(+++) MYSTERIES (ALMOST) SOLVED

The 39 Clues, Book 7: The Viper’s Nest. By Peter Lerangis. Scholastic. $12.99.

The 39 Clues, Book 8: The Emperor’s Code. By Gordon Korman. Scholastic. $12.99.

Young Jesus Chronicles. By Spencer Smith and Mark Penta. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

     By now, anyone who is going to get sucked into the multimedia whirlpool of The 39 Clues is, like Poe’s narrator in A Descent into the Maelstrom, thoroughly trapped and “going down.” But down into what? The complexities of this 10-novel, online-game, playing-card series start to come together in its seventh and eighth books, which will only whet participants’ appetites for the final two volumes (both due out this year) and their extensive and inevitable tie-ins. Peter Lerangis, who also wrote The Sword Thief (Book 3), and Gordon Korman, who also did One False Note (Book 2), are thoroughly familiar with and comfortable in the world of Amy and Dan Cahill and the seven teams of members of the far-flung and amazingly prominent members of the Cahill family – all of them competing for clues that will eventually bring ultimate power to those who solve the mystery. The Viper's Nest is full of partial solutions, some of which attentive readers may already have guessed. For example, in Book 6, In Too Deep, it turns out that Amy’s hero, Amelia Earhart, was not only a Cahill (no surprise: just about everyone famous or notorious in world history seems to have been a Cahill) but was also a Madrigal (a member of the most mysterious of the seven Cahill groups). So when, in Book 7, Amy and Dan finally learn where they fit into the Cahill clan, the surprise may not be especially surprising to readers, although it shocks Amy and Dan. Some revelations about Amy and Dan’s parents are perhaps less expected, such as the fact that they traveled under the name of a murderer. The books of The 39 Clues take Amy and Dan around the world, with Book 7 landing them in South Africa, where they learn about a famed warrior – all the books intertwine bits of real-world history with the fictional Cahills and their clues chase.

     Book 8 takes place in China and features one of the periodic separations of the two protagonists, allowing each to go his or her own way for a while and make separate discoveries. In The Emperor’s Code (the title refers to a note written on silk by a Chinese emperor), Dan is captured by Team One (the Kabras) and rescued, or maybe kidnapped, by Team Six (the Wizards). Team Two (the Holts) turns up as well – climbing Mount Everest. Korman certainly gives readers their money’s worth of people rushing all over the place in this book. Amy and Dan get back together in time to use a helicopter to climb Earth’s highest aboveground mountain, “soaring past altitudes far beyond the ceiling of any other helicopter in the world.” But of course the mystery is not solved atop Everest – although the essential goodness of Amy and Dan is made clear yet again when Amy finds an object that may be vitally important, then loses it while rescuing one of the Kabras. Dan, however, has found another important object – which points them toward the Caribbean and Book Nine. Clearly all will be revealed in the not-too-distant future, although not just yet.

     A far greater mystery than anything in The 39 Clues gets a far lighter treatment in a set of cartoons from friends and fellow catechism school attendees Spencer Smith (writer) and Mark Penta (artist). It happens that the Synoptic gospels tell nothing of the life of Jesus between birth and the start of his ministry in adulthood; nor does the gospel of John have anything substantive to say about this time period, which represents the greatest part of Jesus’ life. Enter Young Jesus Chronicles, a book of mild but respectful irreverence and absolutely-not-to-be-trusted speculation. It is divided into three parts. In “0-VI A.D.” we find Joseph and Mary, covered with hay, turning in their keys at the hotel’s front desk and being told they misunderstood – they were supposed to go to the manager’s suite, not the manger. Also here, Mary looks into the sky while complaining, “The least you could do is change a diaper once in a while!” In “VII-XII A.D.,” Jesus delivers “The Sermon at the Jungle Gym” and offers an enormous tie to an overhanging cloud on Father’s Day. And in “XIII-VXIII A.D.,” those awkward teenage years, Jesus wins a swim meet by running on top of the water and goes on a date with a stereotypical ditz, leading to the comment, “He could cure the blind, but He couldn’t cure the blonde.” Young Jesus Chronicles is, shall we say, a bit of an acquired taste – and in truth, it is neither the first nor the best cartoon-style speculation on Jesus’ life (The Adventures of Jesus [1962] and The New Adventures of Jesus [1969], both created by Frank Stack – under the pseudonym Foolbert Sturgeon – are minor classics). The Smith-Penta book will offend the easily offended (that is why they are called the easily offended), but in truth, it is pretty silly and harmless stuff, occasionally a trifle tasteless but never overtly vulgar or disrespectful. Far worse has been done in Jesus’ name.

(++++) INVITATIONS TO THE DANCE

Brahms: Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 for Viola and Piano; Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano (transcribed for viola by Csaba Erdélyi). Roberto Díaz, viola; Jeremy Denk, piano. Naxos. $8.99.

Mozart: Duets for Violin and Viola, KV 423 and 424; Divertimento for Violin, Viola and Cello, KV 563. Francesco Manara, violin; Simonide Braconi, viola; Massimo Polidori, cello. Concerto. $16.99.

Johann Strauss Sr. Edition, Volume 16. Slovak Sinfonietta Žilina conducted by Christian Pollack. Marco Polo. $9.99.

     Chamber music is, in a sense, an elaborate dance for two or more players. Although it is often described as a “conversation,” it is one done to specific rhythms and is filled with nuances that always approximate the elaborate interconnection of dance partners – with movements sometimes literally in dance forms. Thus, even though there are no overt dance movements in Brahms’ two viola sonatas (although the Allegretto grazioso of the first comes close), a worthwhile interpretation makes it sound as if the viola and piano are dancing with each other – now together, now apart, always in figurative as well as literal harmony. Roberto Díaz and Jeremy Denk for the most part get this sense of interconnectedness just right in their warm and well-played versions of the sonatas. The second of the two – a more introverted work – comes across particularly well, progressing with seeming inevitability from start to finish, the instruments intertwining with delicacy and skill. In the first sonata, in which the performers take a few unjustified and unneeded liberties with tempo, the result is not quite as effective, although when Díaz and Denk do let the music flow naturally, they mesh very well indeed. They are effective too in violist Csaba Erdélyi’s D major transcription of Brahms’ G major Violin Sonata No. 1 – which the composer himself transcribed into D for cello. This work does not lie quite as comfortably on the viola as do the two sonatas (which are at least equally often played on clarinet): Brahms does seek richness in tone throughout his music, and this proves an effective use of the violin in this sonata as well as an attractive handling of the cello in the composer’s own transcription. The viola arrangement, in contrast, works all right as music but does not have the emotional heft of either the violin or cello version. Still, it is always nice to have another well-crafted work for viola players to bring to the chamber-music dance.

     Certainly Mozart knew how to give every possible grace to every instrument – even ones he did not especially like, such as the flute. Mozart’s two duets for violin and viola may not be among his major works, but neither are they throwaways. In fact, they show Mozart’s willingness to treat the viola as an equal partner of the violin – in contrast to the instrument’s handling by Haydn, who generally used violas only to fill in harmonies. The first duet, in G, is better known than the second, in B-flat; but in the performance by Francesco Manara and Simonide Braconi, it is the second that shines. It is longer than the first (20 minutes vs. 16) and comes across as a more elaborate, more thoroughly worked-through piece, especially in its final Andante con variazioni. And having shown Mozart’s skill (and their own) at the violin-and-viola dance, Manara and Braconi then join Massimo Polidori for a piece that is one of Mozart’s most remarkable: the Divertimento in E-flat, a work of amazingly broad scope whose six movements give the three players every possible opportunity to play as soloists, in duets and as a full complement of three. The emotional depth of this music is quite astonishing – and stands in lovely contrast to its lighter, overtly dancelike elements, including two minuets and a finale whose rocking motion is as gentle as it is infectious. The performance here is at times a touch restrained – a little bit of sheer exuberance goes well in this context – but is admirably balanced, with fine integration of the instruments’ sound and great sensitivity shown by each player for each of the others. Always a lovely work, this divertimento here comes across with all its profundity and most, if not quite all, of its joyfulness.

