(++++) THE ETERNAL MOZART

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 13 and 14; Serenade No. 13, “Eine kleine Nachtmusik”; Variations for Piano on “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman.” Janina Fialkowska, piano; Chamber Players of Canada. ATMA Classique. $16.99.

Mozart: Divertimenti Nos. 11 and 17. Cologne Chamber Orchestra conducted by Helmut Müller-Brühl. Naxos. $9.99.

Mozart: Sinfonia concertante, K. 364; Schumann: Piano Concerto; Rossini: Overture to “Semiramide.” Gerhart Hetzel, violin; Rudolf Streng, viola; Sviatoslav Richter, piano; Wiener Philharmoniker conducted by Riccardo Muti. Orfeo. $22.99.

      A famous line from the movie Casablanca proclaims, “We’ll always have Paris.” In somewhat the same way, performers and listeners alike will always have Mozart. Despite all the recent plumbing of musical depths through discoveries and rediscoveries of long-forgotten composers and less-known works, despite all the efforts to make modern classical music an increasing part of popular consciousness and concert programming, there are certain ineffable and incontrovertible facts about classical works and those who perform and listen to them – and one such fact is that Mozart is, has been and will remain eternally new, eternally astonishing and an eternal draw both in the concert hall and in recorded form.  True, the tendency nowadays is to search for some of his less-often-played music, but in most cases these pieces are just as charming, beautifully made and worthy of attention as his better-known and admittedly somewhat overplayed ones (although it is somewhat questionable whether Mozart can ever be “overplayed”).

      Thus, instead of the umpteenth version of Mozart’s later and frequently performed piano concertos, Janina Fialkowska and the Chamber Players of Canada offer light and lithe versions of two less-known ones on a new CD from ATMA Classique. No. 13, in C, and No. 14, in E-flat, are both forthright, well-constructed and lovely works that integrate piano and orchestra beautifully and balance solo and tutti with exemplary skill. Fialkowska and the orchestra play very well together, their lines weaving in and out pleasantly as Mozart’s beautifully balanced melodies pass from hand to hand. Neither of these concertos is quite at the pinnacle of Mozart’s productions, but both are lovely from start to finish and have galant flourishes that make them attractive and sonically interesting throughout. And the two other works on this CD showcase strings and pianist alone, respectively. Eine kleine Nachtmusik features some of Mozart’s best-known music, but it actually does not get recorded all that frequently nowadays, and this quintet version of the lovely little four-movement serenade is a delightful one, light in texture, very well-played, and evocative of evening without ever inviting actual darkness.  The Variations for Piano on “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman” have a nighttime reference, too – the song is known in English as “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” – but again there is nothing dark here. Mozart understood how to write virtuosic but not overdone variations on a simple, pleasant little tune that his audiences and modern ones know equally well. It is important for the pianist not to overwhelm the music or overdo the technique of performing it, and Fialkowska clearly understands this, delivering a fine-hued and rather sweet performance of a piece that is longer and more elaborate than listeners unfamiliar with it might expect – but that never loses its connection with childhood or with a sense of wonder and delight.

      There are delights aplenty in Mozart’s divertimenti, too – they are diversions, yes, not intended to have the strength, drama or cohesiveness of symphonies, being more akin to Baroque suites. But what they lack in carefully structured interrelationship of their movements they make up for through their exploration of all the abilities and sounds of the players. Divertimenti Nos. 11 and 17 are both six-movement works, both are associated with Mozart’s time in Salzburg, and both have a celebratory feel about them – as expected for two pieces in the bright key of D. No. 11 (K. 251) was probably written for the name-day of Mozart’s sister, Nannerl, and No. 17 (K. 334) is associated with the graduation from university of a family friend. Whatever their provenance, though, these are pieces that are simply delightful to hear, as Mozart makes the divertimento form – like so many others – his own. For example, one Menuetto in No. 11 is in the form of a theme and variations; No. 17 also contains a theme and variations, but in its Andante – its two Menuetto movements are in more-traditional form. Through subtleties like this, Mozart guaranteed that even his occasional works (that is, ones written for specific occasions, such as these divertimenti) stood out from similar pieces by other composers, and this is one reason Mozart’s music continues to delight and engage audiences more than 220 years after his death. Finely balanced and nicely nuanced playing by the Cologne Chamber Orchestra under Helmut Müller-Brühl helps make this CD a very pleasant experience indeed.

