(++++) THE OPERA AND THE OPERATIC

Mozart: The Abduction from the Seraglio. Harald Pfeiffer, Piotr Beczala, Ingrid Habermann, Donna Ellen, Oliver Ringelhahn, Franz Kalchmair; Choir of the Landestheater Linz and Bruckner Orchestra Linz conducted by Martin Sieghart. Oehms. $16.99 (2 CDs).

Verdi: Requiem. Luba Orgonášová, soprano; Anke Vondung, mezzo-soprano; Alfred Kim, tenor; Carlo Colombara, bass; Gãchinger Kantorei Stuttgart and Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR conducted by Helmuth Rilling. Hänssler Classic. $29.99 (2 CDs).

     Opera evolved as the mass entertainment of its day, but it developed in several different directions – not only comic (or at least less-serious) opera vs. opera seria, but also opera with everything sung (including recitatives for connective dialogue) vs. opera with spoken as well as sung elements (Singspiel and, later, operetta). In all its forms, opera was sometimes conventional, sometimes beyond the conventions of its time – and Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio, a pioneering German-language Singspiel, certainly pushed the boundaries of its day. The wonder is that it remains so fresh, entertaining and thoroughly delightful today, when the Ottoman Empire is long gone, the notion of “Turkish music” has disappeared from classical parlance, and the entire plot of white slavery in a harem has lost whatever relevance it once had (although the underlying conflict between European and Islamic values, on which the plot partly turns, is as relevant now as it was at the work’s first performance in 1782). The re-release of this Linz performance recorded in 1996-97 is a good opportunity to hear what makes this Singspiel work. The dialogue, not as extensive as in opera seria, moves the action along, but so do some of the arias (which is rarely the case in opera seria); and the characters have considerable life to them – they may be types, but they are interesting types. (Listeners will have to find a libretto elsewhere: this CD set provides only a synopsis of the action.) The music is, of course, simply wonderful. The fascinating twist at the end, in which Selim (Harald Pfeiffer, in a crucial all-spoken role) shows mercy to all his captives even after learning that Belmonte (Piotr Beczala) is the son of his greatest enemy, gives the lie to notions of “good” Europeans and “evil” Turks, for all that the Ottomans were a genuine threat to Europe when Abduction was written. It is worth noting that Mozart’s operas are again and again about forgiveness: Così fan tutte turns entirely on the subject, and even Don Giovanni is given every opportunity to repent and be forgiven. As for Abduction, Belmonte and Konstanze (Ingrid Habermann) are the “serious” couple, with the big arias, but as characters they are something of a bore. Beczala and Habermann sing in grand style, but these are, after all, rather wooden roles. Blonde (Donna Ellen) is actually a more interesting soprano part, filled with humor and flirtatiousness – although in this recording, Ellen takes things a touch too seriously. Pedrillo is a more straightforward “servant” role, which Oliver Ringelhahn handles well. And the part of Osmin (Franz Kalchmair) is a gem, and very difficult indeed to perform (with notes as low as anything the Russians were to demand in the next century). Kalchmair gets the bluster and swagger right, especially in the first act, although it would be nice to have a little more over-the-top vocal acting here. Martin Sieghart conducts effectively if not particularly thrillingly, and the orchestra and chorus are very fine indeed – making this perhaps not the very best Abduction possible, but a more-than-serviceable one filled with many lovely moments.

     It was nearly 100 years after Abduction that Verdi’s Requiem was first performed – in 1874, on the first anniversary of the death of poet/novelist Alessandro Mazzoni. Opera had climbed spectacular heights in the intervening years (and sunk to some remarkable depths as well); Verdi himself was largely responsible for many of the plusses and at least some of the minuses of Italian opera in his time. (The notion of a composer working equally adeptly in Italian and German styles, as Mozart did, was quite foreign to the 19^th century, although Rossini did pretty well using both Italian and French libretti.) Verdi’s is the most operatic Requiem of all, even more so than the earlier (and equally grandiose) one by Berlioz. Verdi even quoted from some of his opera music in the Requiem. But whether the Verdi Requiem should be given a highly operatic performance remains a matter of opinion. It is easy to make the work overstated, even vulgar – the Dies irae is as intense (and potentially overdone) as can be. But there is great beauty and subtlety in Verdi’s work as well, and Helmuth Rilling’s performance wisely takes a middle ground between hyper-emotionalism and the sort of quieter, more overtly religious approach that is traditional in other Requiems, if not this one. The soloists do not strive for undue drama – although Carlo Colombara comes close a few times – but generally present the words feelingly and without excess. The result is a very moving performance that does not have to push itself (as operas so often do) in order to achieve its effects. The opening Requiem aeternam and the Agnus dei, in particular, prove more effective here than they often are – instead of being way stations on the road to the Dies irae and Libera me, they are an integral part of the whole work, which is surely what Verdi intended. There is quite enough splendor in Verdi’s Requiem without turning the work into an emotional eruption along the lines of many of his operas; it is to Rilling’s credit that he brings out the beauty and drama of the piece without feeling the need to overstate it or inflate it artificially.

(++++) THE SPECIALISTS

Rachmaninoff: Complete Works for Two Pianos. Nina Schumann and Luis Magalhães, pianos. TwoPianists Records. $24.99 (2 CDs).

Alexander Rosenblatt: Gipsy Fantasy after Monti for Violin and Orchestra; Concertino on Two Russian Themes for 4 Hands; Paganini’s Variations; Sonata for Cello and Piano; Piano Sonata No. 3; Two Fragments from the Ballet Suite “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”; Waltzing with Hartmann (after Mussorgsky). Nikolai Tokarev and Alexander Rosenblatt, pianos. Solo Musica. $18.99.

Tre Bassi. Leo Santana, Michael Godard and Hille Perl, basses. Carpe Diem. $16.99.

José Serebrier: Symphony No. 1; Nueve—Double Bass Concerto; Violin Concerto, “Winter”; Tango en Azul; Casi un Tango; They Rode into the Sunset—Music for an Imaginary Film. Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and Orchestra conducted by José Serebrier. Naxos. $8.99.

     In the days of LPs, there were innumerable small and highly specialized record labels offering very carefully targeted recordings for highly specific audiences – from MMO (Music Minus One), which provided orchestral accompaniments that budding soloists could use to practice their concertos, to Library of Recorded Masterpieces, which included bound-in scores of most of its releases and a full separate book reproducing Bach’s original Brandenburg Concertos' scores with its recording of those works. It may seem as if that sort of specialization and repertoire creativity is long gone in the digital age, but somewhat surprisingly, it is not: there are various CD firms (some even still using the name “Records”) that have given themselves highly specialized missions and are carrying them out very well. They do not make, or intend to make, recordings for a large audience – they have very specific focuses, and tend to do an exceptionally good job within their narrow niches.

     TwoPianists Records, for example, is the brainchild of the wife-and-husband team of Nina Schumann and Luis Magalhães, who are not only highly skilled pianists but also very intelligent pickers of repertoire. They say they simply want to offer CDs of music that has inspired them, and that may well be so, but in the process, they are unearthing some wonderful and sadly neglected two-piano works. Their recording of Rachmaninoff’s complete works for two pianos is a perfect example. It includes the very rarely heard two-piano version of the composer’s final completed piece, the Symphonic Dances, whose sometimes lumbering, sometimes eerie rhythms come through very effectively in this recording. The two-CD set also includes both suites for two pianos (op. 5 and op. 17), the Six Morceaux, Op. 11, and arrangements of several short works – most notably the famous Prelude in C-sharp minor, in an arrangement by Rachmaninoff himself (also here are an Ada Brant arrangement of Polka Italienne and Maurice Hinson’s version of the posthumous Russian Rhapsody). This is all interesting music that shows some sides of Rachmaninoff’s pianism that are not apparent from his concertos, and everything is quite well played and recorded.

