(++++) WAGNERIAN WONDERS

Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Albert Dohmen, baritone; Georg Zeppenfeld, bass; Dietrich Henschel, bass; Robert Dean Smith, tenor; Peter Sonn, tenor; Edith Haller, soprano; Michelle Breedt, mezzo-soprano; Matti Salminen, bass; Rundfunkchor Berlin and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Marek Janowski. PentaTone. $59.99 (4 SACDs).

Wagner: Parsifal. Evgeny Nikitin, baritone; Dimitry Ivashchenko, bass; Franz-Josef Selig, bass; Christian Elsner, tenor; Eike Wilm Schulte, baritone; Michelle DeYoung, mezzo-soprano; Rundfunkchor Berlin and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Marek Janowski. PentaTone. $59.99 (4 SACDs).

     Something truly extraordinary is happening here. PentaTone is in the process of releasing the 10 best-known Wagner operas, the set to be completed next year for the bicentennial of Wagner’s birth – and Marek Janowski is establishing himself as one of the great Wagner conductors. These second and third releases are live recordings of concert performances from 2011 (the first release, Der Fliegende Holländer, was from 2010), and the casts vary and can be nitpicked, but none of that matters. Janowski understands Wagner, understands each opera as a separate unit that is nevertheless part of a magnificent oeuvre, and drills down so deeply into the meaning of the music that the net effect, time and again, is simply splendid. And PentaTone’s outstanding SACD sound is nearly perfect for Wagner, whose music requires as much attention to the softest passages – including silences – as to the loudest. The marvelous playing of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the attentively idiomatic singing of the Rundfunkchor Berlin, the excellent booklet essays and the complete libretti combine to produce an experience so vivid that listeners will easily be able to transport themselves to the operas’ scenes and become absorbed in them, even though the performances here recorded used no scenery at all.

     So intense is the experience of these recordings that listeners will find highlights of the works beyond the standard ones. In Die Meistersinger, for example, Hans Sachs’ Wahn! Wahn! in Act III is simply extraordinary as sung by Albert Dohmen (listed as a baritone, although he was designated a bass-baritone in Der Fliegende Holländer and sings in that range here as well). The expressiveness of his praise for mein liebes Nürnberg is on the same level as the gorgeous evocation of springtime and love in Morgenlich leuchtend as sung by Walther von Stolzing (Robert Dean Smith) later in the act. Indeed, one of the things that Janowski does remarkably well here is to balance the tenor hero with the opera’s real central character, Sachs, whom Wagner clearly based on himself and whose portrayal was both a love paean and a farewell to Mathilde Wesendonck, whom Wagner clearly adored even though there is continuing uncertainty as to whether she was his mistress. Sachs is an amazing character – it is almost impossible for that not to come through in performance – but he looms so large that he tends to overshadow Walther and everyone else much of the time. Not here, where he is, if not first among equals, at least first among others who are very worthy in their own right. Eva (Edith Haller) is part of this, too: more of an object than a central character, in this performance she attains genuineness and great beauty in the two arias in which she makes it clear that it is Sachs, durch dich erwacht (“by you awakened”), who is dearest to her even though she will happily marry Walther (surely this too reflects Wagner and Mathilde, who stayed with her husband, one of Wagner’s patrons, no matter what she and Wagner meant to each other).

     The fact that the performance is outstanding does not mean that it is perfect. Dohmen misses some of the gruff humor of the hilarious scene in which his hammering constantly interrupts the would-be serenade of Beckmesser (Dietrich Henschel), and Henschel himself is not as over-the-top as he could be. The famous prelude to Act I is less stately and impressive than it ought to be, although the prelude to Act III is excellent. And Smith’s voice actually cracks once during his first-act song. Indeed, the performance as a whole gets better as it progresses, from the warmth and intimacy of Act II through to the end. Nitpicks and occasional missteps aside, though – issues with live performances are inevitable – the overall impressiveness of Janowski’s Meistersinger is quite something to hear.

     So is Janowski’s Parsifal. This is a deliberately paced but never draggy reading with a different cast of Wagnerian specialists than in Meistersinger or Der Fliegende Holländer, but once again a very aptly chosen roster with real understanding of Wagner’s music and generally fine vocal sound. Wagner’s final opera remains one of his most controversial, with arguments about whether the libretto is or is not traditionally Christian, does or does not contain considerable anti-Semitism, and is or is not sunk by its own internal contradictions (how did Titurel end up with a son, Amfortas, in a world where sexual contact with women is de facto evidence of unholiness?). What is inarguable, though, is the sublimity of the music and the extraordinarily tight-knit nature of the score – the interrelationship of the leitmotifs here is beyond anything else in Wagner, and so are the moves beyond tonality into evanescence (starting with a Prelude that, if it not supposed to put the audience to sleep, is surely intended to lull listeners into a sense of otherworldliness). Janowski’s attentiveness to instrumental effects and the frequent chamber-music-like elements of Parsifal is remarkable, and most of the singers do a fine job of trying to breathe some life into their unidimensional characters. Kundry, the only one in the opera who seems fully alive, is well sung by Michelle DeYoung, although listeners familiar with earlier recordings featuring Waltraud Meier’s deeply felt and beautifully projected handling of the role may find DeYoung somewhat pale. Eike Wilm Schulte makes a fine Klingsor, perhaps not filled with menace but certainly monomaniacal in his determination to take the Grail for his own. The “good guys” are somewhat more colorless. Gurnemanz (Franz-Josef Selig) has the most lines, and knits the first and third acts together; and there is certainly passion in Selig’s singing, although at times his voice wavers a little. Dimitry Ivashchenko, who handles the small part of Titurel with world-weary intensity, might have been a better choice as Gurnemanz – a role he has sung elsewhere with considerable success. Christian Elsner is fine as Parsifal, a part as thankless as it is central: its primary characteristics are bewilderment and tentativeness, which Elsner projects effectively. In the equally important, equally thankless role of the ever-complaining Amfortas, Evgeny Nikitin sings with such vocal strength that he comes across as somewhat too intense for a character supposed to be agonized both physically and spiritually. The Flower Maidens scene – said to have been Wagner’s favorite in the opera – is especially well handled here, through the contrast of Elsner’s naïveté with the surface sweetness and underlying danger of the magical women. The overall performance is actually more consistent than that of Meistersinger: it is strong from start to finish. Still to come in this exemplary series are Lohengrin, Tristan, Tannhäuser and the four Ring operas. Even without Rienzi, which cries out for a top-notch new recording, PentaTone’s releases are shaping up as a major highlight of the 200^th anniversary of Wagner’s birth.

(++++) SOMETHING SARDONIC, SOMETHING DEMONIC

Pale Demon. By Kim Harrison. Harper Voyager. $26.99.

A Perfect Blood. By Kim Harrison. Harper Voyager. $26.99.

The Hollows Insider. By Kim Harrison. Harper Voyager. $25.99.

     Some authors are almost too good: readers cannot help but wonder how they can top themselves in their next book, or even stay at the same level they have attained. That’s about the only problem that Kim Harrison has in her novels of the Hollows, of which she has produced 10 in less than five years – a remarkable achievement in itself. Harrison is the nom de plume (or better, in this context, the nom de guerre) of Dawn Cook, who also writes under her own name; it is Cook’s Harrison alter ego who produces urban fantasy novels that are remarkable for their depth of characterization, their believability, their psychological astuteness, and the fact that every one of them is a thrill ride and hard-to-put-down roller-coaster of a read.

