but he has no chance with her as his real self; however, perhaps he can be Sergio the Brazilian and get together with her on that basis. And Ed also finds that his two best friends, jokester Scout and super-brain Quark, are not giving him the respite from his mind-numbing job that he had hoped they would, because Quark has a thing for Scout and Scout appears to have a thing for…Ed. The plot machinery here does get creaky – and no fair comparing it unfavorably to Shakespeare’s, because everyone compares unfavorably to him – and Cannon seems to be trying a little too hard at times to be cute: “Years and years from now, Ed will be having Regency romance cover flashbacks, and it will all be my fault,” says Scout in one of the chapters he narrates (the principal characters take turns, not always sounding convincingly different). On balance, The Loser’s Guide to Life and Love is an above-average offbeat summer romance-and-growing-up book, with its Shakespeare connection providing a little added spice.

     Stealing Heaven has an offbeat angle of its own: 18-year-old Danielle, the central character, is a thief. In fact, she’s a second-generation thief, having been taught by her mother, who stays one step ahead of the cops by moving from town to town and specializing in the theft of antique silver from wealthy homes. Somehow, even with this modus operandi and even with the cops apparently being on to them, they are able to continue their escapades in the little beach town of Heaven. The wrinkle here is that Dani (as she is called), desperate for connections and friendships, finds them unexpectedly in Heaven, and finds herself trying to balance her life of crime (and her relationship with her mother) against her own need to feel at home somewhere and maybe even get something going with a cute guy she meets. Elizabeth Scott lays on the plot coincidences somewhat too thickly – that cute guy, for example, turns out to be a cop, and the special female friend Dani makes turns out to live in the next house that Dani and her mom have targeted for thievery. Dani is, at bottom, more of a naïf than a reader would expect an experienced 18-year-old thief to be. For instance, when her friend catches Dani in a maid’s uniform (Dani has been checking out the antique silver, of course), Dani is amazed to be taken at face value: “And now, in spite of the uniform, in spite of everything Mom has always said, she’s still standing here wanting to talk to me. She’s saying we’re friends. The only people who’ve ever said they were my friends before were cops who’d try to butter me up to get me to rat on Mom.” Dani never quite makes it into believability, and Scott keeps ratcheting up the melodrama until the inevitable parting of the ways between mother and daughter – occasioned not by jail but by disease, which turns into its own kind of prison. Much of Stealing Heaven is depressing, but the ending is uplifting in a fairly typical way, and the whole book seems not only to be set in a beach town but also meant to be read in one.

     Bird Lake Moon takes place in another summer setting: at a lake, where friends Spencer and Mitch have been hanging out at nearby houses while concealing secrets from each other. There is a lot of gloom and doom at the lake, with talk of divorce in the air at Mitch’s house, while Spencer sees what he thinks are mysterious and possibly ghostly signs (new scratches on his goggles, a turtle on the porch, an ivory turtle statue missing from its usual place). Then Spencer’s family’s dog, Jasper, goes missing, only to be recovered by Mitch, and then Mitch, Spencer and Spencer’s sister, Lolly, spend time together, and some secrets come out (notably about the drowning death of another child years earlier). And then bits and pieces start to come together, with Spencer’s concern about a possible ghost in the house colliding with his continuing thoughts about his long-dead brother, and with Mitch revealing at least some of what is really going on. One line in a chapter about Mitch pretty well sums up the overall mood of the book: “He felt an undercurrent of muted sadness encroaching upon and controlling the day.” Although sensitively written, Bird Lake Moon is so fraught with twinges of unhappiness – sometimes more than twinges – that it is a decidedly downbeat read. It is a book about summer, but with winter at its core.

(++++) STRINGS STRUCK AND STRUMMED

Schubert: Piano Sonata in A, D. 959; Six Moments Musicaux, D. 780. Martin Helmchen, piano. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

Ries: Piano Sonatas in E-flat major, Op. 11, No. 1, and F minor, Op. 11, No. 2; Sonatina in A minor, Op. 45. Susan Kagan, piano. Naxos. $8.99.

William Lawes: Harp Consorts (complete). Maxine Eilander, harp; Les Voix Humaines (Stephen Stubbs, theorbo and guitar; David Greenberg, baroque violin; Susie Napper and Margaret Little, violas da gamba). ATMA Classique. $16.99 (2 CDs).