     There are also two pianists featured on a CD called “Tokarev Plays Rosenblatt,” from the specialized Solo Musica label; and one of the performers is also the composer of the music here – that being part of this label’s approach. Rosenblatt (born1956) graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, and his music is fairly well known in Russia – but as this CD shows, it has been strongly influenced by that most American of musical forms, jazz. Even the two most overtly “Russian” works here – the Concertino on Two Russian Themes for 4 Hands and Waltzing with Hartmann (after Mussorgsky) – partake of jazz influences, and the remaining works are filled with similar inflections. Both Nikolai Tokarev and Rosenblatt himself bring a strong sense of “swing” to these works, which also show – in the piano sonata and Paganini’s Variations – Rosenblatt’s fine grasp of classical forms. Solo Musica’s niche is strong collaboration with composers and performers to present both traditional and unconventional classical music. The Rosenblatt CD, which can be looked at as focusing on post-Rachmaninoff Russian piano works, shows that there is some very interesting material out there for this label to explore.

     Instead of a two-performer focus, listeners get one involving three singers on the Tre Bassi CD from Carpe Diem, a label that was founded by two sound engineers and that records in old churches, monasteries and historic concert halls. The CD’s title plays off the super-popular “Three Tenors” recordings, and the repertoire here partakes of a similar mixture of the traditional and the decidedly non-traditional: among the 14 tracks, there is a Magnificat, there is an Ave Maria, there is a Salve Regina, and there are two De profundis clamavi works, but there are also three pieces by Santana. Like the “Three Tenors” collaborations, this three-basses compendium is more about rich tone, fine vocal quality and resonant sound (the recording is really quite good) than about the specific repertoire presented. It is, thus, a specialty vocal disc for people who want to find out how strong multiple bass voices can sound, together and separately, when recorded in venues that allow the singers’ low range to come through dramatically and to the best possible effect.

     Despite the special focuses of small and little-known labels, it is interesting to notice that a very large CD firm, such as Naxos, has also found a way to make less-familiar music a hallmark of its offerings. Through its “American Classics” and other series, Naxos makes fine performances of little-heard works available at a bargain price – surely with no more expectation of a mass audience for these CDs than the small niche labels have for theirs. A fascinating new José Serebrier CD is a good case in point. Here, as in the Tokarev/Rosenblatt disc for Solo Musica, there is a composer performing his own works; and here too, as in all the niche-label CDs, there is music that will be unfamiliar to most listeners. But it is all very worthy music indeed, and shows just how wide Serebrier’s range is and how his style has evolved over time. His first symphony, written in 1956 when he was 17, has derivative elements but already shows an assured compositional style in which Serebrier is finding his own voice. The CD is, happily, arranged chronologically, so the nuances and growth of the composer’s style can be clearly heard. The Double Bass Concerto, which not only features a fine solo performance by Gary Karr (for whom it was written) but also includes a Shelley poem, the basis of the work, read by actor Simon Callow, dates to 1971 and gets its first recording here. The Violin Concerto (with soloist Philippe Quint) came 20 years later, in 1991, and shows Serebrier’s fully mature style as well as his skill in writing for strings. Two short works from the early 21^st century, Tango en Azul (2001) and Casi un Tango (2002), display the composer’s lighter and very rhythmic side, while another first recording – They Rode into the Sunset, written in 2009 and intended for a Bollywood film that was never made – showcases Serebrier’s abilities in tonal writing and in providing a wrapup for a decidedly popular form, the movies (the music was planned for the film’s final scene). Serebrier is a fine conductor at all times, and certainly his work on his own music must be regarded as definitive. More to the point, this CD shows that even today, the world of specialized, targeted recording remains alive and well, within creative major CD labels as well as smaller niche firms.

(++++) WEIRDLY WONDERFUL, WONDERFULLY WEIRD

The Addams Family: An Evilution. By Charles Addams. Pomegranate. $39.95.

The Black Doll: A Silent Screenplay. By Edward Gorey, with an interview by Annie Nocenti. Pomegranate. $17.95.

The Awdrey-Gore Legacy. By Edward Gorey. Pomegranate. $14.95.

The Remembered Visit. By Edward Gorey. Pomegranate. $14.95.

The Utter Zoo and Alphabet. By Edward Gorey. Pomegranate. $14.95.

     They are two of the great American illustrators, as unique in their odd visual styles as Edgar Allan Poe was in his not-unrelated verbal techniques: Charles Addams (1912-1988) and Edward Gorey (1925-2000). Gorey is the more mysterious and difficult-to-fathom of the two; Addams, the more popular and more overtly humorous. Thanks to a series of new books from Pomegranate, Addams and Gorey can now be readily compared, analyzed, discussed, debated and simply enjoyed. And there is a great deal to enjoy, for those of a suitably skewed temperament.

     The Addams Family: An Evilution is a big, handsome volume about the artist’s most-famous creation, that compendium of husband Gomez and wife Morticia (assuming they are married, which is never clear), children Wednesday and Pugsley, Granny Frump, Uncle Fester, Lurch the butler, the Thing and various and sundry hangers-on. From their first appearance in The New Yorker in 1938, when they had not yet acquired a name, through the mid-1960s TV show, two films and a new Broadway musical, the family has spread its wings (bat wings, most likely) and evolved into something iconic (and occasionally ironic). Because The Addams Family: An Evilution is packed with illustrations of family doings, it is enjoyable simply as a cartoon collection – but it is even better the more a reader focuses on the explanatory material. Addams’ character discussions, written for the producers of the TV show, are simply wonderful: Morticia is “contemptuous and original and with a fierce family loyalty,” and “never uses a cliché except to be funny.” Gomez is “a crafty schemer, but also a jolly man in his own way.” Wednesday is “on the whole, pretty lost,” and “has six toes on one foot,” while Pugsley, a “genius in his own way,” is able to “turn himself into a Mr. Hyde with an ordinary chemical set.” Lurch “will gladly undertake to dump the boiling oil on the carol singers [a reference to one of Addams’ most famous drawings, which of course is included in the book], but, generally, the family regards him as something of a joke.” Seeing how these and other characters have developed over the years is wonderful, and choosing individual panels as favorites is great fun – perhaps the one showing bats approaching their house, which is a duplicate of the Addams’ mansion; or the one of a bemused Wednesday with the string of paper dolls she has just made – one of which has three legs; or the Publishers Weekly cover from 1973, showing each family member reading something appropriate or just odd: Morticia, “Foodless Recipes,” Uncle Fester, “A Return to Morality,” Pugsley, “Bugging Everybody,” and a very concerned-looking Wednesday, “The Comfort of Sex.” Directly opposite that delightful cover is a truly revelatory drawing of the family showing, utterly amazingly, that Morticia has legs – Adams elsewhere says she always wears the same costume, “the form-fitting black gown, tattered or cut to ribbons at the elbows and feet,” leaving her legs and feet invisible. There are many, many delights and surprises of this sort in The Addams Family: An Evilution, a book that is about as close to a definitive portrait of this most unusual family as we are likely to get.

     Addams can be called a cartoonist – and often is, although his work is broader than that. But it is highly unlikely that anyone would apply the “cartoonist” label to Gorey, although in a narrow sense it could be said that he drew cartoons. Really, Gorey was really an illustrator, a broader category than “cartoonist,” and an excellent one. Nor was that all he was. Writer, film buff and all-around creative thinker, Gorey was involved in opera, dance and theater as well as books and TV (his famous creation of the animated opening for PBS’ Mystery!). And some of his work can still surprise, even a decade after his death. Thus, The Black Doll is a must for Gorey fans who know only his illustrations. It is nothing less than a full-blown screenplay for a movie – a silent movie, although the screenplay dates to the early 1970s. Playful, erudite, silly and portentous, it includes everything from historical-religious background to such title cards as “The Fiend, dear child, interests himself in the treasures of Blug,” and “You will notice the dancing palace adjoins the abattoirs.” Playful and indeterminate, The Black Doll includes Gorey drawings of 21 characters (displayed on the inside front and back covers and, individually, on various pages of the screenplay) and is virtually incapable of being summarized – it is a sort of Maltese Falcon by way of D.W. Griffith. The Pomegranate book gives the full screenplay as well as a highly informative interview that Annie Nocenti did with Gorey in 1998 – which highlights not only Gorey’s general knowledge of film but also his specific interest in a number of very different directors, many of them European. This is a fascinating book that focuses on a very important but very little-known aspect of Gorey’s life and art.