     Harrison has a thing for Clint Eastwood, which makes sense in light of the action orientation and rather lurid settings of the Hollows novels. The two most recent books have, as usual, titles recalling Eastwood films: Pale Demon reflects the 1985 movie Pale Rider, while A Perfect Blood recalls the 1993 film A Perfect World. Eastwood is a preacher in the first of these movies and a Texas Ranger in the second, and there are some parallels between those roles and the ones that Harrison’s central character, Rachel Morgan, assumes in the novels. But it would be a mistake to take those parallels – or any parallels – too far, because Harrison creates characters and situations that are quite unlike those in films (Eastwood’s or anyone else’s) or other novels.

     The linchpin of all the Hollows stories is Rachel, who starts out as a witch and bounty hunter in a world where humans and supernatural beings live side by side (often uneasily), and who steadily becomes something more as the stories progress. What is a bit unsettling about the two latest novels in the series is that Rachel, who narrates all the books, is often not the most interesting character – and that is quite something to discover in her narration, considering how self-involved and petulant (sometimes to the point of childishness) she has shown herself capable of being. Harrison does a wonderful job of derailing expectations and turning apparently ordinary plot elements into things new and different. Pale Rider is a road-trip book, with Rachel heading west from Cincinnati for a trial by the Coven of Moral and Ethical Standards for her use of black magic. With her are the pixy Jenks and living vampire Ivy, Rachel’s partners and backups and some of Harrison’s most intricate and interesting creations – and Trent Kalamack, a tremendously wealthy elf whose ties to Rachel date back to their mutual childhood and whose unscrupulous, even murderous business methods have disgusted Rachel from the start, even when she has been forced to admire their effectiveness. The love-hate relationship between Rachel and Trent has been bubbling for some time, and in Pale Demon it tilts at last toward love, although Harrison does not go for the easy or obvious in these books and it is by no means assured that they will ever become a traditional couple. More than that: they may become a couple, but certainly not a traditional one. Trent is traveling with Rachel, Ivy and Jenks for reasons of his own – mysterious ones, as usual – and the first part of the book has a fair amount of banter, some of it rather juvenile. In truth, the mystery here is unnecessary and somewhat overdone: one consistent niggling flaw in Harrison’s generally excellent plotting is its dependence on characters not telling each other things that become a big deal but would be much less of one if they were revealed earlier. In any case, things get super-serious in the latter part of the work, as usual in Hollows novels, and eventually Rachel is fully in touch with the demonic part of herself (which we have watched emerging in earlier series entries) and makes a decision that fits her personality but is also rather odd: she dies, or rather accepts being thought dead by the demon collective, thereby taking some huge risks while distancing herself from a whole series of events and other characters, and from her own power. A few things in the book do not ring true, such as the revelation of just how much of a killer Trent is – and Rachel not seeming to care much, even though she herself will not kill unless in mortal danger. And there is a split, or maybe not a split, between Rachel and Ivy, that is pretty much left hanging: it is certainly true that Ivy and Jenks are moving on with their lives in ways that Rachel cannot seem to, for all the fact that she has, in terms of her powers and awareness, changed far more than has anyone else in the Hollows series. Still, there are bound to be loose ends in the middle books of an extended series (Harrison plans to write 12 or 13 Hollows novels in all), and Rachel’s consistent voice and sometimes-irritating but very genuine-seeming personality are as clearly foundational in Pale Demon as in earlier books.

     They carry through to A Perfect Blood as well. Here something new and nasty has been added: a distinctly unpleasant group of human fanatics called HAPA (the rather awkwardly named Humans Against Paranormals Association). These characters are doing grisly murders in an attempt to create demons of their own, which they can then use to destroy all Inderlanders (paranormal species) and return humans to the preeminence that they had before the paranormals emerged from the shadows. Shades of J.K. Rowling’s Death Eaters and their determination to extirpate Mudbloods! The HAPA element drives the plot here but is really not the most interesting element of it. The early part of A Perfect Blood is rather too focused on establishing what is going on: the novel picks up five months after the cliffhanger ending of Pale Demon, and it turns out that Rachel has avoided Trent for all that time (why?), and Harrison uses the first couple of hundred pages to introduce new characters and create the foundation for the balance of the novel. The usual headlong pacing of Hollows books slows down here, but once this section is over, A Perfect Blood quickly becomes just as exciting as the earlier series entries. The blood referred to in the title is Rachel’s, which HAPA needs for its fiendish plans and which is important because Rachel in her childhood had a disease called Rosewood Syndrome, which did not kill her only because Trent’s father found a way to save her life (this is all part of the backstory of Rachel and Trent – whose relationship continues to progress here, which makes their five months of non-contact even more puzzling).

     What Rachel does in A Perfect Blood is interesting because she acts, for a time, virtually without powers – most have been stripped from her (with her agreement, thanks to a bracelet made by Trent). Having officially died, Rachel has practical problems to handle (such as being unable to get a car registration and driver’s license) as well as HAPA-related murders to confront. What she does, and it is an interesting twist in the plot, is to get the competing law-enforcement groups (Inderlander Security and the human-run Federal Inderlander Bureau) to work together, which is no small feat, even if the agencies continue to have independent and often conflicting agendas. Once Harrison gets the developmental material out of the way, A Perfect Blood picks up tremendously, although it has to be said that Rachel’s unremitting stupidity in her constant refusal to listen to anyone’s reasonable suggestions to protect her and those around her really goes too far this time – while her determination not to kill anyone, which became idiotic in Pale Demon in her final confrontation with a viciously murderous creature that ate people alive and destroyed their souls, reaches a point of pathology in A Perfect Blood. It is getting much harder for readers to sympathize with Rachel as she leaves a fast-growing trail of bodies in her wake while indulging in self-praise because she is not directly responsible for the deaths – only indirectly. Still, Harrison manages once again to build to a climax that is satisfying in itself while also leaving a number of questions unanswered – and pointing the way toward the next novel. Apart from the matter of Rachel’s behavior, it is certainly possible to pick elements of these books’ narratives and plot structures apart, and A Perfect Blood has more plot holes than most of the Hollows novels. But even when Harrison’s Hollows books are flawed, they remain gripping in their depiction of a consistent, believable alternative world whose characters, human and supernatural alike, are motivated by identifiable adult emotions (including lust, which is an ever-present part of Rachel’s makeup even when she does not act on it) and are just as mixed-up, uncertain, occasionally misdirected, naïve and even stupid as humans are in the world we know. Harrison has a lot of plot lines to pull together in the final two or three books of this series – and hopefully will do so with the narrative skill that rarely seems to desert her.