     For sheer joy in dance motion, it is a small step from the ¾ beat of the minuet to the ¾ beat of the waltz, and there have been few composers who could churn out danceable waltzes with such consistency as Johann Strauss Sr. Unlike the more-famous, more-symphonic waltzes of his sons, Johann Jr. and Josef, those of Johann Sr. rarely pretended to be more than occasional pieces – trifles perhaps, but delicious ones, with clear rhythms created for the express purpose of making it impossible to stand still while Strauss Sr. led his orchestra. The 16^th volume in the continuing Marco Polo series of Strauss Sr.’s music shows yet again that there is no finer exponent of these works than Christian Pollack, and no orchestra that plays them with more verve than the Slovak Sinfonietta Žilina. There are six waltzes – actually waltz sets, each of them containing as many as five mini-waltzes – on the new CD, plus two Quadrilles, one each for the name days of Emperor Ferdinand I and Empress Maria Anna. All eight works here date from the period of November 1842-August 1843, and it is wonderful to hear the unending flow of melodies produced by Strauss Sr. with such apparent ease. However, it must be said that some of these waltzes seem a touch pale, because one of the pieces here is among the composer’s greatest: Loreley-Rhein-Klänge, a lengthy and thoroughly winning piece that unfolds with a combination of naturalness and beauty. Die Dämonen (“The Demons”) is nearly at the same level, featuring some especially neat twists in its tunes. The other waltzes on this CD – Künstler-Ball-Tänze, Tanz-Capricen, Brüder Lustig and Astraea-Tänze – are less distinguished, although the last of these is pleasantly animated and quite upbeat. If chamber music is a dance of sorts, then the dances of Johann Strauss Sr. – which were often played by small ensembles, not full-size orchestras – qualify as dances writ large, and ones that still retain their bounce and beauty.

(+++) OUT-OF-THE-WAY OPERAS

Rachmaninoff: Aleko. Sergey Murzaev, Evgeny Akimov, Gennady Bezzubenkov, Svetla Vassileva, Nadezhda Vasilieva; Coro del Teatro Regio di Torino and BBC Philharmonic conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. Chandos. $18.99.

Samuel Arnold: Polly. Laura Albino, Eve Rachel McLeod, Gillian Grossman, Marion Newman, Loralie Kirkpatrick, Bud Roach, Lawrence J. Wiliford, Andrew Mahon, Matthew Grosfeld, Jason Nedecky; Aradia Ensemble conducted by Kevin Mallon. Naxos. $8.99.

     Rachmaninoff’s first completed opera, Aleko, brought him great success as a student at the Moscow Conservatory, where he wrote it as a graduation exercise. It won the judges’ highest prizes in 1892 – when the composer was 19 – and was first performed in Moscow that year, then given its Bolshoi Theatre premiere in 1893. Quite an accomplishment – but it did not point toward a successful operatic career for Rachmaninoff, who completed only two other operas (The Miserly Knight and Francesca da Rimini). Aleko, like The Miserly Knight, is based on a work by Pushkin. It is a one-act work lasting less than an hour, in plot being a sort of Cavalleria Rusticana featuring the gypsies of Carmen. The most original thing about it, at least retrospectively, is the extent to which the music rather than the singing tells the story, which is a straightforward-for-its-time one of love, betrayal and murder, complete with an infant in a cradle as a convenient prop. All that happens is that Aleko, an older man who has been the lover of Zemfira and has a child with her, discovers that she is unfaithful to him with someone called only Young Gypsy; in a jealous rage, he kills both lovers; and the thoroughly idealized members of the gypsy band declare themselves too gentle and kind-hearted to punish him but unable to live with him any longer – so they leave with the lovers’ bodies and Aleko ends up alone. Rachmaninoff had yet to find his personal style when he wrote Aleko – indeed, the first gypsy chorus (a celebration of freedom) sounds remarkably like something Sir Arthur Sullivan could have written – but in the darker parts of the opera, the composer is already moving in a direction he would later take more effectively. Included in the 50-minute running time of Aleko are 12 minutes of instrumental music, so there are only the bare bones of a story here. But elements of it are nevertheless effective: the Old Gypsy’s tale of his own lost love, which resulted in him being left with his daughter, Zemfira, whose mother ran off with another man; Zemfira’s Cradle Scene, really an in-your-face song of defiance hurled at Aleko; and Aleko’s Cavatina, in which he recalls the happy times with Zemfira that he now realizes are gone. Gennady Bezzubenkov is sonorously effective as the Old Gypsy, Svetla Vassileva is appropriately fiery as Zemfira, and Sergey Murzaev gets Aleko’s misery right even though his rage seems insufficient for his eventual bloody revenge. This is another in a fine series of recordings made possible by the Serge Rachmaninoff Foundation and featuring the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda – a conductor who is turning out to have quite a way with Rachmaninoff’s music. Aleko may not ultimately be particularly convincing, but it would make an interesting double bill with Cavalleria Rusticana or another melodrama, such as Puccini’s Il Tabarro.

     If Aleko is off the beaten operatic path, Polly is so far afield that it might take a Mars Rover, figuratively speaking, to find it. Think for a moment of The Beggar’s Opera, that wonderfully irreverent sendup of the world of 1728 by John Gay and Johann Pepusch. Now imagine a sequel, also a “ballad opera,” by the same team, focused on Polly Peachum and created in 1729. Now imagine censorship that prevents the staging of that sequel – then the death of both Gay and Pepusch in 1732 – and then, nearly half a century later, a complete revamping and toning-down of the unperformed opera, the writing of a great deal of new music for it, and the interpolation into it of works by well-known composers of the day such as Thomas Arne and Jeremiah Clarke. Imagine all that and you have Samuel Arnold’s Polly, a work about as incoherent – even by operatic standards – as you are likely to find anywhere. The Aradia Ensemble and a batch of fresh-voiced young Canadian singers press their way through this spectacle with verve and appropriate period style, but to what end is hard to say. The synopsis included with the CD is virtually impossible to follow, thanks to its constant cross-references to musical tracks that appear at different places. Reading the libretto – which, thank goodness, Naxos makes available online as a PDF file – is an absolute must in order to figure out what is going on. But, again, to what end it is worthwhile to follow the plot is unclear. The music is almost uniformly undistinguished, and virtually all the bite that made The Beggar’s Opera such a success (and an inspiration for, among others, The Threepenny Opera in the 20^th century) has been removed. Polly has no teeth; it barely has gums. Anyone who reads the libretto will find out why in a scene set before the Overture is to be played. An actor called the Poet says, “I know that I have been unjustly accus'd of having given up my moral for a joke, like a fine gentleman in conversation; but whatever be the event now, I will not so much as seem to give up my moral.” And one called the First Player responds, “Really, Sir, an author should comply with the customs and taste of the town.” And there we have it: a morally instructive story in compliance with the “customs and taste” of the right-thinking people of 1777: Polly’s father has been hanged for his crimes before the work starts, Macheath is hanged for his before it ends, Polly (who has followed Macheath to the New World) proves to have noble sentiments that enable her at the end to wed a suitably noble Indian prince; and the eventual triumph of virtue is celebrated to the tune (this is not a joke) of Clarke’s famous “Trumpet Voluntary.” A small amount of the unrecorded dialogue of Polly retains a bit of the Gay/Pepusch spirit, and an occasional hint of their sly irreverence does manage to peek through in the songs. But by and large, Polly is a piece of 18^th-century bourgeois gentlemanliness, without even a particularly tuneful score to relieve its dull sting. This CD gets a (++) rating – and then only because it is so earnestly sung and so well played. Now, if someone would dig up the original version of Polly and see what Gay and Pepusch wanted to create, that might be interesting.

(++++) MOVABLE FEASTS FOR THE EYES

Bee & Me. By Elle J. McGuinness. Illustrated by Heather Brown. Animation created by Jeffrey Charles Cole and Heather Brown. Accord Publishing/Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

Zoo Babies. By Paula Hannigan. Illustrations by Heather Brown. Animation created by Jeffrey Charles Cole and Heather Brown. Accord Publishing/Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

Trucks. By Paula Hannigan. Illustrations by Shannon Chandler. Animation created by Jeffrey Charles Cole and Shannon Chandler. Accord Publishing/Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

     Lenticular photography has a long and honorable history. It was, among other things, the basis of the Kodacolor process that made it possible to shoot color images using black-and-white film. And that process, which dates all the way back to 1928, was itself based on earlier lenticular work. What does this have to do with three clever new board books from Accord Publishing? Well, the modern version of lenticular printing makes still objects seem to move when seen from different angles – and has been used in everything from advertising to novelty prizes in Cracker Jack boxes. Thanks to the precision placement and photography made possible by computers, lenticular motion looks better than ever these days, and can now be done inexpensively enough to enhance children’s books – indeed, to provide a significant part of their enjoyment.