     But the seeds of dramatic presentation are there in much of Gorey’s work. The complex theatricality of The Awdrey-Gore Legacy is a perfect example. The book is about the murder of a 97-year-old author of mysteries (three supposed covers of which appear on the front of The Awdrey-Gore Legacy itself); but instead of a straightforward narrative – there is little straightforward in Gorey – the book deconstructs murder mysteries of the Agatha Christie type from start to finish. Included are the highly peculiar murder scene; the famous detective (shown in an amazing series of pictures that take him from ordinary-looking man to one-legged, one-handed, one-eyed, bearded and vastly overdressed oddball); 17 beautifully drawn characters who may be one thing or another – depending on the needs of the never-fleshed-out plot; various places where bodies are typically discovered, each of them including a pair of protruding feet; forms of dispatch, ranging from “gradual” (28 “arsenical buns”) to “instantaneous” (a boulder); all sorts of “clue bits” that may or may not mean something; notes on possible things that the killer could have failed to realize; the obligatory confrontation scene (where nothing is confronted, much less revealed); and many possible fates of the guilty party. A seamless mixture of text and illustration, a brilliant sendup of murder mysteries, and a fascinating put-it-together-for-yourself book, The Awdrey-Gore Legacy is pure Gorey and pure enjoyment.

     There is always a sheen of pathos, if not necessarily something murderous, in Gorey’s work. The Remembered Visit and the apparently harmless ABC book, The Utter Zoo and Alphabet, both show this clearly. The first of these is the story of a young girl named Drusilla whose parents take her abroad, where she tries unsuccessfully to appreciate all the cultural wonders to which she is exposed, and where a family friend introduces her to an elderly man who does not wear socks and who may once have been or done something important. The enigmatic meeting – enigmas are Gorey’s stock in trade – leads to a promise that Drusilla makes, unthinkingly breaks, and then discovers, much later, that she can no longer keep…leaving her sad and wistful. What is the book’s meaning? Perhaps there is none; perhaps it is about a rite of passage to adulthood; perhaps it is about the consequences of failing to keep a promise, even one that seems small; perhaps it is simply an exercise in meticulously rendered melancholy, as so many Gorey books seem to be. The same question of meaning can actually be raised about The Utter Zoo and Alphabet, which is no “mere” alphabet book, since it consists entirely of nonexistent creatures whose names Gorey weaves into hauntingly odd couplets: “The Ombledroom is vast and white,/ And therefore visible by night.” “The Ippagoggy has a taste/ For every kind of glue and paste.” One of the strangest things about this peculiar little book is how many of the imaginary creatures the reader does not see. That Ippagoggy is covered with paper pasted all over it; the Dawbis hides behind window blinds; the Jelbislup is kept inside a jar – only the jar is shown; and so on: “The Ulp is very, very small;/ It hardly can be seen at all.” Even creatures that are visible are usually not entirely viewable: only the rear end of the Xyke is seen as it walks away; the Quingawaga’s back and large wings are shown, but not its head, which its turned-away body conceals; etc. This sort of illustration, in which much more is implied than shown, is typical Gorey – he uses the technique in many of his stories that are about violent things but never quite show them. In fact, this approach carries right through to the letter Z, whose illustration shows four feet sticking up out of a box: “About the Zote what can be said?/ There was just one, and now it’s dead.” This is not exactly rolling-on-the-floor-laughing humor: it is sharp, subtle, sophisticated and superbly shown in the inimitable style of one of America’s great modern illustrators.

(++++) HALLOWEEN, AND SO FORTH

A Not Scary Story about Big Scary Things. By C.K. Williams. Illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska. Harcourt. $16.99.

All Hallows’ Eve: 13 Stories. By Vivian Vande Velde. Graphia. $8.99.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves! By Lucille Colandro. Illustrated by Jared Lee. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $5.99.

Flat Stanley: Stanley’s Christmas Adventure. By Jeff Brown. Pictures by Macky Pamintuan. Harper. $4.99.

The Klutz Book of Inventions. By John Cassidy & Brendan Boyle. Klutz. $19.99.

     The approach of autumn heralds cooler, crisper weather, falling leaves and the frights of Halloween. Even scary books not specifically involving Halloween seem somehow more appropriate in fall. A Not Scary Story about Big Scary Things fits right in – and it also doesn’t fit right in, because this is a very unusual “scary” book about a little boy who simply refuses to be scared. He lives by a forest where there were “probably…bears who growled” and “might have been wolves who howled” and most likely “were big snakes that slithered through the underbrush” and, worst of all, “people said there was a monster in that forest.” No one can quite agree on what the monster is or looks like, but everyone knows it has terrifying teeth and fangs and claws and likes to scare children. Except the little boy, who knows that bears and wolves and snakes are not really anything to be afraid of and who, no matter what people say about a monster, simply walks on through the forest “as though there weren’t anybody there at all.” C.K. Williams makes this into something less and more than a book about confronting fears. He emphasizes the unreality of the monster while still having it talk to the boy, who keeps refusing to be scared: “I’m not afraid of you, because I don’t believe in you.” The monster crashes its fangs and rears up and shows long, sharp teeth, but the boy says, “You’re just not real,” and keeps walking. And the monster gets argumentative, saying he is supposed to scare boys and girls, and asking the boy to believe in him “just a teeny bit.” But the boy refuses, and the monster shrinks, and eventually boy and monster find a way they can both believe in each other, sort of – leading to an ending both offbeat and amusing. Gabi Swiatkowska’s very unusual illustrations, made from water-based paints on paper, are a big reason for the book’s success. She shows the different parts that supposedly make up the monster – without putting them together. She shows the scared faces of little children – but not what they are looking at. As the boy walks through the woods, the trees seem to sprout monster claws, but when the monster tries to prove its existence, the pictures shows it rearing up on hind legs – with trees clearly visible through its transparent body. At Halloween or in any season, A Not Scary Story about Big Scary Things teaches important lessons about fear and belief.

     All Hallows’ Eve, on the other hand, is genuinely scary. Originally published in 2006 and now available in paperback, Vivian Vande Velde’s 13-story collection shows the prolific author at her creepiest. The stories are unpredictable – one reason they are so frightening. In one, a girl trying to be helpful during a field trip to a cemetery confronts a group of ghosts – and a living person who is more to be feared than the dead. In another, a girl trying to be helpful in an old barn confronts a far less benevolent ghost. One story features a most unusual GPS system; another, the parallel narratives of two friends that converge in a frightening way. There is a tale in which Halloween vampire costumes turn out to conceal something worse, and one in which discovering one’s vampire family is the least of a girl’s worries. And there are tales with twists, one involving a visit by ghostly parents who turn out not to be the only specters around, and one in which there is a frightening vision – but whose vision is it? There is nothing light in this All Hallows’ Eve – darkness is everywhere.

     But autumn is more than Halloween, and the lighter side of fall is the focus of Lucille Colandro’s latest variant on the rhyme about the old lady who swallowed a fly and many other things: There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves! The whole concept of swallowing larger and more ridiculous things is a little strained here – the book gets a (+++) rating – but the amusing focus on autumnal fun will please young readers. The lady swallows leaves, a shirt, a pumpkin, a pole and more, the refrain being “perhaps she’ll sneeze” (which sort of rhymes with “leaves”). Eventually she swallows all the ingredients for a scarecrow, and kids will probably realize what is going on before the lady does sneeze out the fully formed character. No matter – the silliness of the whole proceeding, and the amusing illustrations by Jared Lee, will be entertaining enough to keep children amused for a while.