     And speaking of narrative skill, Harrison uses it in a different and distinctly entertaining way in The Hollows Insider, a sort of concordance to the series in which she presents, as the book’s subtitle says, “New Fiction, Facts, Maps, Murders, and More in the World of Rachel Morgan.” This book is an adjunct to the Hollows sequence itself, and is for existing fans who want to delve a little more deeply (or at least a little more clearly) into elements of the world of the Hollows than they are able to during the complex and frenetically paced novels. The packaging is a big part of the charm here: the book contains pages that look hand-written, newspaper stories and columns that look as if they were cut from newspapers, interoffice memos, copies of arrest warrants, photos that look like mug shots, song lyrics, even a cookbook section (Betty Bob’s Everyday Recipes for the Stovetop Idiot), excerpts from the magazines Witch Weekly and JOLLS: The Journal of Ley Line Studies, and a short book of charms (101 Earth Charms for Home and Office). The way this is all pulled together is very clever: a blogger and journalist named Devin Crossman is accidentally caught in one of Rachel’s spells during her days working for Inderlander Security. Readers may have wondered about collateral damage from all the Hollows mayhem – and now they meet someone who was collateral damage. There is no permanent harm done, but when Crossman, who is human, tries to find out who spelled him, and gets stonewalled, his journalistic instincts kick in, and he is soon looking into the whole paranormal world, including the different types of nonhumans in it and a number of specific characters from the Hollows series. The format of the book makes reading it a great deal of fun, and it is packed with information that readers of the Hollows novels have been able to glean only a bit at a time. It is not, however, for novices in Harrison’s world, because the many events to which Crossman refers in his increasingly wide-ranging investigation are central to the novels but not fully explained in The Hollows Insider. Of course, they cannot be explained in this context – that would require far too much space and would not gibe with this book’s “investigative” format. But this means, for example, that the wrenching story of the final death of Kisten Felps, who was the vampire lover of both Ivy and Rachel, is here reduced to a short newspaper obituary notice, a few comments by Crossman, and a copy of the “certificate of second death.” The Hollows Insider may have some readers rushing back to early books in the sequence to refresh their memories about the events that Crossman explores. And by the way, Crossman is not always a reliable narrator or an unbiased one – that is one thing that makes this book interesting. Another is that Crossman catches the attention of none other than Trent, who tries to figure out a way to stop him from digging into certain matters too deeply – even if that means hiring him away from the newspaper so as to silence him. This is one angle that did not appear in the main series of novels, and there are others as well. The result is that The Hollows Insider is packed with information that elucidates Harrison’s created world while also being a lot of fun to read in its own right – provided that you understand the many references it makes to the novels in the main sequence of Rachel Morgan stories.

(++++) BABY ANIMALS’ SEASONAL DELIGHTS

Duck & Goose: Here Comes the Easter Bunny! By Tad Hills. Schwartz & Wade. $6.99.

10 Easter Egg Hunters. By Janet Schulman. Illustrated by Linda Davick. Knopf. $6.99.

10 Hungry Rabbits. By Anita Lobel. Knopf. $9.99.

Little Bunny. By Lisa McCue. Random House. $5.99.

The Bunny’s Night-Light: A Glow-in-the-Dark Search. By Geoffrey Hayes. Random House. $11.99.

Peepsqueak! By Leslie Ann Clark. Harper. $12.99.

     Spring is approaching, and with it Easter, a longtime celebration of fertility, rebirth and renewal even before it became a Christian holiday. In the book world, the coming of spring and of Easter heralds the approach of adorable animals, especially bunnies and chicks, long associated with the season and the holiday. So Tad Hills’ latest tale of Duck & Goose has a distinct holiday tie-in. The story in this amusing board book actually has something of a Christmas angle, although not explicitly: Duck & Goose are trying to hide so the Easter Bunny won’t see them while distributing eggs. But just as kids waiting for Santa Claus always fall asleep, giving Saint Nick a chance to drop by unseen, so it happens for Duck & Goose. After exploring places to hide, such as a pond or mound of dirt, they decide to stay in the meadow, disguised as trees – but when they fall asleep at night, the Easter Bunny (seen as a silhouette in the background) shows up, leaving beautiful eggs everywhere; and in the morning, surrounded by eggs, there is nothing for Duck & Goose to do but hold up signs saying “Happy Easter.” The friends’ befuddled expressions and well-meaning attempts to find a place to hide are amusing and enjoyable, and therefore so is the entire book.

     The eggs are already hidden when 10 Easter Egg Hunters go searching for them. The Easter Bunny shows up here at the start of the book, after which the only bunny around is Baby, in a bunny costume; but the 10 children searching in Janet Schulman’s board book are adorable in themselves, especially as portrayed by Linda Davick. The book provides a count of brightly colored eggs on right-hand pages, with simple rhyming text on the left: “Lily sniffs a daffodil,/ Sees an egg on the windowsill.” The kids – big-eyed and big-headed – find eggs inside and outdoors, in a tree and by a fountain, and eventually, in the book’s cleverest rhyme, “And now for something really delicious,/ A big chocolate egg for sweet Aloysius.” A final parade of happy children in brightly colored outfits makes a yummy ending.

     Anita Lobel’s 10 Hungry Rabbits is a counting book, too, but without a direct tie-in to Easter. The story is certainly springlike, though, being focused on fresh vegetables that Mama Rabbit needs for the soup pot so she can make dinner. So off the little rabbits go, finding peppers and tomatoes and carrots and all sorts of other good things for Mama Rabbit to cook. On each page, Lobel shows a big picture of what each bunny finds; below it, there is a smaller picture of the little rabbit discovering the ingredient. After the finding and counting, the hungry little rabbits stand eagerly in the kitchen as Mama Rabbit chops the ingredients and makes a big, big pot of delicious vegetable soup, which the whole family sits down to enjoy at the end. The simple, straightforward story is winning, and Lobel’s pleasant pictures of the rabbit family go well with her illustrations of the food they find and prepare.

     There is only one little rabbit in Little Bunny, a board-book edition of a 1982 book from the Lisa McCue’s Fuzzytails series. But this bunny too is a charmer. Drawn more realistically than Lobel’s rabbits, but possessed of human-like expressions and expressiveness, McCue’s bunny does rabbit-like things with a touch of human-like flair. “Where are you going, little Fuzzytail Bunny?” asks McCue at the start, following up that question with a series of others, such as, “Are you going to the park after the children have gone home?” (showing an empty playground with the bunny happily nibbling on flowers). All that happens in the book is that the bunny explores its world, seeing and sniffing various things, then eventually runs home to “snuggle with your brothers and sisters” in a hollow tree. The book is easy to read and very easy to enjoy.

     The rabbits in The Bunny’s Night-Light are adorable, too, but are fully of the anthropomorphic type, with pajamas and robes and newspapers and a house and a boat. They also have glow-in-the-dark items all around, none of which solves Bunny’s problem: he cannot sleep because of “too much dark,” and needs a night-light. So his father searches for one with him. The moon (which has a bunny face and seems to have bunny ears, thanks to clouds passing by) is too bright; the stars are too twinkly; fireflies are “too busy.” A glow-worm is occupied being its own night-light, and the light on a fishing boat is too small. But eventually, Bunny and Papa, with some help from Mama, come up with just the right night-light – charmingly – and Bunny goes happily to sleep. The simple good-night tale makes a sweet bedtime story, and the glow-in-the-dark feature makes it extra enjoyable: stars, a street light, the glow-worm, and other elements in Geoffrey Hayes’ tale really do glow, brightly enough to be seen by a sleepy child but not so brightly as to make it hard for him or her to nod off.

     And when that child wakes up, will he or she be as energetic as Peepsqueak? Here as in several of the bunny books, there is no direct tie-in to spring or Easter, but the energy here makes it clear that this is certainly a story about, ahem, springing into action. Leslie Ann Clark repeatedly comments of Peepsqueak, “He was on the move!” From the moment he hatches, wearing a bright red shirt bearing the initials “P.S.,” this little chick wants to do only one thing: fly! He is absolutely, 100% determined to fly way up in the sky, and never mind such nay-sayers as Big Brown Cow, Big Sheep and Yellow Duck. They say he can’t possibly fly high, but Peepsqueak is determined – and every time he fails and lands in the soft grass (after he tries to launch himself from a stone wall, a hill, even a tower of other chicks), Peepsqueak is on the move again, looking for some other way to get up in the air. How he finds one is delightful, how the other animals react to his eventual success is wonderful, and what Peepsqueak decides to do when he goes right back “on the move” toward another accomplishment makes for an amusing and thoroughly enjoyable conclusion. The energy of spring will soon be making itself evident in regions emerging from wintry chill, and Peepsqueak’s enthusiasm will be mirrored by that of many human boys and girls – hopefully having just as good a time as this little chick does.