     That is what happens in all three of these short books. The Bee & Me board book is an abridged version of the original Bee & Me, which appeared last year and which also featured color “moving” pictures of a bee that gets trapped behind window glass and uses the opportunity to teach a little boy about the importance of bees in general. This shortened version still contains a modicum of the ecological awareness that was a big element of the original book – told in poetry that does not rhyme or scan very well but does argue its points effectively: “We’re good for much more than just honey, you see,/ We bees help the flowers, the bushes and trees./ We gather their pollen and spread it around –/ The only way to keep them growing, we’ve found.” Four of the five animations here (Accord calls the process “AniMotion”) show the bee chased by the family dog, trapped by the window, wiggling its body and shedding a tear; the fifth shows a flower apparently moving in the breeze. The book’s remaining, non-moving illustrations are nothing special, but they carry the story along well, and the juxtaposition of moving and non-moving pictures is well handled.

     The other two new “AniMotion” titles have even less to offer in terms of story line, but here again, the five moving pictures per book are the primary interest. Each of these books emphasizes specific words related to the subject matter – for instance, “Zebras RUN with the herd” and “Dump trucks DROP piles of dirt.” Each emphasized word is illustrated by a moving picture – and some of the illustrations are especially clever: a lion cub pounces on its mother’s tail (only the cub and the very end of the tail are shown in motion), a baby elephant sprays water to cool itself off, a steamroller presses dirt into smooth pavement. Very young children will find these board books endlessly fascinating, although slightly older kids may be tempted to try to separate the thick “AniMotion” pages to find out why some pictures move – and still older ones will tire quickly of books whose main attraction is purely visual and that include only five moving pictures in a total of only 12 pages. Parents should consider their children’s developmental stages carefully when deciding whether to buy any of these books. They can be tremendously attractive and a lot of fun – but only for kids of the right age and interest level.

(++++) MARRIAGE MATH AND MORE

For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage. By Tara Parker-Pope. Dutton. $25.95.

     Distinguished from typical self-help books by its penchant for research and insistence that marriage partners ask and answer similar questions – and then compare their responses – For Better is a well-written and impressively analytical look at an intimate relationship in which everyone thinks, “My situation is different,” while scientists and other researchers say, “No, it isn’t.”

     Getting over the “my situation is different” hurdle is the hardest part about getting into this book, whose author is a New York Times columnist and blogger (and formerly wrote for The Wall Street Journal). Herself divorced after a 17-year marriage, Tara Parker-Pope is not naïve about this form of coupling and does not have her head in the romantic or societally sanctioned clouds. This lets her produce a book that is both plainspoken and filled with research-backed good sense. Despite the work’s optimistic title, only the first of Parker-Pope’s three sections is actually called “For Better.” The second is entitled “For Worse (But You Want It to Be Better)” and the third is “From This Day Forward,” being intended to help couples apply what they learn in the first two sections.

     Parker-Pope tackles all the main elements of marriage: commitment, attraction, sex, illness, parenting, conflict, household chores, money and more. Her basic approach is to discuss research in a given field and then suggest ways for couples to apply it. For example, she cites a 1981 study of 50 married couples’ sex lives and the different reasons men and women reported for initiating sex. Then she presents one of her many “For Better quiz” segments, asking partners to write down five things each would like the other to say or do during sex – and then compare answers. Parker-Pope cannot know how closely readers’ responses will compare, of course, but she can show what happened when researchers asked similar questions: husbands wanted their wives to be more seductive, initiate sex more often, be more experimental, be sexier and give more instructions; wives wanted their husbands to talk more lovingly, be more seductive, be more experimental, give more instructions and be warmer and more involved. That is, three of the five responses were the same, although not in the identical order – indicating that in the bedroom, men and women seem to want many of the same things. Yet the two differing responses were significant, since men focused more on sex apart from the rest of life and women tended to place it in a broader context . Couples can use this research as a jumping-off point to analyze their own responses – and if they feel this particular test is not helpful in their situation, they can ignore it and try plenty of others.

     Parker-Pope spends some time on the issue of mutual perception – how two people can see the same event very differently, not only in terms of their own personalities but also in terms of the strength of their marriage. This is an especially useful element of self-analysis, as Parker-Pope shows how happier couples tend to discuss hard times in their relationships in a more positive light: a wife says her future husband’s apartment was “a wreck…definitely a bachelor pad,” or says it was “disgusting – even back then, he was a complete slob.” Thus, a series of questions about how partners met can be very significant, since it shows their current perceptions of the earliest, most romantic time of the relationship: “What were your first impressions? …Was it an easy or difficult decision [to get married]? …What moments stand out as really good times in your marriage? What moments stand out as the really hard times?” The answers to questions like these matter, says Parker-Pope, because “we end up recasting history to reflect our current state of discontent.”

     So, what to do with all the research, all the tests, all the questions? It is one thing for Parker-Pope to point out studies showing that “in stable marriages, there are at least five times more positive interactions than negative ones,” and quite another for people to make use of the mathematical data and analyses. Indeed, the three chapters in Parker-Pope’s concluding section are her weakest, because even though they include reasonable ideas from a researcher’s point of view, there is no focus on how hard it can be to implement those ideas in daily life. “Keep your standards high.” “Pay attention to family and friends.” “Don’t expect your spouse to make you happy.” “Reignite romance.” Well, yes. And yes, yes and yes. But what to do in the real world? Parker-Pope sometimes seems well aware of the disconnect between these lofty ideals and everyday life – at one point, she offers “The lesson: Forget the lesson. Put down this book and go have sex with your husband or wife.” Cute – but what time of day is it? Where are the kids? How are matters of health and hygiene? What stressors are intolerable at the moment? The person reading For Better may be only too willing to toss the book aside for a bedroom break, but the other spouse may at that time be somewhere entirely different, mentally or emotionally if not physically. This is certainly not Parker-Pope’s fault: it would be worse if she came to no conclusions and made no recommendations after all her research than it is for her to come up with thoughts that are longer on idealism than on practicality. The reality is that marriage only works if it is for better and (not “or”) for worse. And despite her book’s title, Parker-Pope’s studies (not to mention her own experience) indicate that she knows this. So her ideas about keeping things in the “for better” column are best viewed as ideals worth striving for – not prescriptions that must be followed lest hard marital times inevitably loom.

(+++) WOODSY TALES

Out of the Woods. By Lyn Gardner. Pictures by Mini Grey. David Fickling Books. $17.99.

The Owl Keeper. By Christine Brodien-Jones. Illustrations by Maggie Kneen. Delacorte Press. $17.99.

Star in the Forest. By Laura Resau. Delacorte Press. $14.99.

     “The woods are lonely, dark and deep,” wrote poet Robert Frost, and the woods have been a place of both literal and metaphorical loneliness, darkness and depth for many, many years. Fairy tales by Charles Perrault, the brothers Grimm and others take place in the woods and depend on them for all or part of their effect. Even in the modern age, a time of urbanization and deforestation, there is something primeval about the woods, or about what we imagine the woods to be – and they still make an effective setting for all sorts of stories, for adults and young readers alike. Out of the Woods is particularly attuned to the history of woodlands as places of mystery, adventure and – not to make things too serious all the time – humor. This is a sequel to In the Woods, and brings back the Eden sisters, Aurora, Storm and Any, who have escaped from Dr. DeWilde for good – or have they? “Aurora had always been scared of the woods, and her fear had increased after she and her sisters had been chased through the trees by evil Dr. DeWilde’s wolves.” But the sisters – Storm in particular – seem oblivious to danger now that it seems to be past, with Storm skating down the frozen river through the center of the woods. The fact that she skates, she thinks, makes it safer; and Any (who is not yet two years old but has been talking since the day she was born) agrees: “‘Wolves can’t skate. They can never find boots to fit all four feet.’” So with all this in the background, there comes into the foreground the sisters’ self-proclaimed new stepmother, Belladonna, who happens to be a wicked witch. Let’s see…there is an enchantment meant to deprive Aurora of her heart, and there is a frog rescue (the frog being Any), and a lion named Zeus who loves madeleines, and a sort of county fair brimming with traps, and much of this new-plot-every-minute story revolves around Storm’s all-powerful pipe, which Belladonna covets and which the sisters must return to the land of the dead to make everything right again. Lyn Gardner’s story is a great deal of fun, and Mini Grey’s illustrations are wonderful, although at times Out of the Woods seems to be trying a little too hard to pull in the threads of the previous book and of as many fairy tales as Gardner can press into service. Readers who missed Into the Woods really ought to start with it before trying to follow this sequel, and readers not immersed in fairy tales (and even some who are) may well find Out of the Woods rather overdone. But parts of it are very amusing indeed (a picture of the Underworld Booking Office, chapters called “Out of the Forest Into the Frying Pan” and “Squashed!” – and the menu of a fine establishment called The Legless Frog). There is also a delicious bonus at the end: a recipe for “Granny Ridinghood’s Double Chocolate Brownies with Hot Fudge Sauce.”