      The remastered (and high-priced) CD of performances led by Riccardo Muti in 1972 and 1974 has some excellent moments, too, although they are primarily in the Schumann Piano Concerto rather than the Mozart and Rossini works that accompany it. The musical mixture here is a touch on the odd side, with the wonderful Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola being the longest work on the disc but taking a back seat to the Schumann, because the soloists in the Mozart are little-known, while Sviatoslav Richter is world-famous. In fact, Gerhart Hetzel and Rudolf Streng deliver very fine performances indeed, absolutely free of grandstanding and clearly committed to Mozart’s finely honed structure for this double concerto: the lines of the two soloists weave in and out of seamlessly with each other and with the orchestra, and the overall performance is a strongly committed and very poised one. The Vienna Philharmonic is, though, sonically rather too lush for this music, and Muti – who has a somewhat overblown reputation as a conductor, particularly where Mozart is concerned – makes no attempt to lighten the orchestral sound or make it more “Mozartean.” In fairness, though, this was not a high priority in the 1970s. And the orchestra certainly gives its all in the Schumann, which gets a very large-scale reading here, with Richter and Muti both seeing the work as having a grand, arch-like structure with considerable strength of orchestration (something often not regarded as Schumann’s strong suit).  This is a top-notch performance that wears very well indeed. The Semiramide overture is fine as a curtain raiser (it appears first on the CD): this is one of Rossini’s biggest and most-dramatic overtures, and again the sheer size and warmth of the orchestra work in its favor, even if Muti’s interpretation does not bring anything particularly new or revelatory to the music. The strength of the Schumann here is the most attractive element of the disc, although the wonders of Mozart, even if somewhat muted (or Muti-ed) in this recording, also come through quite clearly and reaffirm his preeminence in concerts both past and present.

(+++) PERSONALIZATIONS

Alex Lubet: Reliquary Dances; Eight Ouds. Alex Lubet, acoustic guitar. Ravello. $13.99.

Sparky Davis: …and One Last Waltz; Symphony in B-flat; Fantasy Sonata. Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vít Micka and Petr Vronský; Karolina Rojahn, piano. Navona. $16.99.

Juan Sebastián Lach Lau: Islas. Navona. $13.99.

Sergio Cervetti: Keyboard³—Works for Piano, Harpsichord & Organ. Karolina Rojahn and Sergio Cervetti, piano; Maria Teresa Chenlo, harpsichord; Karel Martinek, organ. Navona. $14.99.

Turlutte et Reel. Les Charbonniers de l'Enfer La Nef; Suzie LeBlanc, soprano. ATMA Classique. $18.99.

Jeffrey Stadelman: Messenger; Nine Bagatelles for Piano and Recorded Sound; Evans House; Koral 19. Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Petr Vronský; Jeffrey Stadelman, piano; Elizabeth McNutt, flute. Navona. $15.99.

      Now that all bets are essentially off on how to produce classical music – and how to define it – composers have come up with a remarkable number of ways to create highly personalized approaches to musical creation. Many are so personal that they seem self-referential – and it can be hard to tell whether the composers want to reach out to an audience or simply express whatever they may have to say, not particularly caring whether anyone else pays attention.  Indeed, in many instances composers write music for themselves to perform, which is certainly nothing new but which these days carries a greater aura of inward focus than self-performance did in the days of the great virtuosi. The highly personal nature of many modern classical works makes it difficult to analyze them, much less recommend them, for it is inescapably true that they are saying just what their composers want to say – but whether that is something that listeners want to hear will be up to each individual to decide.

      Thus, guitarist Alex Lubet is certainly an accomplished performer, and he definitely knows his way around the steel-string acoustic guitar that he uses on his new Ravello CD. Furthermore, he is a composer who, like many today, finds traditional Western classical music far too constricting for his taste, instead reaching for Eastern influence and combining it with elements of jazz, notably the blues.  Lubet is influenced by electronic sounds, too, although he does not use them in these works – however, the nature of the harmonies and disharmonies that he produces, including some that Doppler in and out of the listener’s consciousness, shows that he hears things in a distinctly modern way and then interprets them in works that are eclectic, difficult to pin down, and often startlingly unlike other pieces for guitar. It is a bit hard to realize sometimes that it is a guitar producing the sounds that Lubet creates. Whether his decidedly interesting musical thoughts will have wide appeal, though, is by no means certain.