(++++) TRAUMATIC TALES FROM THE REAL WORLD

Buried Alive! How 33 Miners Survived 69 Days Deep under the Chilean Desert. By Elaine Scott. Clarion. $17.99.

Scandalous! 50 Shocking Events You Should Know About (so you can impress your friends). By Hallie Fryd. Zest Books. $13.99.

     Scary stuff happens every day in real life. “Reality” books for young people have to decide not only what to tell but also how to tell it. At their very best, as in Elaine Scott’s book about the disaster in Chile’s San José mine in August 2010, these works explain how and why bad things happen and how people rise to the occasion – or fail to do so. Scott has the benefit of a really amazing story, in which all 33 miners trapped 2,300 feet underground survived for 17 days without any contact with the outside world, and then persevered once contact was made with them and the slow extraction process began. For a total of 69 days, the longest time miners have ever spent buried beneath the earth and survived, this was a story less of super-heroism (although that is what books and movies are tempted to turn it into, and some have) than of dogged persistence. It is a tale of making the best of a horrible situation, of having faith in oneself and one’s companions, and of doing whatever is necessary to make it through a time whose horrors readers will barely be able to imagine. It is very much to Scott’s credit that she finds a way to help readers understand what the miners went through, thanks in part to her own limited experience of being inside a mine with lights extinguished: “There is no darkness like that. You are just wrapped in black.” But for the Chilean miners, the darkness – to which they were somewhat accustomed because of their profession – was only a small part of what they faced. A partial collapse, a blocked escape route with an improperly built ladder that was supposed to lead to the surface – these elements led to the miners, who were enormously lucky to have survived the initial collapse, finding themselves in an emergency refuge at the deepest part of the mine. But there was little ventilation and far, far too little food and water, and no way for them to contact anyone on the surface to say they were alive.

     And here is where there was heroism, spread among many of the men and focused in particular in their foreman, Luis (Don Lucho) Urzúa. His sheer determination and his leadership abilities made it possible for the men to make it through those first terrible 17 days, when no one knew if they would ever be found. Rationing the limited food from the beginning, having the men eat their meager meals together so everyone knew that everyone else received the same amount, preventing ill will between men who had some antipathy to each other because of their different jobs, creating teams with specific survival-related responsibilities, Don Lucho gave the men a sense of purpose that distracted them, as much as possible, from the very real chance that they would not be found in time and would all die almost half a mile beneath the earth. Scott relates their harrowing story, interweaving information on mining and mine rescues with details about the lives of individual miners and their families, effectively humanizing a frightening tale that is illustrated with some of the absolutely remarkable photos that the men themselves took during their weeks underground. Scott explains how contact was eventually made, and why it was so difficult to achieve, and then gets into information on how supplies were eventually gotten to the men, and how three different methods of reaching them had to be tried – with the one that succeeded being run by two American entrepreneurs who were so averse to being glorified or deemed heroic that they left the site as soon as their drill broke through to the rescue chamber. Buried Alive! is an absolutely amazing story on every level – but it is a real-world story, and Scott does not shrink from giving readers the far-from-uplifting aftermath of the rescue: although a mine owner not involved with this particular mine gave every rescued miner money and a motorcycle, 15 of the men ended up unemployed, five took up jobs selling vegetables or groceries, and four actually returned to mining, feeling they had no alternative. This is the real world on every level: elements of drama, events melding deep fear and horror with celebration, and then a mundane and in many ways unsatisfactory aftermath. Buried Alive! details all those parts of the miners’ story with remarkable cogency and skill.

     Far more superficial and celebrity-oriented, the (+++) Scandalous! is designed, as its subtitle says, to present brief information on a variety of “shocking events” from 1906 to 2000. Hallie Fryd gives basic facts on each event in a format that includes a newspaper-like opening called “The Scoop!” and a spiral-notebook-like list of “The Players,” plus photos and quotations and a “Why We Still Care” section. And for each event mentioned in brief, several others are discussed even more quickly. For example, the 1950 story of the Rosenbergs, who were executed for spying, includes “More Famous Spies” – Nathan Hale (1776), Aldrich Ames (1994) and Robert Hanssen (2001), each of them getting a short paragraph. The actual descriptions of the main events in the book are introduced with the words, “What Went Down,” in an attempt to somehow make the older information seem trendy. In fact, readers of this book who enjoy modern gossip will find that not much has changed in the past century or so: the earliest item is about architect Stanford White being shot dead by the wealthy husband of White’s former mistress. And many other items are of the tabloid-fodder variety as well: film star “Fatty” Arbuckle accused of murder (1921), Charlie Chaplin accused of being the father of the child of a woman who stalked him (1943), rock star Jerry Lee Lewis marries his under-age cousin (1958), the daughter of movie star Lana Turner stabs Turner’s boyfriend to death (also 1958), and so on. A line about the Turner incident is similar to ones that recur throughout the book: “The shocking and juicy story made headlines across the country.” More-recent scandals may be ones that readers already know, or have heard about in school or modern-history books: President Nixon resigning because of Watergate (1974), the sex-and-money scandal of televangelist Jim Bakker (1987), Pete Rose banned from baseball for gambling (1989), sexual harassment alleged against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas (1991), Michael Jackson accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy (1993), President Clinton’s sex scandal and impeachment (1998), and more. The prose here tends to the overheated, obviously quite deliberately: “The trials that followed were a sensation from the start.” “The trial…turned into a dramatic showdown…” “The judge immediately closed the courtroom to the public and the press to keep the case under control.” “The congressional hearings made front-page news.” The suggestion of Scandalous! that these stories are fodder for impressing one’s friends is pretty thin – there is not really very much in the book that isn’t still being done by today’s mostly minor celebrities. There is some genuinely important material here, such as Upton Sinclair’s exposure of the meat-packing industry in his book The Jungle (1906), but it is unlikely to be as interesting to readers as the stories about Elvis Presley shaking his hips (1956) and the murders of rappers Biggie and Tupac (1996). The more things change on some levels, the more they remain the same on others – and one thing that has stayed the same, for the past century and far longer, is the sort of behavior given the once-over here…and many people’s continuing fascination with it.

(++++) GARDEN GIRLS AND GROWNUPS

The Little Gardener. By Jan Gerardi. Random House. $6.99.

Gluten-Free Vegan Comfort Food: 125 Simple and Satisfying Recipes, from “Mac and Cheese” to Chocolate Cupcakes. By Susan O’Brien. Da Capo. $18.

Let Them Eat Vegan! 200 Deliciously Satisfying Plant-Powered Recipes for the Whole Family. By Dreena Burton. Da Capo. $20.

The Organic Nanny’s Guide to Raising Healthy Kids. By Barbara Rodriguez with Eve Adamson. Da Capo. $16.

     Things are so much simpler when you are young. Adults may struggle with dietary preferences, health issues related to food, how much meat to consume (if any), and other matters, but for young children, all that is necessary is a sense of wonder and some basic information, and lo and behold, a delightful book. The Little Gardener is in the Random House “Teenie Greenies” series, which aims to make kids ecologically aware and involved in a more-sustainable life. Jan Gerardi’s simple, attractive board book uses easy rhymes and big flaps to show kids what is involved in planting a garden in which vegetables and flowers grow. For example, a left-hand page shows the little girl featured in the book with a watering can and a pail filled with an apple core, banana peel and similar items. The right-hand page has a flap with a big-eyed frog and big-eyed worm on top, and they appear in different poses when the flap is lifted. The text goes: “Compost. Water. Rain. Sun. Seeds sprout/ one by one.” The last part of this, starting with “Sun,” appears under the flap, along with a drawing of three just-sprouting plants. The whole short book is like this: simple, yes, but accurate in depicting how gardens grow and showing ways that kids can do a lot of the planting themselves. The eco-awareness even extends to insect control: the little girl has to get rid of slugs, so she simply uses salty water – no chemicals. The Little Gardener is a sweet little book that parents and children alike can enjoy.