     Although also targeted at preteens and young teenagers, The Owl Keeper is as dark and complex as Out of the Woods is light and complex. Christine Brodien-Jones’ novel is a mystery/post-apocalyptic SF/fantasy story whose 12-year-old protagonist, Maxwell Unger, is said to be allergic to “sun particles,” so he must remain all day in a darkened room with the shades drawn close. This turns out not to be much of a problem for Max, who has always loved the night – but what is a problem is the absence of his Gran and the stories she used to tell Max about the time before the Destruction. Max used to hear those tales with wonder, and used to be brave enough to go into the forest at night with Gran. Now Max is scared of the dangerous forest and the things within it, and his favorite story – about the Owl Keeper, who would appear in dark times to unite the forces of good against those of evil – seems at best a thin legend. These are the elements of a fairly standard find-or-rediscover-your-courage story, complete with ancient prophecy sure to be fulfilled by the time the tale ends (although perhaps not exactly as expected). And indeed, the main weakness of The Owl Keeper is that it hews so closely to the story arc of so many other “discover who you really are” books for young readers. There is even an organized group of repressive characters squeezing the light out of everyone’s life: “They lived in constant fear of the High Echelon and its tedious rules.” And yet The Owl Keeper, even when it smacks of formulaic plotting, is often gripping and intense. A mysterious girl who appears sometimes – but not all the time – under what Max calls “the owl tree” is an important element in Max’s self-discovery. And there is genuine evil in this book; even the words, such as skræk and Misshapen, communicate it. And although there is little doubt from the start that apparently helpful characters such as Mrs. Crumlin and Dr. Tredegar will turn out to be evil, the depth of their betrayal and intensity with which they pursue their designs nevertheless prove shocking once revealed. Indeed, The Owl Keeper is a bit much to take at times. Very near the end, Max comments, “‘This is all so … well, I just can’t quite believe it. It seems incredible.’” Readers will likely agree; but there are plenty of thrills and lots of excitement before Brodien-Jones knits the plot strands together.

     The use of the woods in Star in the Forest, a story set in today’s world, is different. Intended for ages 7-10, Laura Resau’s book is about Mexican immigrants and their difficulties in the United States. It is not overtly preachy about immigration reform (although Resau tackles that issue after the story ends); instead, it stays focused on family issues. At the book’s center is an 11-year-old girl named Zitlally, whose undocumented-immigrant father has been arrested and deported to Mexico – and then is kidnapped and held for ransom. The “forest” of the book’s title is not a woodland but a scrap heap of rusty car parts behind the family’s trailer home. The “Star” of the title is a dog that Zitlally finds and that she believes may be her father’s “spirit animal,” which means her Papá will be safe as long as the dog is. But then Star disappears…. Could the dog have been kidnapped? Can Zitlally and her friend, Crystal, find Star and rescue him? Eventually everything works out just fine – somewhat unbelievably, but every reader will be rooting for things to go just the way they do. And the book ends with a folktale about a forest – the real kind, filled with trees – and the admonition, if you ever find yourself in the deep and magical woods, to “be kind to whatever creature you meet there.” Kindness is not entirely simple in Star in the Forest, or in real life, but the book’s happy outcome is tied as closely to the impulse to be kind as it is to the desire to be free.

(+++) MULTIVIEWS

Click: One Novel, Ten Authors. By David Almond, Eoin Colfer, Roddy Doyle, Deborah Ellis, Nick Hornby, Margo Lanagan, Gregory Maguire, Ruth Ozeki, Linda Sue Park, and Tim Wynne-Jones. Scholastic. $8.99.

Top of the Order: 25 Writers Pick Their Favorite Baseball Player of All Time. Edited by Sean Manning. Da Capo. $15.95.

The Kingfisher Soccer Encyclopedia. By Clive Gifford. Kingfisher. $19.99.

     Anthologies have inherent advantages and disadvantages. When they are collections of stories – built on a central theme – by various authors, they can provide an interesting variety of viewpoints, insights and styles, some inevitably more congenial than others for any given reader. On the other hand, anthologies inherently lack cohesion, and very few readers are likely to enjoy all their elements. But then there are what could be called “anthological modifications,” such as these books – one fiction and one nonfiction. Click, the novel, is more than a clever assemblage of individual chapters by 10 different authors, more than a set of variations on a theme. It is in fact a fully coherent book built around a connecting premise that allows the writers to produce chapters ranging from gritty and grim to futuristic and fairy tale. It may be a little too neat, a little too carefully intertwined for all tastes, but it has enough points of interest to make a fascinating read. At its center are photojournalist George “Gee” Keane and his grandchildren, Maggie and Jason. Keane has died in the book’s first chapter (by Linda Sue Park), and has left certain inheritance items for Maggie and Jason. The balance of the book moves – effectively if not always seamlessly – between what happens later to the young people and what Keane encountered during his life. Each chapter is named for a person, and “Min,” by Tim Wynne-Jones, has Jason neatly summing up what his grandfather did: “‘He was this socially conscious kind of miracle. He had a nose for chaos, for disaster: Hiroshima, Bangladesh, Eritrea, Darfur – wherever the world was falling apart, he’d be there. …It wasn’t exploitation he was after. He was like trying to make sense of these tragedies. His pictures are…Oh, beautiful and horrible, and they ask hard questions.’” It is the “hard questions” element that attracts most of the authors of Click, often starkly: Ruth Ozeki’s “Jiro” begins, “When my older brother came home from the war, he had no legs.” There are, though, occasional flashes of humor, such as a birthday-party scene in Eoin Colfer’s “Jason,” and there is a sense of wonder here and there, too, as in David Almond’s “Annie,” which may, just may, be about a selkie or two. In the final analysis, Click is attractive in an offbeat way. And the authors are certainly well-meaning in real-world terms: all royalties from the book are being donated to Amnesty International.

     If Click is designed to be relatively seamless, Top of the Order is just the opposite. It represents a more traditional approach to the anthology format – and is designed more to bolster (or contradict) readers’ own opinions than to convince anyone of anything. If you do not actually make your living from sports, the field has no significant objective value to your life; but fans invest sports with a huge amount of subjective importance, to the point of living parts of their own lives through fantasy leagues and imaginary games and battles (pairing boxers or tennis players of different eras against each other, for example). So devoted baseball fans will surely have their favorite players – and Top of the Order gives readers a chance to compare their picks with those of 25 writers, then argue endlessly among themselves about which writers are correct, partially correct, completely full-of-it, and so on. Some but not all the writers here are sports journalists – the list also includes novelists, humorists, and even former major-league players Jim Bouton (who chooses Steve Dembowski) and Doug Glanville (who picks Garry Maddox). Actually, the choices are all over the place, as are the writing styles. Editor Sean Manning himself contributes an essay in which he chooses, of all people, Michael Jordan – and has a very specific personal reason for doing so. Vanity Fair contributing editor Seth Mnookin, usually a serious type, selects Pedro Martinez, and writes a very amusing and amply footnoted piece replete with off-color anecdotes. Actor/comedian Michael Ian Block, on the other hand, puts nothing humorous at all in his piece on Mookie Wilson, instead turning his contribution into a meditation on his own childhood racism – of which he was made aware when Wilson gave a speech. Block also hits, in passing, on the attitude of many adult sports fans – although he is talking about how he felt at age 11: “In my mind, ballplayers inhabited a different, better universe. The kind that was populated only with athletes, astronauts, assorted rock musicians, and Christie Brinkley. It was certainly a better place to live than my constrictive New Jersey town.” Indeed, those sentences encapsulate the feelings of many adults about sports: that somehow they can get outside their own narrow lives by focusing on highly paid celebrities whose world appears far different from the mundane one of 99% of the population. This sort of thinking is harmless as long as it does not become a belief system that distracts people from real-world, everyday responsibilities. And Top of the Order is a bit of harmless enjoyment, too, opening up many chances to discuss why certain writers chose Tom Seaver, Mariano Rivera, Kirby Puckett or Yutaka Enatsu as their favorites players – while others gave the nod to acknowledged all-time greats of the game, such as Lou Gehrig and Jackie Robinson. These 25 writers, making 25 choices, offer readers far more than 25 chances to argue, debate, agree, complain and then, hopefully, return to real-life pursuits.