      Likewise, Spark Davis pulls in some nontraditional sounds in his works, in his case quite overtly. A piece such as …and One Last Waltz recalls, in its title, Ravel’s La Valse, which is traditionally considered a sort of ”waltz to end waltzes.” But Davis’ sound world is so different from that of Ravel that his vision of the waltz seems to come from another planet, not just another time. Davis’ pieces follow, on their surface, traditional classical models: waltz, symphony, sonata. And there is nothing cutesy about the traditional movement designations: Maestoso, Adagio, Allegro Moderato, Presto and variations thereon. But Davis surprises in how he pulls the music together: he has clearly absorbed atonality as well as traditional harmonic structures and has tried to forge a synthesis in which the two approaches, generally seen as polar opposites, can somehow be reconciled. The result is somewhat strange to the ear, as if these works are almost consonant and almost dissonant without being fully committed to either style. They become as much an intellectual puzzle as a form of emotional communication – and perhaps that is just what Davis intends.

      The intentions of Juan Sebastián Lach Lau are clearer, although that does not necessarily make his music more communicative. The Navona CD called Islas includes six works for various instruments – including computers treated as instruments in well-worn mid-20^th-century style. And the works’ titles, unlike those of Davis, are quite deliberately modern and occasionally unpronounceable.  These pieces pay homage to Cage, Ligeti and other composers celebrated for the way they redefined music as much as for their actual works. Lach Lau seems to see his compositions as islands of isolation – hence the CD’s title – within an overall oceanic framework that somehow connects them. This may be an attractive philosophical idea, but whether it makes his works any more strongly communicative is uncertain. Lach Lau’s Mexican heritage does occasionally peek through in these pieces, although more in their titles than in their handling of notes. And it is certainly true that Lach Lau extracts forms of sound from instruments that make them acoustically interesting, as in the percussion piece rzw + Continuidad Paralela, which Salvatore Novello handles with considerable aplomb.  But like Cage – to whom Blank Space for clarinet and piano seems to pay homage – Lach Lau often seems more interested in having instruments bring forth sounds beyond those they were intended to produce, rather than in having those sounds become expressive in a way that communicates clearly with an audience.

      Sergio Cervetti, on the other hand, is certainly trying to communicate, and uses three different keyboard instruments and a firm knowledge of traditional classical-music compositional elements to do so. The rather awkwardly titled Keyboard³ has a surprisingly religious bent in several works, including Seven Farewells to Paradise for piano and In Principio Erat Verbum for organ; but the religion here is better described as spirituality and a feeling of oneness and connection than the form of organized religion that inspired composers of past centuries. Cervetti interestingly mixes these works inspired by olden themes with ones that have an air of distinct newness about them, such as Hard Rock for harpsichord (an interesting juxtaposition of modern theme with old instrument) and Tres Estudios Australes for piano, which attempts to deal with issues such as the continuing ownership dispute over the Falkland Islands and “the hole in the sky of the Antarctic.” The two remaining pieces here – Alberada and Candombe, both for harpsichord – are, like all the works on this CD, well and interestingly made, expansive in their emotions, and nicely balanced between the techniques of the past and the sensibilities of the present. There is a certain sense in which Cervetti seems to be trying too hard to be too many things to too many people – the opposite of the impression left by composers who seem to be speaking mainly to themselves. But he certainly does try to tell listeners something, and what he has to say musically about the ways in which old and new forms blend, complement each other or push each other out makes for interesting listening.

      Old forms are paramount in Turlutte et Reel, too. This ATMA Classique CD offers a 13-track compendium from previous releases performed by Les Charbonniers de l'Enfer La Nef with soprano Suzie LeBlanc.  The combination of old and new is very much apparent here, as the works themselves represent a musical journey to Quebec and into the world of Acadian traditional music.  Just about everything on the disc is bright, upbeat and festive, including turluttes (wordless songs), reels, waltzes and folk songs.  The target audience here seems to be existing fans of the performers and of this particular element of Canadian heritage: the CD is a simple and simply (indeed, cheaply) packaged compilation that sounds fine but does not seem particularly interested in reaching out to and making converts of potential new listeners. It is also on the short side for a rather high-priced disc – not as short as the 43-minute Lubet CD, but at 53 minutes about the same length as the one featuring works by Lach Lau. Fans of French Canadian history and culture seem to be the sought-after listeners here.