     And lest families forget what fall brings: it brings winter, eventually, and winter is the setting for the latest easy-to-read Flat Stanley adventure, in which Stanley Lambchop’s family has only two days to save Christmas. This is an old plot, twisted a bit to accommodate Stanley’s flatness. The story involves Sarah Christmas, Santa’s daughter, who is upset because her father plans not to deliver any presents this year. But Stanley’s flatness interests him, so Sarah thinks maybe Stanley can help save Christmas, and she brings Stanley (with his family) to Snow City. The most amusing part of the book, which gets a (+++) rating, is the description of Santa, who wears a blue zip jacket and fuzzy brown slippers, sports a beard with crumbs in it, and watches TV channels that show “buildings burning, people begging for food, people hitting each other,” and other bad things. “Been wasting my time” trying to arrange peace on Earth, he says, so this year Christmas is off. Of course, everything works out just fine – but kids who know Flat Stanley may be disappointed that he is round, not flat, in this book: his brother, Arthur, has blown him up with a bicycle pump. So Stanley’s Christmas Adventure may be about Christmas, but it’s not about Flat Stanley except incidentally. Still, kids who already know and like the character will enjoy this seasonal extension of his doings.

     For something far more inventive – and delightful in any season, autumn and Christmas included – The Klutz Book of Inventions lets you open your very own Santa’s workshop. Or at least think about it. This (++++) book starts by explaining “How to Think Like an Inventor” (a big part of it is playing with ideas, including ridiculous ones, before you come back to ones that might actually work). And then – speaking of ridiculous – there are such concepts here as the PogoPlunger (pogo stick with “plumber’s helper” at the bottom, to make cleaning out stuffed toilets fun); Squeeze-Me Silverware (utensils with condiments inside: add ketchup or mustard right at the point of consumption); Chocolate Chip Checkers (bake them, play with them, eat them); Bug Zapper Earrings (battery-powered, earring-size bug killers); Soup-Testing Spoon (with built-in thermometer); Socks by the Foot (a 100-foot-long sock in a box – cut off as much as you need); Combo Cans (for small kitchens – whipped cream on one side, a fire extinguisher on the other); Snack Shirts (with pockets customized to hold bananas, ice-cream cones or whatever you like); and much more. Yes, the inventions are put-ons – the fun is in the wonderful pictures and the descriptions of what these oddball items might do – but given the fact that autumn inevitably leads to winter, and winter inevitably means Christmas, and every Christmas season produces weird new products “for the person who has everything,” who knows? One or more of these 162 Klutz inventions just might show up on store shelves sooner than you think!

(++++) DINOSAURS AND OTHER CRITTERS

Dear Tyrannosaurus Rex. By Lisa McClatchy. Illustrated by John Manders. Random House. $16.99.

Detective Dinosaur Undercover. By James Skofield. Pictures by R.W. Alley. Harper. $3.99.

Just Critters Who Care. By Mercer Mayer. Harper. $3.99.

The Rooster Prince of Breslov. By Ann Redisch Stampler. Illustrated by Eugene Yelchin. Clarion. $16.99.

     Kids’ endless fascination with dinosaurs provides the backdrop for a slew of books, some much cleverer than others. Dear Tyrannosaurus Rex is more fun than most. It is all about a little girl named Erin who wants a real dinosaur at her sixth birthday party. So she writes the T. Rex she has seen at the museum a long letter – which is the entire text of Lisa McClatchy’s book. The letter is just the sort of thing a six-year-old might write, about the signs and balloons with directions to the party, the planned backyard tent, the games everyone will play, and the fun everyone will have. The fun readers will have comes from John Manders’ illustrations, showing T. Rex participating in all those six-year-old activities: trampoline jumping, pizza eating, blowing out candles, hitting a piñata, and much more. The silliness of the whole idea (the book includes illustrations of the other party guests playing with and reacting to T. Rex) is what makes Dear Tyrannosaurus Rex so much fun. But of course, there are no living examples of T. Rex anymore, so Erin is bound to be disappointed. Or is she? The final picture, which does not show T. Rex, leaves the question open – or at least open enough for a delightful conclusion.

     There is an entirely unrealistic-looking T. Rex character in Detective Dinosaur Undercover, along with an equally silly Pterodactyl and Diplodocus. This is a Level 2 book in the I Can Read! series. Intended for ages 4-8, it contains three stories in which not much detecting gets done but a lot of silly things occur. One tale turns on Detective Dinosaur’s lack of understanding of the term “undercover.” The second has him dreaming of scary blobs that turn out to be neither blobs nor scary. And the third is about whether or not (or maybe “weather” or not) it is raining. There is nothing profound in this easy-to-read (+++) book, but the dinosaur connection is a cute one for the simple stories. And dinos are not the only critters in the I Can Read! series. Another book – at the “My First” level, for ages 3-5 – features…well, just critters. They are Mercer Mayer’s critters, and this super-simple (+++) story is about a scary-looking house that really just needs some yard work and attention to fit comfortably into the neighborhood. But the little old bunny who lives there cannot do the work herself – so Little Critter, his friends and their families dub themselves “Critters Who Care” and do some voluntary good deeds – rewarded with a sense of satisfaction, plus cookies and juice. This is a nice little “help your neighbor” story that beginning readers should be able to negotiate without much difficulty.

     The critter connection is more complicated in The Rooster Prince of Breslov, Ann Redisch Stampler’s (++++) retelling of an old Yiddish folktale – with very fitting, distinctly Russian-appearing illustrations by Russian-born painter and illustrator Eugene Yelchin. The story is about a young prince who snaps under all the attention and pressures of his life, throws off all his clothes, and starts behaving like a rooster, pecking at crumbs on the floor and making poultry sounds. Neither medicine nor magic can cure him, so in despair, the prince’s parents turn to an old man who says he needs one week to cure the prince – using a rather strange sequence of objects, which must be brought to him without question. “The king and queen were so desperate, that they agreed to provide all the odd things he asked for,” writes Stampler. The prince is not really a rooster, of course, but he certainly behaves like one. So the old man throws off his clothes and also acts like a rooster – confusing the prince long enough to start winning his confidence. Day after day, servants bring things to the rooms, and the old man pretends not to know what they are – mattresses, fresh-baked bread, and so on. The prince explains what each thing is; the old man says it seems unfair that humans have such nice things while roosters (that is, he and the prince) have nothing; and gradually, the old man gets the prince re-acclimatized to behaving like a person. By the end of the week, man and prince have dressed again and are eating human food at a table, but the prince still insists he is a rooster. Not so, says the old man – the way the prince treated “a cold, hungry, achy old rooster” proves that the prince is not only human but also has truly become a man. Lesson learned, the prince becomes an able ruler who passes the wisdom along to his own son; and this story of a critter who is not really a critter transmits its old wisdom about growing up as well.

(+++) SECOND HELPINGS

The Red Blazer Girls #2: The Vanishing Violin. By Michael D. Bell. Knopf. $16.99.

Oracles of Delphi Keep #2: The Curse of Deadman’s Forest. By Victoria Laurie. Delacorte Press. $16.99.

The Poisons of Caux, Book Two: The Tasters Guild. By Susannah Applebaum. Illustrated by Jennifer Taylor. Knopf. $16.99.

The Clockwork Dark, Book 2: The Wolf Tree. By John Claude Bemis. Random House. $16.99.

     Sequels are tough. Whatever inventiveness an original book contained is already known by the time of the sequel; whatever personalities have been developed are in place already; whatever striking oddities made a first book attractive are no longer unusual. An author’s task in a sequel is to develop themes further, show new facets of characters’ personalities, send known characters in new directions while perhaps introducing some new ones to balance or expand the originals, and maintain whatever pacing and special elements presumably made the original book a success (“presumably” because otherwise, why publish a sequel?). All four of these books continue interesting stories their authors set up earlier, but none of them has quite the impact of its predecessor.