     Younger sports fans, or fanatics-in-training, can find an even more colorful book (although the language is not as colorful): The Kingfisher Soccer Encyclopedia, which is helpfully subtitled “The Facts, the Goals, the Superstars.” The timing of this big-splash release is obvious: this year’s World Cup starts June 11 in South Africa. But soccer (which is called football just about everywhere except the United States) is a year-round worldwide passion, causing even more temper flares and unseemly rowdiness than is even seen in American football. The British bow to no one in their propensity for over-enthusiasm for this game, and Clive Gifford – a British author and soccer coach – certainly brings plenty of intensity to this oversized, beautifully photographed and nicely laid-out book. Originally published in 2006, The Kingfisher Soccer Encyclopedia has been thoroughly updated to 2010, even to the point of including a bound-in wall chart for the upcoming Johannesburg World Cup. Although intended for readers as young as age eight, this book will appeal to fans throughout the age spectrum, right into adulthood (or pseudo-adulthood, for really intense fans). The reason is that it not only includes the game’s basics (goalkeepers “must wear a shirt that distinguishes them from other players and officials”) but also throws in a lot of history (“In 1882 goalkeeper James McAulay was pressed into service as a center-forward and scored in Scotland’s 5-0 defeat of Wales”) and the sort of detail that will appeal tremendously to fans of any age. The inner workings of team selection, picking and playing in a particular match, making substitutions – all are here. There are “snapshot” pages with wonderful photos and remarkable stories: “Madrid’s Magnificent Seven” in 1960, “The Wingless Wonders” of 1966, and so on. “Fact file” boxes provide tidbits of information within chapters that focus on legendary individual players, great teams, “Soccer Fortunes” (some good, some not), and so on. There are even pages on “Soccer Nightmares,” including fixing, cheating, stadium riots, racism and more. The Kingfisher Soccer Encyclopedia is not really comprehensive – it treats many topics, but all of them briefly rather than in depth. But for fans, would-be fans, committed fans, fans who probably ought to get a life but probably won’t, fans who live for the thrill of the World Cup, fans who care only to support their local teams – for all these and more, Gifford’s book is both a fine introduction and an excellent reference. It is not, however, for those who believe that soccer/football, like any other sport, is a distraction from most people’s real lives rather than a big part of the heart and soul of existence.

(++++) BYPASSED SYMPHONIES

Taneyev: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3. Novosibirsk Academic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Sanderling. Naxos. $8.99.

Taneyev: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4. Novosibirsk Academic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Sanderling. Naxos. $8.99.

Bruch: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2. Staatskapelle Weimar conducted by Michael Halász. Naxos. $8.99.

     There are many reasons that well-made symphonies of the 19^th century have been passed over in later years. In the case of the four symphonies by Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev, the neglect is part of a more general one: the composer himself, a pupil of Tchaikovsky and Nikolai Rubinstein and teacher of Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, falls into a kind of intergenerational musical limbo, and the neglect of his symphonic works is merely a part of the lack of attention given to everything he composed. Since much of his music is quite well constructed, and since there has in recent years been increasing interest in less-known composers of the Romantic era, Taneyev is slowly emerging from obscurity – but his symphonies are nevertheless rarely heard. In fairness, it should be pointed out that part of the neglect is self-inflicted: only the fourth symphony, which Taneyev designated No. 1, was published in his lifetime (1856-1915) and given an opus number, since the composer did not deem the others sufficiently worthy. In fact, he never finished No. 2 at all, despite the urging of Tchaikovsky. Thanks to mostly strong performances by Thomas Sanderling and the Novosibirsk Academic Symphony Orchestra, it is now possible to hear all the Taneyev symphonies and judge whether both history and their composer have been fair to them.

     Taneyev was sometimes called “the Russian Brahms,” but except for some superficial harmonic similarities and the fact that Brahms too wrote four symphonies, the comparison is not a very good one. Taneyev’s symphonies lack the grandeur and the simultaneous structural rigor and innovation of those by Brahms, while also falling short of the emotionalism of Tchaikovsky – this latter characteristic not necessarily being a failing. (Like Tchaikovsky, interestingly, Taneyev wrote only one symphony in a major key.) Taneyev wrote all his symphonies between 1875 and 1898. No. 1, completed when he was 18, has some resemblance in its finale to Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2, and features themes that seem to stop and start rather than flow both in the opening movement and, more disconcertingly, in the scherzo. The finale not only sounds somewhat like Tchaikovsky’s “Little Russian” symphony but also includes a folk song later used by Stravinsky in Petrushka. Symphony No. 2 (Taneyev’s only major-key one, in B-flat) is a significantly broader, more expansive work, although Taneyev never wrote a scherzo for it and left the second movement only partially scored (the completion used by Sanderling is by Vladimir Blok). The first movement here shows skill in both polyphony and monumental orchestration, and the finale – in which timpani are prominent – is quite effective. Symphony No. 3 is broader still but, at least in this performance, suffers from a bloated-seeming first movement, which Sanderling takes at a slower tempo than the Allegro con spirito indication. The finale is this work’s best movement, featuring double canons and other contrapuntal techniques worked through with considerable skill. And No. 4 is, as Taneyev himself rightly perceived, his best symphony of all, using counterpoint to very strong effect in the first movement, employing a three-note unifying motif throughout, including a powerful and affecting Adagio and nicely flowing Scherzo (both using that three-note motto), and concluding with a movement that is grand in scope and majestic in affirmation. It remains to be seen whether any Taneyev symphony will become popular in the concert hall – but all four are certainly worthwhile experiences for listeners at home.

     The same is true of the first two of Max Bruch’s three symphonies, whose neglect is one of being overshadowed by the composer’s other works rather than involving inattention to the composer himself. Indeed, Bruch’s first violin concerto so overshadows so much of his other music that many people do not know it is the first of three. Like Taneyev’s symphonies, Bruch’s No. 1 shows some influence of Brahms – to whom, in fact, it was dedicated. It also sounds at times like works by Mendelssohn (notably in the Scherzo) and Schumann, and if it has a significant fault, it is that it never quite sounds like Bruch himself, lacking the gorgeously lyrical melodies (usually for strings) for which he is best known. Bruch had finished his overwhelmingly popular Violin Concerto No. 1 the year before he started writing this symphony in 1867, so this is in no sense a “starter” work. It is well formed, traditionally structured and effectively put together, although not especially memorable. The Symphony No. 2 of 1870 – in three movements (the last immediately following the second), without a Scherzo – is nevertheless a longer work, and its F minor key keeps it darker than No. 1 in E-flat. Bruch’s Second Symphony has more individual touches, including scoring variations among the movements (the lovely Adagio ma non troppo generally being lighter in instrumentation) and an effectively quiet ending of the first movement. Bits of Bruch’s beautifully flowing themes peek out here and there – in the violas in the finale, for example – and the work as a whole is more emotionally satisfying than the earlier symphony. Staatskapelle Weimar plays these symphonies with warmth and fervor, and Michael Halász conducts with a good sense of control and balance. Like Taneyev’s symphonies, Bruch’s first two (as well as the third, for that matter) are worthy of being heard more often, even if they are scarcely at the pinnacle of the Romantic symphony.