     Beethoven presented enormous challenges to all composers of his time and afterwards – challenges they met in varying ways, with various degrees of success. Schubert’s last three piano sonatas – the A major is the second of them – were written just a year after Beethoven’s death, in the final year of Schubert’s own life, and are largely successful attempts to take the form in new directions and out of Beethoven’s shadow. The lyricism and singing quality of the Sonata in A in some ways echo Beethoven – especially earlier Beethoven – but Schubert’s structure is different (less wedded to traditional sonata form, for one thing), and his alternation of lyrical passages with intense ones speaks more thoroughly of the Romantic era that both Beethoven and Schubert ushered in, each in his own way. It is worth remembering that Schubert’s last sonatas are nevertheless youthful works – the composer died at age 31. Certainly Martin Helmchen, who was 25 when he made this recording last year, gets this aspect right. The sonata practically overflows with emotion, although it never gets out of control or sloppy; this is a performance that eschews virtuosity for its own sake. Helmchen’s pedal use is particularly well considered, especially in the final Rondo, the work’s longest movement. The opening Allegro is perhaps a bit too diffuse, but this is otherwise a highly notable performance. The Six Moments Musicaux are lovely, too, their flowing quality especially evident in Helmchen’s hands. The third and shortest of them, marked Allegretto moderato, is the most wistful and charming. The sixth and longest, simply marked Allegretto, becomes a little long-winded here; but again, on balance, these are highly enjoyable and well-thought-out readings, and PentaTone’s SACD recording is top-notch, bringing forth every nuance of both sound and silence.

     Ferdinand Ries had a closer relationship with Beethoven than Schubert did and perhaps felt his influence loom larger. The three piano works on Susan Kagan’s CD – the first in a planned series devoted to Ries’ sonatas and sonatinas – were all written during Beethoven’s lifetime, the two sonatas around 1807-8 and the sonatina around 1811-2. The F minor sonata is by far the most interesting work here, sounding again and again like Beethoven’s “Pathétique” sonata, written a decade earlier. Ries’ work has drive, determination and deep emotion, although its ending is a disappointment: it simply flies away and evaporates instead of reaching a climax. Still, it is well constructed and definitely worth hearing. The E-flat sonata is of lesser interest, with more serenity and less drama, although its theme-and-variations finale shows considerable inventiveness. The two-movement Sonatina in A minor has an expressive opening movement and a brighter second one, and comes across as something of a miniature. Kagan plays all the works with enthusiasm, and they are certainly intriguing enough to make the prospect of additional Ries piano CDs an appealing one.

     Long before Beethoven, Schubert and Ries, and long before the piano, there were other stringed instruments of choice in the 17^th century. William Lawes (1602-1645) was a master particularly of the viol and the lyra viol (the latter being a small bass viol popular primarily in England). Lawes was attached to the court of the ill-fated Charles I, whose defeat and beheading in 1649 led to Oliver Cromwell’s interregnum; in fact, Lawes was shot to death by a Parliamentarian in 1645 during one of the battles between Charles’ supporters and opponents. This “Father of Musick” (so named by the king himself) was highly skilled not only in compositions for viols but also in those for harp and small consort, as the new recording by Maxine Eilander and Les Voix Humaines shows clearly. This is the first complete recording of Lawes’ 11 harp consorts, which are well balanced between major and minor: three in G, three in G minor, three in D, and two in D minor. They are also remarkably well balanced among the instruments, flowing naturally among the players with the harp being first among equals. Yet these are far from 17^th-century background music: Lawes was fond of mixing disparate themes, allowing pastoral simplicity to reign for a while, only to be interrupted by something more outlandish. The harp consorts contain a number of these unexpected juxtapositions, which led to dislike of Lawes’ music after his death but which nowadays make his pieces sound more interesting and, in a sense, more “modern” than the more even-tempered works of other 17^th-century composers. This fine two-CD set also includes a duo for guitar and harp that neatly plays the two instruments’ different string sounds against each other. The Lawes set is a find for anyone interested in out-of-the-ordinary 17^th-century ensemble music.

(+++) MODERNITY MARCHES ON

Schnittke: Piano Concerto (1960); Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra (1979); Concerto for Piano Four Hands and Chamber Orchestra (1988). Ewa Kupiec, piano; Maria Lettberg, piano (Four Hands); Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Frank Strobel. Phoenix Edition. $16.99 (SACD).

Henze: Suite from “Die Bassariden”; Nachstücke und Arien; Symphony No. 8. Claudia Barainsky, soprano (Nachstücke); Gürzenich-Orchester Köln conducted by Markus Stenz. Phoenix Edition. $16.99.