     The Vanishing Violin, for example, revisits skilled-in-different-ways detectives Sophie, Margaret and Rebecca after their successful sleuthing in The Ring of Rocamadour. After gaining their 15 minutes of fame and finding that it mostly brings in dull job offers, the girls once again find themselves involved in something big: the disappearance of a rare violin. And once again, their intertwining friendship (important for the target age group of about 10-13) and complementary abilities must be brought into play as clues pile on confusing clues until the girls come up with a prime suspect – who, they then figure out, didn’t do it. So they have to reverse course, clear the suspect’s name, and find the real baddie, all while riding scooters and coping with crushes. (Well, not while, but these are all parts of the same mix.) Here as in the first book, much of the fun comes from descriptions, as when the girls revisit the family to which they previously returned the ring and encounter the mother, Elizabeth: “Elizabeth maintains her dignity – well, as much dignity as you can maintain when you’re wearing lime green riding pants with knee-high boots and a paisley blazer (a typically daring fashion choice for her).” This is in a chapter called “Where’s Vanna White when you really need her?” – the chapter titles being another element of the style here. One chapter heading here neatly encapsulates the whole book: “In which we take one step forward, two steps on a slight diagonal, pivot on our heels, and repeat.” But all the bouncing about does lead to a conclusion that will be satisfying to readers who agree that “sometimes we just need a determined girl in a red blazer” to solve mysteries and “make your life extraordinary.”

     The Curse of Deadman’s Forest, followup to Oracles of Delphi Keep, continues the tale of what happens to the brother-and-sister team of Ian and Theo, and to Ian’s best friend, Carl, after the discovery of a dire prophecy. The prophecy warns of danger that can be overcome only by gathering six uniquely gifted children – setting up a typical adventure background for a multi-book series. Nominally set in Dover, England, in the years leading up to World War II, The Curse of Deadman’s Forest includes characters from all times, back to an oracle of ancient Greece. The basic plot involves the search for a child with the power to heal. The search requires entry into the magical portal first used by the young adventurers in the initial book, despite the prophecy’s warning about Ian’s death if he uses it again. The unpredictability of the portal and obliqueness of the prophecy are fairly standard elements in fantasies for preteens. Much of the dialogue is fairly standard, too: “We have to try, Theo.” “Looks like we picked the wrong day to sleep in.” “You played a very good game, Colonel…but this evening, luck was on my side.” Sorcery, Nazism and demonology all get mixed together here, and the book’s end clearly signals the next quest to come – to which fans of the burgeoning series will surely look forward.

     The second Poisons of Caux volume seems at first somewhat unnecessary. The first book, The Hollow Bettle, ended with good overcoming evil and the true ruler of the land of Caux restored to the throne after a long interregnum marked by deceit and poison. Here too, though, there is a prophecy that must be fulfilled and a quest that must be undertaken – and the route to completion of that quest, which involves travel to a world called Pimcaux, lies within the Tasters Guild. At the center of all the activity are 11-year-old Ivy, who is a Noble Child and healer – and her friend and taster, Rowan. There are all sorts of complexities here involving the prophecy from the first book, Ivy’s abilities with plants , and the reemergence of one particular deadly plant called both Kingmaker and “scourge bracken.” Although there are schemes aplenty here – most revolving around the evil and corrupt Tasters Guild leader, Vidal Verjouce – the book is actually a pleasure to read, because readers will know that things will turn out all right…and because the volume’s physical design (blue type on cream-colored paper, with interestingly odd illustrations) is such an inviting one. This is quite definitely not the end of The Poisons of Caux – just when you think one of the baddies is finally gone for good, for example, he turns up somewhat worse for wear but very much alive and as determined as ever to do evil. So even if The Tasters Guild is not quite as intriguing as The Hollow Bettle, it is more than enough to whet the appetite for another episode.

     As for the second book of The Clockwork Dark, it picks up in the legendary American South where the first book, The Nine Pound Hammer, left off. That hammer was the property of none other than John Henry, the “steel driving man” of folksong, but it was broken in a climactic battle with the evil machine-creating Gog. In The Wolf Tree, it turns out that although the Gog appears to be dead, his machine lives on (so to speak), poisoning everything around it and changing good people into bad ones. So 12-year-old Ray – now a full-fledged member of the Ramblers (sideshow performers and erstwhile heroes) – takes on the task of stopping the Gog’s machine for good. This requires finding the tree of the book’s title, said to be a gateway to the spirit world. A limb of the tree, it is believed, can repair the broken hammer and make final destruction of the evil machine possible. This is all somewhat more far-fetched than most preteen and young-teen fantasy, but that is because it draws on a different sort of magic from that used in most books targeting this age group. It is the magic of American tall tales, of Appalachia, of Native American stories, of spreading darkness and heroic attempts to restore the light – and also the magic of humans holding out against the inexorable march of technology, as in the original John Henry folktale. In fact, there is a deliberate line drawn between the magic of The Clockwork Dark and that of more-familiar fairy tales, as in a scene of a dying something-that-looks-like-a-wolf: “‘He ain’t a wolf. You’re right about that. And he turned into this wolf, but I can’t tell if he’s really a man. Seems like he is and he ain’t at the same time….’ ‘Maybe he’s under an enchantment,’ Sally said. ‘Like in “Snow White and Rose Red.”’ ‘Ain’t never heard of it,’ Hethy said.” The events in the story are not especially surprising – the usual good-vs.-evil battles with the usual uncertainties and surprises – but the setting is something special, and readers who were fascinated by The Nine Pound Hammer will enjoy returning to the same outré world in The Wolf Tree.

(++++) TO SCHUMANN AND BEYOND

Schumann: Symphonies Nos. 1-4. Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie conducted by Frank Beermann. CPO. $33.99 (2 SACDs).

Schumann: Symphonies Nos. 1-4. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Grzegorz Nowak. RPO. $29.99 (2 CDs).

Batons, Bows and Bruises: A History of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. DVD written, produced and directed by Andrew Colin Davies. RPO. $19.99 (DVD+CD).

     This year’s bicentennial of Schumann’s birth has spawned reconsiderations of his music, some new editions and a number of versions of his four symphonies. These two new symphony cycles are a study in contrasts: Nowak’s generally slower-paced and more massive, Beermann’s more detail-oriented and with a fresher sound.

     The symphonies actually sound good in both interpretations – Schumann admits of multiple effective readings – but Beermann, who uses a new edition by Joachim Draheim, generally gets the better of things. In No. 1, “Spring,” Beermann’s first movement opens with very strong brass and is bright-sounding and enthusiastically played, with wide dynamic range and a quick coda; the Scherzo also features good brass highlights, with a slow first trio and speedy second one; and the finale is all geniality. In No. 2, whose problematic first movement can easily drag, Beermann opts for a very slow introduction to the movement, followed by a speedy main section and broad dynamic range. The Scherzo is quick and lively. Then comes an Adagio espressivo that is very expressive indeed, if a bit fast – and a finale that is very spirited and fleet-footed. For No. 3, the “Rhenish,” Beermann is resolutely upbeat and buoyant in the first movement; the second and third flow well; the more-serious fourth has appropriate weight; and the finale is truly rousing, especially the coda. And in No. 4 – which both Beermann and Nowak play in the more-common revised version of 1851 rather than the original version of a decade earlier – Beermann is quick and intense in the first movement, with clear textures, but a touch too fast in the Romanze, whose lovely violin solo is therefore less than fully effective. The Scherzo is quick and strongly accented, and the finale is rhythmically well defined, with especially impressive timpani.

     Nowak’s readings are somewhat more conventional and, on the whole, not as impressive – but his Fourth comes across better than Beermann’s. The warmth and full sound of Nowak’s performance are winning: his rendition strides forth boldly, featuring a warm and lovely violin solo in the Romanze, a well-contrasted Scherzo, and a very effective finale with excellent rhythms, pacing and flow. His other three performances are less effective. No. 1 is a touch flaccid, especially in the second movement, and the Scherzo’s second trio and entire finale both sound rushed – this is the only symphony in which Nowak’s reading is faster than Beermann’s. In No. 2, Nowak adheres more closely to the designated tempo of the first movement than Beermann does, but as a result the movement sometimes flags. The Scherzo is fine, but the Adagio espressivo is a bit ponderous. And in the finale, Nowak twice introduces very intrusive rubato that unwarrantedly slows everything down. Nowak’s “Rhenish” is more pedestrian than Beermann’s, with brass not always featured as prominently as it could be (Nowak hesitates to bring it forward when it is not actually carrying a theme). The Scherzo is rather hesitant, although the finale has good bounce.