(+++) MODERNS, SMALL AND EXPANSIVE

Idil Biret Archive Edition, Volume 4: Berg—Piano Sonata No. 1; Webern—Variations, Op. 27; Boulez—Piano Sonata No. 2. Idil Biret, piano. IBA. $8.99.

Rautavaara: Before the Icons (1955/2005); A Tapestry of Life (2007). Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Leif Segerstam. Ondine. $16.99.

     The gigantism of many works of late Romanticism and the early 20^th century produced various reactions in composers as the century progressed. Some, led by Schoenberg, sought an entirely new tonal language, which others, notably Webern, then used to take miniaturization to an extreme. Others adapted the large forces commonly used early in the century to new ways of thinking and new instrumental emphases – led in this, not always knowingly, by Mahler, who was as capable of using his huge orchestras for chamber-music detail as for overwhelming power. The latest Idil Biret Archive release from the Finnadar catalogue – actually a compilation of two separate Finnadar vinyl records – shows the “miniaturization” trend quite clearly. Alban Berg’s first piano sonata – which is his Op. 1, dating to 1907 – actually straddles the older and newer musical approaches in some ways. It almost (but not quite) breaks with tonality; it almost (but not quite) is organized in a horizontal/contrapuntal fashion rather than a vertical/harmonic one; and despite its wandering chromaticism, it retains a certain amount of Romantic sensibility. Webern’s Variations, written much later (1936), are fully in the 12-tone camp, with all three movements based on the same row. Here the horizontal symmetry is nearly complete in the first movement, while there is vertical but non-harmonic symmetry in the second, which is a canon. Boulez’ second piano sonata is later still (1947-8), and is the most difficult piece on this CD to hear – and to play. There is an underlying structure that Boulez strictly controls, as often in his works; but, as is also common, the structural underpinnings are by no means apparent to the listener, even after several hearings. To the extent that Webern’s Variations retains a sort of classical purity within a new musical language, Boulez’ sonata has a complexity of arrangement and sound that looks forward to further developments in piano composition (by Boulez himself and others) while nearly abandoning any clear ties to the older forms from which it grew. To say that this music will not be to everyone’s taste is an understatement, but Idil Biret makes the case for all of it – particularly the Boulez – with a combination of virtuosity and intellectual understanding that is quite remarkable. Indeed, Biret, whose approach can at times seem a touch too cerebral for gentler and more delicate works of earlier times, seems quite at home here, delivering thoroughly impressive interpretations from start to finish.

     Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Before the Icons had its start as a fairly modest piano work, too. Simply called Icons and written in 1955, the musical portrait of six Byzantine icons was the Finnish composer’s Op. 6. But unlike the Berg, Webern and (especially) Boulez works played by Biret, Icons always “wanted” to outgrow its original miniature form: Rautavaara says he knew from the start that he would orchestrate it. It took him half a century to do so, though, and when he did, in 2005, he produced a much larger work than he had originally written. It is this piece, now in 10 movements and called Before the Icons, that gets a knowing and carefully shaped performance from the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra under Leif Segerstam. The four added movements are called Prayer, and are intended to represent people praying before the icons described in the orchestrations of the six original movements. Most of the work is lyrical and uplifting – although clearly in the musical language of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. The first movement (“The Death of the Mother of God”), third (“The Madonna of Blakernaya”) and fifth (“The Holy Women at the Sepulchre”) are most traditional – along with the concluding “Amen” – in their religious expression. The second movement (“Two Village Saints”) has more of a folk-music flavor; the fourth (“The Baptism of Christ”) builds in more dimensions than the title would lead the listener to expect; and the sixth (“Archangel Michael Fighting the Antichrist”) is an effective battle scene – with Rautavaara here using the substantial orchestral size clamorously. Before the Icons is paired by Segerstam with one of the prolific Rautavaara’s even more recent works, A Tapestry of Life, whose underlying theme nicely complements the religious foundation of Before the Icons even though the music itself is quite different. A Tapestry of Life is a mostly solemn four-movement work. “The Stars” is a night vision of stars falling in a garden; “Halcyon Days” looks backward to contentment despite some disturbing episodes; “Sighs and Tears” is mostly a lament; and “The Last Polonaise” is a solemn dance, although it has little in common with the Valse Triste of Sibelius, whose successor in Finnish music Rautavaara is sometimes considered to be. Neither this moody work nor the largely solemn Before the Icons will necessarily have immediate, widespread appeal, but Rautavaara does speak his own musical language successfully and with skill, and those who find his approach to melody, harmony and orchestration attractive will welcome a chance to hear these two recent examples of his thinking and feeling.

(++++) ADVENTURES IN THE GRAND STYLE

The Keys to the Kingdom, Book 7: Lord Sunday. By Garth Nix. Scholastic. $17.99.

Sebastian Darke, Book Three: Prince of Explorers. By Philip Caveney. Delacorte Press. $17.99.

     As epics for young readers go, The Keys to the Kingdom is one of the longest-lasting: Garth Nix has taken 10 years to get from Mister Monday to Lord Sunday. That is as long as it took for the full set of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books to be published – but in those books, the hero and his friends grow up chronologically and pull the readers along with them, while in the Nix series, it is fair to guess that young readers who enthusiastically embraced the first few books are likely to have moved beyond The Keys to the Kingdom after a decade. The growth here is more emotional and metaphysical, almost spiritual, than it is physical: Arthur Penhaligon, Leaf and Suzy are not significantly different on Sunday from what they were the previous Monday. The nature of the decisions that Arthur has to make has changed, to be sure, and the nature of the forces opposing him in his role as Rightful Heir to the Architect of the House has changed as well – becoming more complex and, in this final book of the series, significantly stranger. Lord Sunday is a cold, calculating and inflexible opponent whose motivations Arthur has difficulty determining. “‘I do not interfere unnecessarily beyond these Gardens,’ said Lord Sunday. ‘It is unfortunate that events have so transpired that I must take a hand, to impose order where others have failed to do so.’” Lord Sunday has bizarre methods of negotiating: “‘Consider that allowing the puppets to take your eyes is only one of many things I can do to make you reconsider. While I will not stoop to menace mere mortals, I do hold your mother prisoner.’” Arthur, of course, has powers of his own, and such allies as Leaf, Suzy, Elephant and Dame Primus. The grotesquerie is ratcheted up a couple of notches in this book: “The tattoos on [Dr. Scamandros’] face became tumbling Catherine wheels trailing sparks as they careened across his cheeks and crashed into each other.” Arthur’s biggest worry here is that he is “afraid because he felt his human life slipping away from him.” This is no mere identity crisis – it is a key, so to speak, to what Arthur must finally decide and finally become. Longtime readers will have no trouble with prose that may seem unintentionally funny to series newcomers: “‘It was just that my savagesword broke on a Newnith’s helm.’ …‘It does not matter. We must move onward and upward. The Drasils have wilted, and this tower now projects fully into the Incomparable Gardens, which has allowed Saturday to mass far more force there, with the Piper’s army hot on her heels.’” Nix gets credit for consistency: his characters and his prose stay in the same channels here as in earlier books. And Arthur’s eventual discovery of what he must do, what he must become, is skillfully handled, although it may disappoint readers who saw The Matrix film trilogy years ago. In the end – and this gives nothing away – we have…well, the beginning, or a new beginning, just as the end of one week heralds the start of the next one. So Nix brings The Keys to the Kingdom to a very satisfying conclusion, if not an altogether surprising one.