     Adult life gets more complicated. Grownups have to decide not only what they want to eat but also what they can eat – there are both physical and psychological factors that come into play in an age in which food is not merely fuel but is often a statement of personal or political philosophy. Generally, people can decide whether or not to become vegetarians, but becoming a vegan is frequently a way of making a statement about one’s beliefs and attitudes. On the other hand, gluten sensitivity is a real physical problem (although there is some argument as to whether it is as widespread as it now seems to be or if it is being over-reported – or perhaps was under-reported in the past). Susan O’Brien’s new cookbook tries to cover a lot of bases all at once. Three bases, in fact. Gluten-Free Vegan Comfort Food is clearly not intended for a general audience: it is for people who have decided to pursue a vegan lifestyle and who must avoid gluten for health reasons – but who still identify certain forms of edibles as “comfort foods” and would like to consume something that approximates their taste and mouth feel. Whether O’Brien has, um, bitten off more than she can chew in this (+++) book will be a matter of opinion. People who are really determined to have food that is both vegan and gluten-free will applaud the recipes, but others may find this work is really for a very small niche of eaters. Readers will need to have ready access to such ingredients as chia seeds, vegan buttery spread, coconut palm sugar, sorghum flour and vegan chips – those are just some of the items that go into “Best Banana and Chocolate Chip Cookies.” The “Mac and Cheese” mentioned in the subtitle includes, among other things, arrowroot, coconut milk, Tofutti sour cream, Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet nacho cheese alternative, gluten-free pasta and vegan margarine or coconut oil. Some recipes here combine common ingredients pleasingly – spinach salad and fresh pea and asparagus risotto, for example. But are those really “comfort foods”? The recipes that most people will readily identify as comfort-food substitutes tend to be the ones requiring a lot of substitutions – using ingredients that some vegans may already have on hand but that others may find bothersome to assemble. For instance, “Fried ‘Chicken’ Nuggets” are made with gluten-free tempeh, vegan chicken broth powder, gluten-free cornflakes, sorghum flour, potato flour, and nutritional yeast, plus a few other things. Determined vegans who need gluten-free recipes will find the ones here useful only if their idea of “comfort foods” matches O’Brien’s. This is one cookbook worth thumbing through before buying to make sure that you are in sync with the author.

     Thumbing through Dreena Burton’s (+++) Let Them Eat Vegan! is a good idea, too. This is a more straightforward vegan cookbook, and can be a good introduction to vegan food preparation, thanks to introductory material on useful kitchen tools and a section explaining just what various ingredients are: chia seeds, agar powder, hemp seed nut butter, sorghum flour, xanthan gum and many more. The question here, though, is whether your family members will really find a number of these recipes appealing, as the book suggests they will. Smoky spiced tahini sauce? Pureed apple, celeriac, and sweet potato soup? Chickpea pumpkin seed burgers? Raw chai bars? Check out these and the many other recipes to be sure that the often-lengthy lists of ingredients are ones you are comfortable using and that the final result is likely to be one your family will enjoy. The photos here certainly make the recipes look appealing, but the question is whether the tastes will be ones your family will like. If you do decide to try these foods out, you will find Burton a very good guide to making them: her instructions are straightforward and clear, and she starts each recipe with some sort of comment on it, to help you get into the spirit of the food. The one for “Oat ‘n’ Applesauce Muffins,” for example, begins, “This just might typify the crunchy-granola kind of muffin one would imagine vegans eat – full of wholesome goodness, with oats, oat bran, oat flour, and even ground white chia.” And the recipe for “White Chili with Roasted Poblano Peppers” is introduced with the note, “Bulgur and beans give chewy, substantial texture to this tomato-less chili, and roasted poblano peppers elevate the flavors with a mildly spicy smokiness.” The printed-in-red comments on aspects of the different recipes are also helpful, especially the “If This Apron Could Talk” remarks based on Burton’s own experiences making the various foods.

     And how to arrange the transition from childhood nature-oriented simplicity to the more-complex adult issues in the same field? Barbara Rodriguez, who has been a nanny to the children of various celebrities and therefore presumably has the cachet to tell ordinary mortals a thing or two, has a suggestion or two – or, actually, many more than that. The Organic Nanny’s Guide to Raising Healthy Kids, a (+++) book written as a first-person guide from Rodriguez but presumably actually put together by Eve Adamson, since celebrities and their hangers-on are too busy for such mundane tasks as organizing written material and making it coherent, is subtitled “How to Create a Natural Diet and Lifestyle for Your Child.” Rodriguez calls herself “the Organic Nanny,” and promises that even non-famous, non-super-rich people can, by following her approach, remove processed food from the family diet, get rid of processed sweeteners, “embrace a life-affirming, passionate, cruelty-free lifestyle by phasing out industrial feed-lot and factory-farmed meat and toxic dairy products,” and (lest we forget) “make gratitude, respect, and reverence for life a way of life in your home.” Can this be done by harried everyday families with parents working two jobs or one parent out of work, with several children making constant demands of super-stressed adults who have to contend with kids’ homework, behavioral issues, dietary requirements and desires, illnesses and need for love and attention – without a support staff? Rodriguez says yes, although in light of her pride about spending two decades working for celebrity families, it is fair to ask how she would know. According to Rodriguez, eliminating “the bad stuff” in the family diet “softly, sweetly, gradually,” is “as easy as 1-2-3: 1. Use it up. 2. Upgrade it. 3. Phase it out.” For example, don’t deny your kids snack foods, but carry around specific ones from Annie’s Organic, Revolution Foods, Whole Foods and Earth’s Best – all much more expensive than other brands, of course. Drink water rather than soda at home and get rid of soda and other sugary drinks – this applies to everyone in the family, not just the kids, because a parent must be “a water-swigging role model” even if he or she feels entitled to something else after a super-long, super-difficult day. Buy nondairy milk, trying several different kinds to find one your kids like – never mind that many children have difficulty with any food change, much less with multiple changes in a short time. Want pizza? Buy non-dairy ones from Amy’s Kitchen or Tofurkey – higher-cost than others, of course. Eat local food – that’s a big celebrity fad right now. It may seem that “not every community has an abundance of local products,” but “maybe you just aren’t aware of the hidden jewels in or just outside your community.” Don’t forget to take your kids, including preteens, “to a park with a jungle gym and swings and big open spaces” so they can get the fresh air and sunshine they need in places that are readily available in upscale communities. And so on and so forth. The ideas that Rodriguez puts forth are in fact quite reasonable, even admirable, although her presentation of many of them comes with a feeling of superficiality and trendiness rather than deep commitment. In reality, families at any income level – to the extent that they can manage to do so – can benefit from eating more vegetables and more locally grown foods in general, from paying attention to environmental issues when cleaning house, and from learning “to listen from the heart,” as Rodriguez puts it in one her many New Age-y phrases. But Rodriguez, even as she proclaims that anybody can follow her prescriptions for a more-healthful life, seems blissfully unaware that many families are barely getting by both financially and in terms of time pressures and emotional wherewithal. Up in the rarefied spheres where Rodriguez works, her ideas are a lot easier to implement than they are in the world where most of her readers are likely to be living. After all, in Rodriguez’ world, there are nannies to handle many of the child-rearing, child-managing and health-improving chores. Someone needs to explain to her that there are some families that cannot afford nannies at all.