     The Royal Philharmonic sounds quite good for Nowak, and anyone interested in finding out more about how the orchestra got to its current high level of quality should enjoy the DVD-plus-CD combo called Batons, Bows and Bruises, which provides a history of the RPO from its founding by Sir Thomas Beecham. Beecham himself, and others important in the ensemble’s history, appear in the DVD, which is well-presented by Andrew Sachs. But the included CD may be the more interesting part of this (+++) set. It offers words and/or performances by five conductors who have led the RPO at various times in its more-than-60-year history. Beecham himself gives two brief sets of remarks and conducts a dab of Debussy and a bit of Gounod. Rudolf Kempe offers the finale from Beethoven’s Symphony No.3, André Previn leads Walton’s Henry V suite, Sir Charles Groves conducts Elgar’s Serenade for Strings, and Daniele Gatti directs Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture and is interviewed afterwards. The whole production is, of course, calculated to show the RPO in the best possible light – it is something of a vanity release, with interesting anecdotes but certainly nothing scurrilous or at all troubling to any public-relations person. Batons, Bows and Bruises is for fans of this particular orchestra who would like to see and hear a bit more of it and of some of the conductors who have led it over the years, but it is not a release to be recommended on strictly musical grounds. However, it was clearly not developed on that basis, either.

(++++) VOCAL COMBINATIONS

Mahler: Lieder aus “Des Knaben Wunderhorn.” Christiane Oelze, soprano; Michael Volle, baritone; Gürzenich-Orchester Köln conducted by Markus Stenz. Oehms. $19.99 (SACD).

Strauss: Four Last Songs; Rosenkavalier Suite; Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks. Anja Harteros, soprano; Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks conducted by Mariss Jansons. BR Klassik. $12.99.

Tallis: Spem in alium; Lamentations of Jeremiah I and II; Videte miraculum; Dum transisset Sabbatum; Honor, virtus et potestas; Loquebantur variis linguis. Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, conducted by Stephen Cleobury. Newton Classics. $12.99.

     Mahler came up with something genuinely new in his major song cycles of voice with orchestra: no one had done anything quite like it before. In the case of Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”), the composer first mined the Arnim/Brentano collection of mostly naïve folk poetry for more than a dozen songs, then incorporated the themes of those songs into several of his symphonies and retained some flavor of the music throughout his entire symphonic output. Des Knaben Wunderhorn itself has fluid boundaries: there are usually 13 songs in the cycle (although the new Oehms recording adds a 14^th), and Mahler left it to performers to decide on the song sequence and vocal range (he recommended a male voice but sometimes used a female one himself, and certain of the “dialogue” songs work particularly well with two voices). Christiane Oelze and Michael Volle have nicely complementary vocal qualities, and the sequence chosen here is a particularly apt one. The songs fall into thematic groupings and, within the groups, are sometimes lighter and sometimes heavier. The “military” songs are particularly difficult to arrange, and the greatest of them – “Revelge” – is almost impossible to follow with anything. This recording places “Revelge” 12^th in the overall sequence, followed by “Das irdische Leben” and, from outside the usual Wunderhorn sequence, “Das himmlische Leben” – the finale of the Fourth Symphony. This works exceptionally well, making the final two songs into a coda of sorts to the first dozen. The “dialogue” songs are quite effective here, and even when a vocal choice sounds a touch odd (“Das irdische Leben” sung by Volle so Oelze can conclude with “Das himmlische Leben”), the overall effect is exemplary after a moment of initial uncertainty. Markus Stenz paces the songs very well and makes the orchestra an equal partner with the singers, not letting it overwhelm them but ensuring that it is no mere accompaniment. Mahler’s music adds a great deal to poetry that is, by and large, not particularly good, and this very well-recorded disc presents all the music to fullest advantage. Not the words, though: they are included in the booklet only in German. English speakers will really want to find a translation, since Mahler’s music so carefully complements and amplifies the text.

     Some composers after Mahler created equally powerful – if not equally extended – voice-plus-orchestra sequences. Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs, one of the composer’s and the 20^th century’s vocal masterworks, is an important example. The songs absolutely require a tremendously sensitive and vocally agile soprano, coupled with a highly sensitive orchestra, to attain their full effect (indeed, some of the most moving parts of the songs contain no words at all). The new Mariss Jansons CD of three live Strauss performances features the rather light, very pliable voice of Anja Harteros, who is at her best in the first two songs. “Frühling” has fine flow and a sense of wonder, while “September” showcases Harteros’ strong upper register and features fine blending between voice and orchestra. After the text of “Frühling” ends, the tenderness of the horns is especially affecting. The third and fourth songs are not quite as successful. Harteros sounds a bit strained in “Beim Schlafengehen,” although her voice climbs beautifully when singing of the spirit soaring in flight and the violin solo is movingly played by Andreas Röhn. “Im Abendrot,” last and longest of the songs, starts like a lullaby, and the orchestra’s portrayal of larks is lovely. But Harteros does not seem fully involved in the text – the performance is lovely in many ways, but lacks depth. The same may be said of the other two works on this CD – although depth is not a major requirement for them. The Rosenkavalier Suite actually comes off quite well, with smooth playing throughout and some nice attention to detail, such as the very tentative start of the famous waltz. Jansons makes this suite into a tone poem of sorts, with an emphasis more on its languid, long-drawn-out lyrical lines than on its faster and more glittery sections. Till Eulenspiegel is a tad less effective: it too is very well played, and again the flow of the quieter material is especially well done, but a sense of rough humor and of cutting loose is missing – the whole performance seems a bit too tightly controlled. Nevertheless, this is a very fine Strauss CD both instrumentally and vocally.

     The voice is everything in the Newton Classics release of music by Thomas Tallis. Listening to the purity of this 16^th-century music after hearing the vocal elaborations of Mahler and Strauss is a salutary experience, almost like getting back to basics. Everything on this CD is religious in meaning and orientation, and everything has communicative directness and carefully modulated sound that well bespeak the solemnity of some topics (such as the two-part Lamentations of Jeremiah) and the tremendous hopefulness of others (such as Spem in alium and Videte miraculum). The Newton Classics label is reviving, in high-quality new releases, a series of recordings made two or three decades ago; this one dates to 1989. The skillful and well-modulated blending of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, comes through very clearly here, with Stephen Cleobury leading the singers in carefully paced and lovingly balanced church music. Indeed, it is scarcely necessary to know the meaning of the words – and certainly not necessary to know Latin – in order to feel and empathize with the beauty and careful order of Tallis’ very sensitive settings. Vocal music has certainly come an enormously long way since Tallis’ time, but this CD shows that even in a world where Mahler and Strauss took the voice to new heights, there is much-older writing that is every bit as lofty.

(++++) DIFFERENT THINGS TO TREASURE

Problem Identified and You’re Probably Not Part of the Solution: A “Dilbert” Treasury. By Scott Adams. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.

Cul de Sac Golden Treasury: A Keepsake Garden of Classics. By Richard Thompson. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.

     Andrews McMeel’s “Treasury” volumes are essentially reprints of reprints: newspaper comic strips are reprinted by the publisher in small-size book collections, and then those collections are re-collected into larger-size books and given the “Treasury” label. But the publisher has in recent years enhanced its “Treasury” series in several ways that increase the books’ appeal; two of those ways are on display in these new releases.