     The more lighthearted adventures of Sebastian Darke show no sign of ending anytime soon, even though Philip Caveney intended to write a trilogy: Prince of Fools, Prince of Pirates and Prince of Explorers. Caveney hedges his bets here, though, having Sebastian say, near the book’s end, “There’ll be no need to go adventuring, ever again,” and having another character – the ever-faithful buffalope, Max – sigh and reply, “Now, why do I find that so hard to believe?” To be sure, Sebastian’s adventures contain enough fun – for readers, and sometimes even for Sebastian himself – so that readers will likely want more of them. Prince of Explorers is about the hunt for a legendary lost city called Mendip. Never mind why – the search itself is the point here. And search Sebastian does – along with Max, Cornelius (a good fighter to have at your side, or in front of you or behind) and sundry new characters. Some events are genuinely harrowing, such as a battle with zombies called Night Runners, but Caveney is careful to keep a lot of the book, and its dialogue, light: “‘For a Chosen One, you’re not all that knowledgeable, are you?’ …‘I’m very knowledgeable…about some things. I tell you what, I know more jokes than you could shake a stick at.’” Indeed, the half-elf, half-human Sebastian is declared the Chosen One of a tribe whose chief’s very attractive daughter becomes a traveling companion and complication. And there is an Indiana Jones-style whitewater-rafting adventure, plus many other hazards and some very long stories along the way – but as Cornelius sagely points out, “If adventuring were easy, everyone would be doing it, wouldn’t they?” Cornelius and Max do a good job of providing comic relief even when the doings are dark. For example, Max discovers that an ark that is being built is actually the third such craft, the first two having met less-than-pleasant fates – and when he is told “third time lucky,” Max replies, “Yes…I believe I’ve heard several idiots saying that.” It’s fun – and often exciting – to stay with Max, Cornelius and of course Sebastian right through to the end of Prince of Explorers, and to look forward to wherever Caveney (the original “trilogy” plan notwithstanding) will take them next.

(++++) LETTERS OF INTENT

FDR’s Alphabet Soup: New Deal America, 1932-1939. By Tonya Bolden. Knopf. $19.99.

     Economist Milton Friedman coined the phrase “we are all Keynesians now” – and attributed it to President Richard Nixon – as a way to show that by the 1970s, politicians and economists of all persuasions implicitly accepted the approaches advocated by John Maynard Keynes to manage the United States economy in times when things seemed to veer significantly off track. An equally emphatic phrase, perhaps even more accurate than the one about Keynes, would be, “We are all FDR’s children now,” for the enormous expansion of the federal government that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt engineered has had a huge and lasting effect on every aspect of American life – and continues to be the underlying basis for further expansion of government power, such as President Obama’s recent push for a vastly greater role for the government in the healthcare field.

     The time is always right for a look at what FDR did and what it means, but it seems particularly right today, when there are so many arguments being made – often so stridently – about the importance of either making government more a part of everyday life or of rolling back its influence. A well-researched book for young readers, such as FDR’s Alphabet Soup, can be especially valuable in showing the limits of today’s debates. For example, no one short of a few fringe extremists is suggesting abolition of the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), FCC (Federal Communications Commission) or FHA (Federal Housing Administration) – three of the agencies created by FDR in a single year (1934). Even the proposals of the strongest critics of government’s role will at most tinker around the edges of what FDR did. Rolling back the government to pre-FDR days is literally unthinkable.

     What FDR’s Alphabet Soup does so well is to show the context within which Roosevelt vastly expanded the government; his rationale for doing so; the horrible economic climate in which we was elected and served; and many of the elements of his plans to pull the country out of the Great Depression. To her credit, Tonya Bolden does not offer an unmitigated cheer for FDR, and in fact questions (as many economists do today) whether all those New Deal programs actually pulled the economy up very much – or if they merely reoriented it, with the advent of World War II being the factor that finally ended the Depression.

     Bolden offers a combination of statistics (unemployment tripled during the Depression, to a rate of almost 25%, and national income fell more than 50%) and personalizing photos (FDR walking in 1920 during his unsuccessful bid to become Vice President, and three years later visiting a resort whose waters were supposed to help polio sufferers). There are political buttons from the period, cartoons, and plenty of photos – plus many quotations from ordinary citizens, not just politicians. There are also pictures of people working in one or another of the FDR “alphabet” agencies: men planting trees in South Dakota for the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), others pushing wheelbarrows in San Francisco for the CWA (Civil Works Administration). Bolden discusses how the agencies were created, what they did, what sort of opposition they faced, and what events made people ever more willing to accept a governmental helping hand – for example, the disastrous dust storms that hit the Plains in the mid-1930s. FDR’s missteps are mentioned, too – notably his failed attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court by increasing the number of justices, so he could add ones who would support his initiatives rather than possibly declare them unconstitutional. And the legacy of FDR’s creation of so many new government entities is made clear in a four-page postscript showing what happened to many of the “alphabet soup” agencies. Anyone wondering about FDR’s profound and lasting influence on the size and reach of the federal government has only to look here: the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation), and many other FDR-era creations – including non-alphabet-soup ones such as Social Security – are a huge part of modern American government and modern American life. Whether or not FDR’s approach helped end the Great Depression, there is no question that it permanently transformed the relationship between Americans and the government that is supposed to be elected to serve them.

(+++) POP WISDOM FROM MOM

Secrets of a Jewish Mother: Real Advice, Real Stories, Real Love. By Jill Zarin, Lisa Wexler, and Gloria Kamen. Dutton. $25.95.

     Clichés become clichés in the first place because they contain, at their heart, a nugget of truth. Some stereotypes, although scarcely all, are the same way – and some people deliberately play to the stereotypes their heritage evokes, such as the Latin lover, the frugal Scotsman and, as in this book, the Jewish mother.

     You get three Jewish mothers here for the price of one, although it is the name of Jill Zarin – known from The Real Housewives of New York City on the Bravo network – that gets the most play. Gloria Kamen is Jill’s mother; Lisa Wexler is Jill’s sister. The three women are clearly cut from the same cloth, at least within the pages of this guide-to-life book. Each gets a chance to express herself separately on a subject, but there is virtually no attitudinal difference in what they say. As for the content of the book – well, there is content, but it is so frothy that it seems ready to evaporate if you examine it too closely. It is also rather strangely old-fashioned. Take the subject of dating and sex: “A Jewish mother does not advise you to live together before marriage. …Why would a guy choose to get married if he gets all the benefits of marriage by living together, without the burdens? …Why should he get to see you in your pretty underwear without having to accompany you to your parents’ on the holidays or help pay for all those pretty negligees?” Oh, come on – didn’t that sort of thinking go out of style about 50 years ago? Do these women really think people who cohabit don’t see each other in everyday working clothes and don’t visit each other’s families? Obviously this is a very, very skewed view of human relationships – made more so when, after the general statements, the authors get to make some specific ones. From Lisa: “I don’t understand couples who would rather live together before getting married just because they want to save up for a ring.” From Jill: “One of the rules I learned from my mother is to never move to a city for a man without a ring and obviously never move in with a man without a ring.” And from Gloria, who is her mother: “In my day, people simply did not live together before they got married.” Apparently her day has continued to today in this particular group – both the sexual revolution and women’s liberation passed these three Jewish mothers by, in terms of their attitudes if not necessarily their experience.

     Of course, it is this attitudinal hyper-traditionalism, delivered with a kind of homespun certainty, that will attract some readers. They will find plenty of it. “We strongly believe that Jews should marry Jews, Christians should wed Christians and so on.” “Learn as much as you can for as long as you can.” “A real friend will kvell [be joyful about someone else’s accomplishments] when you receive that promotion you’ve been working for, your kid has gotten into Harvard (it should only happen!) or you finally manage to lose those last ten pounds.” “Ideally, we do not push our kids into doing anything [as a career] they wouldn’t be happy doing. But we are not above giving a shove in the right direction.”

     Readers who are not enthralled by this sort of dispensing of this sort of pseudo-wisdom will quickly start wondering what planet these women are from. The answer is, of course, the planet New York City – specifically the planet Jewish New York City, which apparently accounts for a lot (and not just the sprinkling of Yiddish terms). Even advice that is intended to be with-it and plainspoken tends to come across as hectoring here. For example, what should a woman do if her marriage is not going well and she flirts a little too avidly with an attractive co-worker? Should she tell her husband what happened? From Gloria: “Why do you want to confess? To make yourself feel better? To alleviate your own guilt? Too bad. If you intend to stay with your husband and work on your marriage, then shut up and don’t say a word. …Fooling around was your sin; your punishment is that you have to live with what you did.” Wow! And this is in a hypothetical example of someone who was not actually unfaithful – only “almost.”

     These self-proclaimed Jewish mothers are big on forgiveness of close friends and family, but not so forgiving otherwise. And they really do have an almost laughably narrow view of human relationships in the 21^st century: “Two parents are better than one. Don’t holler—of course, there are exceptions to this rule.” But rules are what Secrets of a Jewish Mother is ultimately all about – rules on how to live, with whom, when, under what circumstances, doing what sort of work, where, for what kind of payment, and on and on and on and on. And if you don’t like what you are told here – well, you can always feel guilty for not “getting” it. Guilt is a big behavioral driver for these women – and, in fact, the use of guilt as a motivator by Jewish mothers is not only a stereotype, not only a cliché, but, as readers of this book will discover, a way of life.