(++++) LESS-KNOWN AND UNEXPECTED PLEASURES

Idil Biret Archive Edition, Volume 12: Rachmaninoff—Six Moments musicaux, Op. 16; Variations sur un thème de Corelli, Op. 42; Preludes, Op. 32: Nos. 1, 5 and 12. Idil Biret, piano. IBA. $9.99.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 2, arranged for piano trio by the composer; Quintet for Piano and Winds, Op. 16, arranged for piano quartet by the composer. Van Swieten Society (Igor Rukhadze and Franc Polman, violins; Bernadette Verhagen, viola; Job ter Haar, cello; Bart van Oort, fortepiano). Quintone. $19.99.

Bruckner: String Quartet in C minor; Hans Rott: String Quartet in C minor. Israel String Quartet (Yigal Tuneh and Avital Steiner, violins; Amit Landau, viola; Zvi Maschkowski, cello). Quintone. $19.99.

     Put the words “Rachmaninoff” and “variations” together and most people will think of the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for piano and orchestra – one of the composer’s most flamboyant and popular works. But Rachmaninoff also wrote a less-often-heard set of variations – for solo piano – and those are the ones played with great style and skill by Idil Biret on the latest Idil Biret Archives CD. The Corelli variations date to 1931, three years before the Paganini rhapsody, and are based on the “La folia” theme from Corelli’s final Op. 5 sonata for violin and continuo; Bach, Cherubini, Liszt and other composers also based works on this theme. Biret handles the variations with restraint and poised skill in this recording, which dates to 1972: after the initial straightforward presentation of the theme, as the variations gain in complexity and pianistic difficulty, she simply calls on her deep reserves of technique to go along with the frequent changes of color, mood and rhythm. The result is very accomplished and convincing. So, in the main, is Biret’s interpretation of the Six Moments musicaux, a much earlier work (1896) whose title recalls Schubert but whose handling of the mostly lyrical material does not. Biret does not turn these works, which are essentially glorified salon music, into big virtuoso display pieces, and that is a good thing. It is only in the third piece, an extended Andante cantabile, that her reading, which is a bit too much on the cerebral side, seems a little out of touch with the music. The CD also offers three of the Op. 32 Preludes in a recording that also dates to 1972 but was not released at the time. These are modest showpieces that serve well as brief encores and nicely display Biret’s considerable technique.

     Even less-known than the Rachmaninoff works are some that Beethoven rewrote to give them greater popularity – and make himself more money. Arrangements of complex pieces such as the Symphony No. 2 (which was considered very difficult to play and understand when first performed) gave amateur musicians a way to study the scores and play them over and over again at home. Arrangements of works for winds allowed amateurs – who were far more likely to be string than wind players – to perform pieces at aristocratic and middle-class musical evenings. Even when the arrangements were made by the composers themselves (many were not: popular works were frequently pirated and arranged by others), they fell by the wayside over time, as the underlying music became more popular in its original form and was heard more often, while the self-performance vogue started to fade in the 19^th century and beyond. Therefore, the Van Swieten Society’s readings of Beethoven’s own arrangements of his Symphony No. 2 and Op. 16 wind quintet are genuine rarities in the 21^st century. They are also curiosities, sounding (especially in the case of the symphony) like bare-bones versions of the originals, fascinatingly revealing the works’ rhythmic and harmonic skeletons but lacking in the tonal richness and color of the fully fleshed-out compositions. This is nevertheless a truly fascinating disc, not only for revealing how Beethoven himself handled arrangements of his music but also for providing a new perspective on pieces whose originals are nowadays quite well-known and frequently played. The chamber musicians are excellent, performing in period style and on period instruments or meticulously crafted copies. No matter how well listeners think they know this symphony and the Op. 16 quintet, they are unlikely ever to have heard them like this: listening to this CD is almost like discovering two entirely new Beethoven works (and in a sense, that is exactly what the disc makes it possible to do).

     If it is a very pleasant surprise to discover Beethoven’s own chamber arrangements of some of his music, it is an equal one to encounter a string quartet by Bruckner, who is firmly identified with the symphony and the Mass. But Bruckner did write one quartet, in 1862, while still a student of musical form and orchestration. This was around the time of the F-minor symphony that Bruckner later disowned but that is still occasionally performed under the number “00.” Bruckner’s quartet is not particularly “Brucknerian” in terms that listeners now know, but its C minor tonality is one that he used three times in his symphonies (Nos. 1, 2 and 8), its mysterious opening looks ahead to his handling of later symphonic works, and its slow movement has a theme that resembles one in an 1864 Mass. The main impression left by the work, however, is of absorption of Mendelssohn and Schubert, especially the latter, whose influence continued to be heard in most of Bruckner’s symphonies. The quartet is not especially original, but it has many attractive elements and is worth hearing as a “study piece” by listeners familiar with Bruckner’s later music. On the other hand, the quartet by Hans Rott, which dates to 1878-80, is original – strikingly so – even though Rott himself is almost completely unknown today. Rott lived only 26 years (1858-1884), dying of tuberculosis in an asylum after having a bizarre nervous breakdown in 1881 (he claimed that Brahms, whom he had recently met, had filled a train with dynamite). To the extent that Rott is known at all, it is for his sole symphony, which Bruckner and Mahler (both of whom knew Rott) admired, and which Mahler actually echoed in several of his own symphonies. But the quartet is equally worth knowing, if not more so. It is an amazing compilation of influences ranging from Bach and Mozart to Mendelssohn and Bruckner – which nevertheless has a wholly distinctive sound. It is, surprisingly, in five movements, and includes both a scherzo and a minuet (although this deliberately stiff and plodding movement is no Haydnesque dance). Rott’s quartet is thematically very tightly structured, with a theme in the first movement recurring throughout like a leitmotif. The work uses considerable dissonance, surprising instrumental effects and unusual rhythmic approaches: the Trio of the Scherzo, for example, is in duple rather than triple meter. It is impossible to know what Rott would have written had he not died so very young, but on the evidence of this quartet, Mahler was quite correct in commenting, “What music has lost in him is immeasurable.” The Israel String Quartet plays both works on this CD with warmth, understanding and superb ensemble, showing that even if both these quartets were, to a greater or lesser extent, atypical of their creators, they nevertheless contain much music that is entirely worthy of being heard on its own terms.

(++++) THE PLAYING’S THE THING

Falla: The Three-cornered Hat; Nights in the Gardens of Spain; Tributes. Raquel Lojendio, soprano; Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, piano; BBC Philharmonic conducted by Juanjo Mena. Chandos. $18.99.

Grieg: String Quartets in G minor and F major, arranged for string orchestra by Alf Årdal; Arne Nordheim: Rendezvous. Oslo Camerata conducted by Stephan Barratt-Due. Naxos. $9.99.

Delius and Ireland: Songs arranged for cello and piano. Julian Lloyd Webber, cello; Jiaxin Cheng, cello; John Lenehan, piano. Naxos. $9.99.