     Problem Identified is a “theme” book, collecting individual strips from Scott Adams’ long-running Dilbert strip into a single volume built around the topic of incompetent bosses and co-workers. Since this is one of the foundations of Dilbert, Adams had a lot of leeway in choosing strips for this “Treasury,” and he picked ones from all different times of his career and all different levels of his drawing skill (which has never been the strip’s strongest point). The great thing about Dilbert is how it takes everyday workplace occurrences (including many real-life experiences of the strip’s readers) and twists them just a tiny bit, making them funnier and more absurd but keeping them immediately identifiable as infuriating elements of the corporate world. Given this approach, the art is almost an afterthought, which is why a “theme” book like Problem Identified works so well even though it exposes Adams’ past (and, some would add, current) artistic inelegance. “Do you ever just marvel at the fact we get paid to do this?” is a recurring element here. Dogbert, ever alert for exploiting human stupidity, creates a “seminar for management zombies” to teach attendees how to use such words as “paradigm,” “empowerment” and “proactive.” The company decides that employees are its ninth most valuable asset – carbon paper is eighth. The Pointy Haired Boss (PHB) tries out a new motivational technique by requiring each employee to eat a bug – “It’s way more motivational if I pick the bug.” The PHB also requires the department to create an internal Web page that will contain “enough information to be difficult to maintain, but not so much that it’s useful.” And the PHB agrees to cut short a motivational meeting “if you’ll all agree to feel worse in some way.” Throw in Wally’s usual work-avoidance expertise, Alice’s perpetually frustrated super-competence, and Dilbert’s unending bewilderment, and you have yet another collection – the 34^th, actually – in which Adams proves that he has had his finger on the pulse of big-company ridiculousness for more than two decades.

     Richard Thompson’s Cul de Sac is a much newer strip – only two small-size collections so far – and a much, much better-drawn one. Thompson’s observations, though, are just as trenchant as those of Adams. But they focus entirely on suburban family life, to which the workplace is (at least in this strip) quite incidental. Cul de Sac Golden Treasury, the first Thompson book in oversize format, adds value in a way that is different from that used in the latest Dilbert collection. Thompson’s volume re-collects the cartoons previously published in both his first book (Cul de Sac: This Exit) and his second (Children at Play). But it adds something valuable and often very amusing: Thompson’s comments on a number of his strips. He points out the salute to Family Circus in one Sunday entry, talks about “group tours” to the time-out corner in the strip’s preschool, explains that recurring character Dill “sometimes shows signs of having a dark side” because “he’s the smallest of five poorly socialized and semidiabolical brothers,” and repeatedly points out that cheese is funny. Cul de Sac is nominally focused on four-year-old Alice Otterloop (as in “outer loop,” a reference to the Beltway that surrounds Washington, D.C. – the area where Thompson lives and works). But her older brother, Petey, frequently steals the show with his very narrow comfort zone and manifest neuroses (he is proud to be on the list of world-champion picky eaters). Petey’s self-narration at an oboe recital – using a technique popularized by Garry Trudeau in Doonesbury – is a highlight of this collection. But Alice’s brief ability to control bees – and, even more briefly, butterflies, which “in the right hands” are “surprisingly aggressive” – is equally enthralling. So are the strips featuring the well-spoken and perpetually put-upon preschool-class guinea pig, Mr. Danders. And Thompson’s parodies of children’s literature can be out-and-out hilarious: the “Fontanelle” books by “Oswaldo Twee” (modeled on Lemony Snicker’s productions) and the “Little Neuro” comic strip (not exactly “Little Nemo”) that Petey perpetually reads are just two examples. Thompson’s strip is quite literate without being in-your-face about it; his art is unusual in today’s cartooning world (more detailed and better designed, among other things); and his commentaries in Cul de Sac Golden Treasury are treasurable in themselves. The result is a thoroughly winning collection highlighting a thoroughly winning comic strip.

(++++) ANIMAL PURSUITS

The Bat Scientists. By Mary Kay Carson. Photographs by Tom Uhlman. Houghton Mifflin. $18.99.

Bearwalker. By Joseph Bruchac. Illustrations by Sally Wern Comport. Harper. $5.99.

Guardians of Ga’Hoole, Book One: The Capture. By Kathryn Lasky. Scholastic. $5.99.

Animal Rescue Team #2: Special Delivery! By Sue Stauffacher. Illustrated by Priscilla Lamont. Knopf. $12.99.

     One of the most interesting of Houghton Mifflin’s many fascinating “Scientists in the Field” books is Mary Kay Carson’s The Bat Scientists, simply because bats themselves are so amazing and so widely misunderstood. This book is, almost of necessity, largely the story of Merlin Tuttle and the organization he founded, Bat Conservation International. There is no other group quite like this one. Both Tuttle and BCI work tirelessly to get the word out about the importance of bats, to educate people about these wonderfully adapted and extremely beneficial flying mammals, and to argue strenuously for bat protection – which is more crucial than ever now because of a fungal disease called White Nose Syndrome, which is threatening the survival of many bat colonies and perhaps even some entire species. The Bat Scientists discusses how bats live, explains their anatomy (they have the same arm bones as humans, but not in the same proportions), shows some of their many habitats (hollow trees, caves, the areas under bridges), and features beautiful and extremely informative photos by Tom Uhlman. Many bats look grotesque by human standards – one reason people have long feared and hated them – but the extreme closeups in this book will go a long way toward generating empathy for them: a rescued baby red bat drinks milk, its huge eyes wide as it looks at the scientist feeding it; a bat pup licks its mother’s face; bats of multiple species snuggle together in the tight quarters they prefer, getting along better than many squeezed-together humans do; and there are photos showing bats flying (individually and in huge clouds), scientists working to make caves safer for bats and to provide artificial homes (such as bat houses) to attract them, and much more. This is a highly informative book about a unique animal – the world’s only flying mammal – and it is also a call for helping to protect creatures whose unique ecological niche is quite beneficial to humans: some bats eat their own weight in insects every night.

     Bats, although real, have long been the stuff of legend (vampire stories and other types). But they are not the only animals around which legends have grown. Joseph Bruchac, who specializes in creating scary adventure stories built around Native American myths, calls up one that involves a bear – or a creature that is part bear – in Bearwalker, originally published in 2007 and now available in paperback. This is the story of 13-year-old Baron Braun, who has Mohawk ancestry and is the littlest student in his class – two factors that are both important to the tale. Baron has long been fascinated by bears in a positive way, but he is also aware of the legend of a creature that is part human, part bear, and all evil. And on a class camping trip in the Adirondack Mountains, Baron thinks that creature may be stalking him and his classmates. Bearwalker is worth a (+++) rating for its pacing and the background information it offers as part of the story. But there is no especially mystifying mystery here: when characters learn that someone has been leaving messages while claiming to be someone else, and when there is an unexplained explosion trapping the class at remote Camp Chuckamuck, it is pretty obvious that no supernatural creature is behind the events. On the other hand, there is genuine evil roaming about, and Baron does have a frightening encounter with a real bear (a mother protecting her cubs). Baron also uses his ancestry without expecting too much of it: “I’m not a trained tracker. …Just because I was born Indian doesn’t mean I have the instinctual knowledge, like a spider that knows how to spin a web just because it’s a spider. But I do have…two things in particular that I’ve been told by my parents, by great-uncle Jules, and by Grama Kateri. Look and Listen. Simple enough, it seems, but hard to do and do right.” And it is doing those things right that leads Baron both into terrible danger and, heroically, out of it.

     The heroism is of a different sort in the Guardians of Ga’Hoole series, which dates back to 2003 and is now being re-released in connection with an upcoming film. The Ga’Hoole books – there are 15 of them in the main story sequence – are fairly straightforward heroic fantasy, except for their central characters: owls. The first book in the sequence, The Capture, introduces some key characters and many of the settings shown on an included map, including the Island of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree in the middle of the Sea of Hoolemere. The story is a forthright heroic fantasy: young protagonist (Soren) born in a peaceful place where nothing much happens (Tyto) is captured by evil forces and taken to a frightening location, from which he and a friend (Gylfie) must escape. After they do, they meet two other comrades (Twilight and Digger) and begin an epic journey to learn the truth about their world and protect it from danger. These are standard elements of a light-vs.-darkness story, and although Kathryn Lasky uses them well, the whole tale is a fairly standard and predictable one – not in its particulars but in terms of its general direction. Lasky keeps reminding readers that the heroics (and evil deeds) involve owls: “The two little owls’ hearts grew strong, their brains cleared, and their gizzards once again quickened.” Or: “We’ve got to get into that eggorium and the hatchery.” And she is careful to create some specialized vocabulary to reflect the environment: “Grimble, you must be yoicks. It’s not anywhere near the dwenking.” But this is still fairly straightforward (+++) excitement, although middle-grade readers will enjoy it and look forward to the next book, The Journey.