(+++) PERSONAL EFFECTS OF SOCIETAL ISSUES

Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment, 2^nd Edition. By Sandra Steingraber. Da Capo. $16.95.

Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War. By Matt Gallagher. Da Capo. $24.95.

Worried Sick: Break Free from Chronic Worry to Achieve Mental & Physical Health. By Karol Ward. Berkley. $15.

     It is only when big, macrocosmic events are brought down to the human, microcosmic level that those not directly involved in them start to feel their effects. Hence the quotation usually misattributed to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin: “One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic.” But when you, personally, are threatened with being the one, those one million loom much larger – in the most highly personal way. That was the situation facing Sandra Steingraber, who at age 20, nearly three decades ago, was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Knowing that the odds against that form of cancer at so young an age are very small is not helpful when you are one of the very few to contract the disease. And Steingraber, whose cancer was cured and has not recurred, was determined not to be simply a statistic, in any case. A biology major who eventually got a graduate degree in field biology, Steingraber started on an exploration of the environmental factors considered causative for bladder cancer after learning that this particular cancer has a particularly strong link to pollutants. Living Downstream is Steingraber’s account of what she learned – expanded, in this second edition, to include new scientific information and toxicological findings. As a book with a strong personal as well as societal orientation, Living Downstream is hard to fault, and its writing (and rewriting) was surely cathartic for Steingraber. Indeed, the book’s language is more plainspoken and thus more accessible than that of many other books warning of environmental hazards. But the problem is that there are so many books (and news stories, and magazine articles) warning of the dire consequences of this, that and the other thing. The drumbeat of doom beats so constantly that it is hard to dredge up enthusiasm for yet another book saying that our way of life is destroying us. Steingraber correctly notes that “the process of exploration that results from asserting our right to know about carcinogens in our environment is a different journey for every person who undertakes it,” but she has no convincing argument for why other individuals – ones not themselves touched directly by environment-related cancer – should go through a process so arduous and time-consuming. “Going in search of our ecological roots has both intimate and far-flung dimensions,” Steingraber explains. “It means learning about the sources of our drinking water (past and present), about the prevailing winds that blow through our communities, and about the agricultural system that provides us food. It involves visiting grain fields, as well as cattle lots, orchards, pastures, and dairy farms. It demands curiosity about how our apartment buildings are, and have been, exterminated, our clothing cleaned, our golf courses maintained.” And more – much more. But it demands all this in addition to handling the realities of daily life – and without any way, ultimately, to have a significant influence on the extremely complex and interrelated issues that Steingraber raises. This is an insuperably large order for the vast majority of people – and delegating their concerns to environmental groups that spend all their time on such issues is at best an iffy proposition, since those groups have their own agendas and their own ways of spending money that people give freely. Ultimately, Steingraber’s book is yet another indictment of pretty much everything that we, as a society, are doing and have done in the past with regard to the environment. Despite her accessible prose and her interweaving of personal elements with wide-ranging ones, this sort of doom-and-gloom scenario is simply a tale too often told, with too little that anyone who reads the book can do directly about the issues it raises.

     There is even less that an average citizen can do about the issues in Kaboom, for this is a book about war – specifically the Iraq war – and how it has been managed and (frequently) mismanaged. Yes, yet another war-is-hell book; and in truth, Matt Gallagher has little to say that has not been said as well or better before. Catch-22 remains the ultimate book about the idiocies of war and warmakers, despite being a novel rather than a nonfictional account, and the “Suck” of Gallagher’s subtitle is a kind of 21^st-century Catch-22. It is whatever happens to lower-ranking members of the military that they need to endure and accept – such as senseless orders, miserable assignments or a blog shutdown. The last of these happened to Gallagher, whose blog – called, not surprisingly, Kaboom – was closed by the Army in June 2008 even though, Gallagher says, he had committed no security violations or done anything else justifying its cancellation. Kaboom, the book, is based on Kaboom, the blog, and is full of the everyday experiences of ordinary soldiers during Gallagher’s 15-month deployment in Iraq. Not surprisingly, Kaboom offers a mixture of the horrifying, the gritty and the surreal, all told in forthright language that makes it easier (although not much easier) to read about some of the more frightening events. “I sometimes felt my compassion for fellow human beings leaking out of me like oil leaving an engine,” writes Gallagher, “so slow it was barely evident and yet dripping with enough regularity that I knew the problem was severe in nature.” Yet Gallagher never actually loses his compassion or his capacity for connection, and that is what gives Kaboom most of its impact. For instance, when he is told that he will be moved out of his platoon to become an executive officer elsewhere, he comments, “Surplus officers crawled around every staff office on Camp Taji, and the thought of a line platoon going short in such an environment lit my already short fuse. …I told [the captain] how I felt about this reactionary method to [sic] filling officer slots, describing it as ‘self-important chimpanzees making a square peg go into a round hole, logic be damned.’” Readers who find Gallagher’s language and perspective on Army life refreshing, and who want to know what it feels like to slog through the Suck in Iraq, will certainly find Kaboom worthwhile (if not easy or pleasant) reading. Readers who have seen books filled with similar anecdotes before, from many other wars – too many other wars – will likely wind up with the feeling of having been here before, often, with only the names of the towns, the soldiers and the victims changed. And that is the Suck for civilians.

     What to do? The reasons for the war in Iraq – for any war – are always complex and sometimes self-contradictory, no matter how simple politicians and interest groups try to make them. No single person can hope to change the events in Kaboom, or whatever Kaboom-like events are occurring right now in Iraq and other world trouble spots. Nor can any single person hope to reverse (or even fully understand) the extremely complex environmental interrelationships discussed in Living Downstream. It is this feeling that one should do something but cannot do anything meaningful that is a huge reason for the heightened stress levels in modern society, as the well-known (although not always well understood) flight-or-fight response causes chemical changes in the body without providing an outlet for the hormonal flow. The best most people can hope for in their everyday lives is to find a way to live with the stressors that seem to appear unceasingly from everywhere – home, family, work, politics, war, the environment, etc. This is where Worried Sick comes in. Psychotherapist and communication consultant Karol Ward discusses, simply and usefully, just what stress is, how the body responds to it, and what to do about that response. Her basic explanations are very clear: “We respond with our whole being whether a worrisome situation is actually happening or we anticipate it happening. …After we sense that a worrisome situation is not as bad as we first imagined, our parasympathetic nervous system takes over and helps us move from panic to calm.” But how can we make that move easier, quicker and more frequent, given all the stressors bombarding us day after day? That is what most readers of this book will want to know – and unfortunately, Ward has nothing to suggest that has not been recommended many times before. That does not invalidate what she says, but readers looking for something new – even if not for a magic bullet to kill all those stress symptoms instantaneously – will be disappointed to be told only that exercise, changes in diet, adequate sleep, good relationships with others, meditation and a few other techniques are the way to limit the effects of worry and stress. Ward has acronyms – all advice books have acronyms – to encapsulate her recommendations. For example, to wind down your keyed-up mind, she suggests “the three Cs” of calmness, clarity and community. If you manage worry with food, she suggests the acronym SANE – Stop for a while; Acknowledge that your eating or drinking is out of control; Normalize your coping mechanism by realizing that it is a common one; and Evaluate what you can do to handle stress in a better way. Again, there is nothing wrong with this – and nothing new. The best parts of the book, and the ones most likely to be useful to readers who have sought stress solutions many times, are the very specific suggestions that Ward makes. For instance, for people whose worries prevent them from sleeping, she suggests writing in a “worry journal” at night: “Create a list of your worries and rank them in order of concern. Then you can create a plan to address the most important one first and go down the list from there.” If you just cannot seem to shake off constant worrying, she suggests disrupting it by playing a favorite song and singing along; washing dishes or vacuuming; taking a walk; going to the gym; etc. These specific ideas are no newer than Ward’s general approaches, but because they are specific, they give readers explicit ways of trying to cope with stress and worry instead of becoming even more worried because they are not finding ways to cope. So even if Ward offers little that is original, she offers much that can, potentially, be helpful.