Class of 1938: Music by William Bolcom, Gloria Coates, John Corigliano, John Harbison, Frederic Rzewski, José Serebrier, Joan Tower and Charles Wuorinen. Naxos. $8.99 (2 CDs).

     Here are three highly interesting recordings of music by important 20^th-century composers – none of which is likely to attract listeners unfamiliar with the repertoire. The Schnittke and Henze discs present large doses of these composers’ music – a treat for fans, but a lot for non-fans to absorb. And the Class of 1938 set, which offers a wide variety of music by composers who happened to be born in the same year, is somewhat too diffuse to enthrall new listeners.

     The three piano concertos by Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) are very different from each other and date to very different times in his compositional life. The first, written in 1960, is the only one using a standard piano-and-orchestra approach and the only one in the traditional three movements – slow-fast-slow. Even at age 26, though, Schnittke was finding his own way in music; this was before he started writing film scores, the type of music for which he is best known. The 1960 concerto is well put together and fairly demanding of the pianist (Schnittke himself had studied piano); its middle movement is its heart, lasting as long as the first and third put together. Still, there is a strong whiff of Shostakovich in this concerto – a scent that had largely disappeared by the time of the concerto for piano and string orchestra. This is a one-movement work that somewhat uneasily mixes polyphony, parody, and such mid-20^th-century favorite elements as pounding chords and tone clusters. Ewa Kupiec plays it (and the other concertos) very well, but whether this 1979 piece hangs together or seems disjointed will largely depend on the attitude the listener brings to it. Finally, there is the four-hands concerto, which Schnittke wrote for his wife, Irina, and for Viktoria Postnikova. This is a somewhat more introverted work than the earlier concertos, although not as bleak as many pieces Schnittke wrote later in life. The piano parts are cooperative rather than competitive, and the concerto as a whole is expressive and moving, abetted by Frank Strobel ‘s sensitive conducting and by excellent SACD sound.

     Hans Werner Henze’s music is perhaps less emotive and more intellectually stimulating than Schnittke’s. The three works conducted by Markus Stenz all have theatrical origins or associations. Suite from “Die Bassariden” is drawn from Henze’s 1966 opera (libretto by W.H. Auden) based on Euripides’ The Bacchae (the name Bassariden or Bassarids comes from the Roman God Bacchus, equivalent to the Greek Dionysus: Bacchus often wore a fox-skin or bassaris). This is a tragic opera in which the god takes revenge on mortals who have doubted his power, and Henze’s music is appropriately dark and, in the dance of Dionysus’ followers the Maenads, frenzied. Nachstücke und Arien dates to 1957 and is a five-movement work, with three orchestral pieces and two settings of poems by Ingeborg Bachmann, sung with feeling by lyric soprano Claudia Barainsky. The work is heavier and more portentous than Henze’s Symphony No. 8, whose genesis is Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The symphony’s first movement makes deliberate reference to Mendelssohn’s music for the play; the second represents instrumentally the dialogue between magic-addled Titania and the mortal Bottom; and it is only in the finale, inspired by Puck’s epilogue to the play, that the 12-note theme on which the prior movements are based is finally revealed. This symphony was completed in 1993, and Henze, who is now 82, has continued and is continuing to compose; in fact, he has already written two further symphonies. The Eighth has been unavailable in recorded form for some time. Henze’s fans will welcome its return in such a fine performance.

     But what is the fan base for Class of 1938? It is easy to imagine how this two-CD sampler came to be: “What a coincidence! Look at all the top-notch composers turning 70 this year. Hey – that means they were all born in 1938!” And the set is a genuine bargain for people interested in these composers: the second CD includes interviews with six of the eight (Bolcom, Corigliano, Harbison, Serebrier, Tower and Wuorinen). But those who already know Corigliano’s music, for instance, will not buy these CDs to hear his three-minute A Black November Turkey. Gloria Coates’ fans will not buy it for the six-minute excerpt from her Symphony No. 15. William Bolcom’s will not buy it for the second movement of his Cello Sonata. This is not to say that the works are uninteresting or even atypical (although not all of them really showcase the composers at their best). In fact, Rzewski’s Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, Tower’s Tambor and Serebrier’s Fantasia for Strings are fine works and well worth owning. But a hodgepodge like this one adds up, like many other anthologies, to somewhat less than the sum of its parts. And the “1938” angle in itself, although clever, seems unlikely to attract buyers. There is worthy music here, and it is interesting to hear some of the composers discussing themselves and their works, but Class of 1938 comes off, all in all, as an offering in search of an elusive audience.