     The only journeys that the members of Carters’ Urban Rescue (CUR) make are in and around the town of Grand River, but there are plenty of small-scale adventures to be had in the vicinity – and Sue Stauffacher tells them so entertainingly (and with so much real-world information slipped in) that Special Delivery! gets a (++++) rating. It is quite different from the series’ first entry, Gator on the Loose! But it is just as enjoyable. Keisha Carter, age 10, is again at the center of animal mysteries, of which there are two this time: something very smelly at the community garden and something (or some things) very angry on Orchard Street. The puzzles are actually pretty mundane: tracing the smell leads to a skunk that has taken up residence where it is not wanted, and the anger is coming from crows that are not letting a mail carrier make deliveries to a particular home. But as in the first book, what happens is only part of the story here. How it happens, to whom it happens and why it happens are the other parts, and Stauffacher’s way of knitting events together (and pulling them apart) is one reason the book works so well. Another is that there is no real evil here: well-meaning people make mistakes (one of which explains the crows’ anger), and in correcting those errors, Keisha and the CUR team get to explain about animal behavior in a story context that makes perfect sense and does not seem to be grafted on in order to provide educational value. The team does figure out how to relocate the skunk, of course, but there is an interesting twist to this part of the story when it turns out that maybe the smell that has been bothering everyone was skunklike but not from the animal after all. Add in some believable interactions among members of the Carter family and between the family and the other residents of Grand River, and you have the second winning entry in a series that shows that little, apparently mundane adventures can be at least as interesting in their way as grand confrontations between good and evil can be in theirs.

(+++) PRETEEN JOURNEYS

The Wonder of Charlie Anne. By Kimberly Newton Fusco. Knopf. $16.99.

Sunshine Picklelime. By Pamela Ellen Ferguson. Illustrated by Christian Slade. Random House. $16.99.

Windblowne. By Stephen Messer. Random House. $16.99.

Rocky Road. By Rose Kent. Knopf. $16.99.

     Inner and outer journeys tend to move in parallel in books for ages 8-12. The outer, physical travel takes many forms, but the inward progress – toward self-awareness and maturity – is usually pretty much the same from book to book. These four novels are, on the surface, as different as can be, but their protagonists all take the same trip internally, from naïveté and confusion to greater understanding of themselves and the world they live in.

     Charlie Anne’s world is the tough one of the Great Depression, and her family life is not easy, either. Her mother has died, her father and brother have gone north to find work building roads, and her little brother has been sent to live with an aunt and uncle. This leaves Charlie Anne at the family farm and in the care of her mother’s cousin, Mirabel – doing an endless series of tasks that take her away from enjoyable pastimes such as talking to farm animals and to her mother’s spirit (Mama’s grave is by the river). But then a neighbor, Mr. Jolly, brings home a forward-thinking, trousers-wearing new wife named Rosalyn – and a daughter, Phoebe, who is black. More importantly to Charlie Anne, Phoebe and she are the same age, and at last there is someone to talk to, to share things with, to make Charlie Anne’s life seem less constricted. But to the townspeople, the only thing that matters is the color of Phoebe’s skin, and Charlie Anne needs to learn important lessons about prejudice, about standing up for what is right, and about growing up by knowing when to challenge adults, before she can attain the maturity toward which, without fully knowing it, she has been striving. Kimberly Newton Fusco’s writing can be preachy – there is no question of who the good guys and bad guys are here, and Rosalyn talks in language more appropriate for the 1970s than the 1940s: “We do not need to be defined by our circumstances. We can make things different, we can change things, even climb right up and out of the boxes that some people want to put us in.” But the obviousness of the style and some plot elements will not diminish the charms of The Wonder of Charlie Anne for the preteen girls who will be its primary audience.

     They will be the primary audience for Sunshine Picklelime as well. This is the first book for young children by peripatetic journalist Pamela Ellen Ferguson, whose nine previous books (fiction and nonfiction) were for adults. Subtitled “A Story of Life, Laughter, and Lemonade,” the novel strives for cuteness from the start, and often attains it. PJ Picklelime, a little girl with big hair, lives in a village that seems to exist on the boundary between magic and the everyday; and that is where her life perches, too. PJ is one of those eternally perky, upbeat girls who talks to birds and gives one of them, a yellow warbler, a temporary home in her big crop of black hair. PJ later cuts her hair at one point (to help clean up an oil spill), and she makes lemonade that has some very special effects, and everything is simply delightful and quirky – until dark clouds appear, first in the form of fights between PJ’s parents and then in the death of a friend. Now PJ needs to confront reality, tinged with its inevitable sadness, while trying to preserve her happy-go-lucky nature; and this proves far from easy, even when she tries to find out how her friends and neighbors cope with life’s periodic reverses. Eventually, thanks to friends both human and animal – and her own inner resilience – PJ finds a way to integrate her winning personality with the difficulties that she knows she will surely encounter, preserving her inner brightness in a less naïve, which is to say more grown-up, way.

     There is even more of magic in Windblowne, which is both the title of the book and the name of the town where the protagonist, Oliver, lives. It is a town where kite-flying skill is crucial, but Oliver is like Charles Schulz’s Charlie Brown: every kite he tries to fly crashes. A major kite-flying festival is coming up, and Oliver wants desperately to prove himself, so he tracks down his reclusive great-uncle Gilbert, a former champion, to get help. But Gilbert is kidnapped (by kites) and Oliver, searching for him, journeys to another world (yes, by kite) to search for him. There he finds a kind of negative town of Windblowne, where Gilbert’s evil twin is destroying oak trees to obtain energy that he plans to use to rule the world – while Oliver’s Gilbert has been banished. Stephen Messer’s book has all the elements of a grand, heroic and potentially very amusing journey, but he plays the tale straight throughout, which somewhat undermines its effectiveness. This is Messer’s debut novel, and the entire adventure seems derivative not only of Diana Wynne Jones (whose work helped inspire the book) but also of other modern post-Tolkien fantasists. The use of kites is clever and offbeat, and there are occasional flashes of amusement in the writing: “‘I’m imagining things again,’ he whispered to the kite. The kite offered no opinion.” But by and large, Messer takes the story seriously, whether Oliver is being yanked by a kite from place to place, captured by surly guards, or trying to interpret an ancient manuscript while being pursued by the bad Lord Gilbert’s hunters. His eventual triumph over evil, if not at the kite-flying festival, is no surprise; neither is his return to home, wiser and more experienced than before. Many of the settings of Windblowne are unusual; its plot is much less so.

     Nor is the plot of Rocky Road anything special. Here again are family issues: single mom (Pop “stormed out for good with all his stuff” years ago) raising the book’s protagonist, Tess, and Tess’s deaf little brother, Jordan. The twist in Rose Kent’s novel is that Ma lives by coming up with a series of get-rich-quick schemes that inevitably fail, landing the family in financial hardship. But now she has a get-not-so-rich-not-so-quickly idea: move to rundown downtown Schenectady, New York, and open an ice-cream parlor. Kent gives short shrift to the irresponsibility of this whole way of raising children; and even though she makes Tess well aware of the family’s financial problems and Ma’s periodic collapses (days when she cannot even get out of bed), the author stays determinedly upbeat and has Tess do so as well, at least most of the time. The title of the book is, of course, a giveaway of the plot, since it is not only an ice-cream flavor but also a description of the family’s life – including the notions that 1) the road may be rocky, but the eventual taste will be sweet; and 2) it is the simple pleasures in life, such as ice cream and family, that really matter. The ice-cream parlor, called A Cherry on Top, turns out, of course, to be more expensive than Ma ever figured (lease, business insurance, jukebox, dipping cabinet, and of course all the ingredients). But in this town, Tess is growing up and really getting involved in things on her own (notably peer mediation); and eventually everything works out, thanks to a combination of a Cinco de Mayo celebration, an adventure with a turtle, and Tess’s determination to make the Resuscitate State Street Association a success. A nice “Smattering of Ice Cream Recipes from A Cherry on Top” provides a sweet postlude to a story that ends as happily as readers will expect and desire, despite the very expectable bumps along the way.