     Sometimes it is sheer pleasure just to listen to the sumptuous sounds of well-composed music well-played. The new Chandos CD of music by Manuel de Falla is one such case. This is familiar, or at least reasonably familiar, music, but the BBC Philharmonic under its chief conductor, Juanjo Mena, performs it with such flair, such rhythmic vitality, that a listener can simply bask in the sounds and delight in them. From the opening fanfare of The Three-cornered Hat all the way through to the final rambunctious Jota, this is a captivating performance that fully appreciates and beautifully brings forth the many charms of the work and of the Andalusian folk music that permeates it. Raquel Lojendio has a fine voice and uses it well, although Falla wrote the part for a mezzo-soprano and Chandos has not included the texts of her two songs. Still, the vocal elements here – hers and those of the enthusiastic chorus at the opening – combine with the clever orchestration and ever-changing rhythms to produce a performance that sounds completely authentic and very fresh indeed. Nights in the Gardens of Spain is equally successful, with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet showing himself a pianist of subtlety as well as skill, doing just as lovely a job with the misterioso elements of the Alhambra’s garden as with the beautiful coloration and wonderfully quiet ending of the concluding visit to the Sierra de Córdoba. And in Tributes, one of Falla’s latest works (which is, however, largely based on earlier compositions), the orchestra is on its own, neatly moving from the initial bright fanfare to the elegiac writing that Falla used to memorialize Debussy, Dukas and Felipe Pedrell. From start to finish, this well-recorded CD is never less than a delight to the ear.

     The sonic pleasures are of a different kind in the Oslo Camerata’s recording of music by Grieg and Arne Nordheim (1931-2010). Grieg’s complete and well-known G minor quartet and his unfinished one in F major are heard here in finely crafted arrangements by Alf Årdal, which are imaginative and elegant but make the writing somewhat less transparent and less neatly balanced than in the original four-voice versions. Stephan Barratt-Due conducts with sensitivity, and the orchestra is small enough so there is good balance and a sound that is not too thick; as a result, the quartets in this form are certainly pleasant to hear. But by comparison with Grieg’s original versions, these are a trifle pale; the CD therefore gets a (+++) rating. Nordheim’s Rendezvous (1986) is far less known than Grieg’s quartets (especially the G minor), but it is emotive and well-crafted – and works well in a string-orchestra arrangement by the composer himself (this work was originally, yes, a string quartet). The final movement, Nachruf (“Obituary”), is particularly moving without sounding morbid or dwelling too depressingly on its subject matter. As a whole, the CD offers a chance to hear some lovely playing of music that is either little-known or known in a different form.

     Somewhat less successful, although still worthy of a (+++) rating, Julian Lloyd Webber’s performances of his own arrangements of 21 songs by Frederick Delius and John Ireland are, again, lovely to hear, especially for listeners who enjoy the gorgeous tones of which a cello is capable, and which Webber fully exploits and explores. Indeed, he somewhat over-explores them, with the result that the 10 Delius and 11 Ireland songs, which are intermingled on the disc, sound much the same – not only as if the composers had the same style but also as if each wrote all his songs to sound very much alike. Unlike Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, which the composer created in such a way that the audience could infer the vocal line from the melodic treatment, Webber’s arrangements reduce pieces that were always intended to use voices to shadows of themselves. They are often very beautiful shadows: Webber plays with warmth and élan, and the other performers (cellist Jiaxin Cheng in two of the songs and pianist John Lenehan throughout the CD) also perform at a very high level of skill. Considered simply from a sonic standpoint, the disc is certainly a success, although it better repays use as background or being heard a small amount at a time than it does attentive listening straight through. It is any sense of substantiality in the music that is lacking: the beauty here is plentiful, but its attractiveness is surface-level.

(++++) HILARITY AND THE HEARTWARMING

Mouse Was Mad. By Linda Urban. Illustrated by Henry Cole. Sandpiper. $6.99.

Penny and Her Song. By Kevin Henkes. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $12.99.

Seekers #6: Spirits in the Stars. By Erin Hunter. Harper. $6.99.

Seekers: Return to the Wild #1—Island of Shadows. By Erin Hunter. Harper. $16.99.

     One of the most amusing “mood” books published in recent years, Linda Urban’s Mouse Was Mad, which originally came out in 2009, is now available in paperback – and practically a must-have for parents whose kids throw occasional temper tantrums (that is, for just about everyone). Mouse is so mad – we never find out why – that his anger won’t fit within the regular pages of the book. Henry Cole’s marvelous illustrations start displaying it the minute you get inside the cover: even before the title page, Mouse has jumped and shrieked and acted out in seven different poses. There’s an eighth on the title page and a ninth on the dedication page – oh, this is one really big temper tantrum! (And that count doesn’t even include Mouse scowling, hands on hips, on the front cover.) But it seems that Mouse doesn’t quite do anger right, as the other animals tell him. He gets “hopping mad,” but Hare hops better; he is “stomping mad,” but Bear’s stomping is much more effective; he becomes “screaming mad,” but his screams cannot compare with Bobcat’s. And what is worse, every time Mouse tries to imitate the other animals’ impressive displays, something goes wrong and he ends up in a mud puddle. The pictures of Mouse are hilarious, and he is so cute in the first place – wearing striped overalls – that it is impossible to take his hissy fit seriously. Eventually Mouse gets so frustrated with his inability to show how angry he is that he freezes in place. And that turns out to be something that he does better than any of the other animals – and something that also results in Mouse not being angry anymore. This is not a “teaching” book about why not to get mad or how to express anger appropriately – it is a romp with an unlikely subject, and the sort of book that parents can use to calm down their oh-so-angry children, if they can redirect the kids’ focus long enough to have them pay attention to something other than their anger.

     Penny is a very different sort of mouse. In Penny and Her Song, she is lovable and enthusiastic, having come home from school with a wonderful counting song that she can’t wait to share with her parents and the babies. But, in the first part of Kevin Henkes’ easy-to-read book for ages 4-8, the timing is never quite right for Penny to sing: she will wake up the babies. The song really, really wants to burst forth, so Penny tries singing it to herself, but that isn’t very satisfying; nor is singing it to her glass animals. Distracting herself by playing doesn’t work, either. And Penny’s parents will not let her sing at the dinner table. But Penny accepts all of this good-naturedly, although with some impatience, and when she finally does get to sing the song, after dinner, everyone enjoys it so much that the whole family ends up singing along, then putting on a little show with the song as the centerpiece. At bedtime, Penny worries about remembering her song overnight, but that concern proves unfounded, with Penny recalling it happily in the morning after her music has transformed a whole evening into a very pleasant one for the entire family – and for families that read this book together, too.

     Animal endeavors are considerably more serious, and intended for older readers (ages 10 and up), in the Seekers series from Erin Hunter, pen name of a four-person team: authors Kate Cary, Cherith Baldry and Tui Sutherland, and editor Victoria Holmes. The Erin Hunter Warriors books, elaborate stories about clans of feral but noble cats, are the ones for which the team is best known, but the Seekers series, written by Sutherland and Baldry, is expanding as well. Because these stories focus on bears, non-domesticated animals with which young readers cannot have social interactions as they can with cats, Seekers is less immediately accessible than Warriors and feels somewhat more distancing. But the authors are certainly trying to make these determined bears as appealing as possible. The sixth and final book of the original Seekers sequence, Spirits in the Stars, originally published last year, is now available in paperback. Toklo (grizzly bear), Kallik (polar bear) and Lusa (black bear) are found here in Kallik’s territory – the ice – along with their shapeshifting guide, Ujurak. The cold and snow take their toll on Toklo and Lusa, but the friends are in less dire straits than the bears they eventually encounter on land, which are ill with some unknown condition that the friends need to figure out, even if it means the seeking of one of their number will end in this frozen place. There is a fairly straightforward environmental message in this (+++) book, as well as some heart-tugging nobility of purpose and action, the result being a satisfactorily hopeful conclusion to the sequence even though readers’ connection to the bears is likely to be weaker than it is to the cats in Warriors.

     And the bears’ story is not over: a new series, Return to the Wild, is just beginning. The first book, which also gets a (+++) rating, picks up where Spirits in the Stars left off, as the three remaining friends begin their journey home from the land of ice. What happens is not particularly surprising – they encounter friends and enemies and need to decide which bears they can trust and which they cannot – but readers who enjoy Seekers will find this continuation satisfying. In Island of Shadows, Kallik and Lusa are eager to return home to their families, their quest complete. But Toklo is frightened and feels very much alone. When the three companions reach the ice-covered, mountainous island of the book’s title, an accident leads them into a maze of tunnels and all three look for a sign to guide them. And they find one – or Toklo believes they do. It is a cub named Nanulak, half polar bear and half grizzly bear, who has lost his whole family and, Toklo believes, has been sent to the three friends by Ujurak. Toklo happily takes charge of Nanulak, glad that he again has a companion who needs his protection. But Kallik and Lusa are not so sure that Nanulak is what he seems to be – they fear that he may be concealing something that will endanger them all. And then Ujurak appears in the bears’ dreams with a warning, and all three have to decide how to interpret the vision and decide what to do about Nanulak and their own trek homeward. There is nothing particularly original in this story arc: adventurers brought together for a quest complete it despite hardship and the loss of one of their number, then turn homeward and encounter still more challenges. What makes the story special is simply that it involves bears rather than humans, hobbits or starfarers. Fans of Seekers will enjoy this extension of the original series; they are really the only audience at which the new set of books is directed.

(+++) ADVENTURES ALL OVER

The Genius Files #1: Mission Unstoppable. By Dan Gutman. Harper. $6.99.

The Genius Files #2: Never Say Genius. By Dan Gutman. Harper. $16.99.

Ice Island. By Sherry Shahan. Delacorte Press. $15.99.

May B. By Caroline Starr Rose. Schwartz & Wade. $15.99.

     From the lighthearted to the serious and gripping, these adventure novels for preteens take readers on journeys in both geography and time. Dan Gutman’s Genius Files series includes such threats as kidnapping, freezing and boiling alive, but it is nevertheless impossible to take seriously. The books focus on 13-year-old twins endearingly named Coke and Pepsi (Pep) McDonald, who are on a road trip with some of the most clueless parents in the history of preteen novels (and that’s really saying something). In Mission Unstoppable, initially released last year and now available in paperback, things get started eight days before the twins’ birthday, and involve mysterious notes, coded messages, being trapped in the basement of their school (which is on fire), having to jump off a cliff, and being thrown into a giant vat of Spam – among other things. Underlying the mayhem is a secret government document whose author, Dr. Herman Warsaw, has concerns that include “older generation inflexible, stagnant,” “start over – geniuses – standardized test scores – find them.” Gutman writes that after being inspired with a way to save the world, or society, or something, “Dr. Warsaw would sit down and synthesize his shorthand audio notes into a 434-page manifesto titled ‘The Only Way Out: The Simple Solution to America’s Most Pressing Problems of the 21^st Century.’” Hence the twins’ perils; and no, this doesn’t make sense. What does make sense is the cleverest aspect of The Genius Files: the twins visit real-world places, and Gutman provides Google Maps information so readers can follow Coke and Pep’s adventures, seeing just where they are going and how long it takes to get there – a clever form of interactivity that uses the Internet without being entirely bound by it.

     The interactivity continues in Never Say Genius, and so do the threats and challenges. Starting on the twins’ birthday, this one has Coke and Pep confront a new nemesis named Archie Clone, himself a genius and a dead ringer (so to speak) for comic-book Archie (just in case anyone thought the villains here were to be taken at “face” value...pun intended). Again, the family travels to real places (ranging from the National Mustard Museum in Wisconsin to the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.), and again there are mysterious messages and/or bizarre threats (hot: suspension in French-fry cages over boiling oil; cold: being stuck in glass vats of soft-serve ice cream). Are the twins really in danger of death, or are they just being tested to see whether they are worthy of admission to a secret society of young geniuses? Who cares? Probably not readers: like the first book, the second is fast-paced, action-packed, and amusing in a silly way, but there are no characters of any substance in it (not even Coke and Pep). As for the humor, it requires a certain taste, or tastelessness: “‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,’ said Archie Clone. ‘Oh, wait! I almost forgot. I’m going to kill you anyway! Hahahahaha!’” In fact, this is the sort of series in which dead people un-die so Gutman can complicate things further, which he promises to do in the third book.

     Also set in the real world, but a much more serious and intense book, Ice Island is another foray into Alaska by Sherry Shahan, author of Frozen Stiff and Death Mountain. A straightforward survival tale made interesting primarily by its setting on remote Santa Ysabel Island (a fictional re-creation of St. Lawrence Island), the book focuses on 13-year-old Tatum, who dreams of competing in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and has come to the island for a week of training. A freak blizzard strands her there with her new friend, Cole, who is a Siberian Yupik boy. All the usual elements of a survival-against-odds story are here. Food runs low. The temperature drops to life-threatening levels. One of the two sleds breaks. The strongest dog runs away. Do Tatum and Cole stay together? Split up? Stay where they are? Go for help? Go where, when there are no roads or houses? “Sometimes real-life adventures are more unbelievable than stories in books!” Shahan has Tatum think, complete with italics. There are occasional attempts to keep things light, as when Cole asks if Tatum knows why there are no snakes on the island and she says the mosquitoes probably ate them. But the focus here is on camaraderie and survival: “Her brain didn’t know what to do – what to think – how to process what her eyes were seeing.” There is no doubt that Tatum and Cole will endure and eventually survive, and they do; but what will attract readers here is the setting and the ways in which the protagonists – Tatum in particular – rise to the many challenges facing them. There is little character development in Ice Island, but enough adventure to attract preteens looking for a well-told survival story.

     Cold and survival are issues as well in May B., a novel in verse by Caroline Starr Rose. Here the remoteness is not one of geography – the book is set in Kansas – but one of time: this is a 19^th-century pioneer tale. The title character, 12-year-old Mavis (May) Betterly, is sent by her parents to help out the inexperienced Oblingers at their homestead 15 miles away, after a poor wheat crop almost ruins the Betterly family. Sending May away – supposedly only until Christmas – will bring in money from May’s labors and leave the Betterly family with “one less child to clothe” and feed. “I’m helping everyone/ except myself,” May thinks, but she does her best, coping with Mrs. Oblinger’s complaints – caused by her own loneliness – and with the endless chores. Then Mrs. Oblinger leaves, and Mr. Oblinger goes after her, and suddenly May is entirely alone, on her own, and not sure what to do. She tries to study, with little success because of her difficulty with reading and writing; she maintains the Oblingers’ house as well as she can; and she copes with constant loneliness: “When the world is black,/ I’m most alone,/ the silence thick around me.” Unable to figure out how to get home, abandoned as the year goes on and the weather gets worse, May remembers her difficulties in school and thinks often about her family life, trying to stay alive in a harsh environment: “I didn’t ask/ to read like a child,/ quit school,/ come here,/ starve.” May’s decidedly non-poetic approach to her reality stands in somewhat unsettling contrast to the free verse in which the book is written, and the “May B./maybe” pun is unnecessary. But the novel in general is well-plotted and well-paced. An early-season blizzard makes May desperate to get home, and she comes up with a plan to walk the 15 miles to the Betterly house – despite the ever-present threats of the cold, the snow and foraging wolves. Readers will expect her to be rescued, and she is, but here as in Ice Island and other survival tales, what will matter most is how the rescue happens and how May grows despite (or because of) her troubles and her months of isolation. May is the only character in the book whose personality comes through in any significant way; in fact, she is nearly the book’s sole character. Girls with an interest in the Little House books, which Rose cites as an influence, and ones who suffer from dyslexia as May does, will be especially attracted to this story of hardship and pluck in the face of adversity.