      Navona’s new Jeffrey Stadelman disc is also in the 53-minute range, but here the reaching out is of a different sort. This is a CD that in some senses sums up the ways in which modern classical composers look both back and forward, pick and choose among techniques, and combine disparate sounds and sound patterns generated from a wide variety of sources. The three Stadelman pieces on this disc take very different approaches to musical construction and to an awareness of the past. Messenger is an extended three-movement orchestral work that is a bit like an updated version of the Baroque suite, except that it uses entirely modern sounds and is structured on a symphonic scale (although no one would call it a symphony). Much of it is aurally jarring; tempos range from galloping to still; and the three movements seem to require the orchestra to do just about everything that every instrument can in the space of 33 minutes. It is a difficult work to absorb; whether it is worth repeated hearings to ferret out its meanings will be very much a matter of taste. Nine Bagatelles for Piano and Recorded Sound stands at something of an opposite extreme, with six of the nine movements lasting less than a minute. This is a kind of modern version of the “conversation” concept of chamber music, except that here the conversation is between the piano and distorted electronic sounds – and this too is an odd work that is less than immediately accessible and does not seem intended to be. Evans House, for solo flute, shows that Stadelman can write music purely for a traditional instrument when he chooses, although this is scarcely a soothing work of the sort that listeners may assume would spring forth from the flute; and Koral 19 shows Stadelman doing going pretty much in an opposite direction – the work is entirely electroacoustic and identified as one fragment among hundreds within a larger piece.  Stadelman’s pieces do not really reach out to listeners at large – they seem mainly to be expressive of his own experimentally minded compositional style, which mixes a wide variety of techniques and ideas to create pieces that are quite different from each other and do not fit neatly into any particular musical category. But that is simply an extreme version of what many other modern classical composers are creating as they pull from the past while marching into a future that may or may not include the building of an audience for their works.

(++++) LOVE ON BOARD

Duck & Goose: Goose Needs a Hug. By Tad Hills. Schwartz & Wade. $6.99.

10 Valentine Friends: A Holiday Counting Book. By Janet Schulman. Illustrated by Linda Davick. Knopf. $6.99.

Tweet Hearts. By Susan Reagan. Robin Corey Books. $5.99.

Sweet Dreams Lullaby. By Betsy Snyder. Random House. $6.99.

Who Needs Love? By Elise Primavera. Illustrated by Laura Park. Robin Corey Books. $16.99.

      Chilly winter days are warmed by thoughts of love and affection, and the characters in board books need warmth just as much as their human creators do. Tad Hills’ Duck and Goose – and other friends – have yet another modest and charming adventure in Goose Needs a Hug, which begins with downcast Goose feeling sad and trying to tell his friends what would make him feel better. They are so eager to help him that they never let him explain – instead, they suggest games, headstands, splashing in puddles, or a song, until frustrated Goose insists loudly that all he needs is a hug. And his friends wonder, “Why didn’t you say so?” And they give him what he wants – with everyone ending up happily cuddled.

      Janet Schulman’s and Linda Davick’s neighborhood friends are in the mood for affection, too, and show it by getting ready for Valentine’s Day by making just-right cards for each other while showing board-book readers how to count to 10.  So when, for example, Annie Lee draws squishy slugs for bug-loving Pete, that is the fifth valentine pictured on the right-hand side of the book; and when Alexandra makes a silly card for Lily, that is the ninth card – the card display grows page by page, while the kids’ activities are shown on most of each two-page spread.  The simple poetry is typical for this series and maintains the lighthearted tone throughout: “Tom likes to pretend to be a gorilla./ Guess what he gets from his neighbor Priscilla.”  And this board book goes well with one that counts down from 10, Tweet Hearts – another Valentine’s Day tie-in, but a book that is fun at any time of year.  Susan Reagan’s book features two cute little yellow birds doing all sorts of heart-related things: blowing heart-shaped bubbles for “Eight bubbly hearts are on their way,” then see-sawing in a game with hearts whose little feet let them scamper about for “Seven silly hearts love to play,” and so forth.  The ideas are clever and the pictures are very cute indeed – and the book ends, unusually for a board book, with a pop-up to the words, “One big heart says I love you.”  The use of hearts as hearts some of the time, and as characters the rest of the time, is especially captivating, and the two birds (lovebirds, of course) are just adorable.

      Love, of course, need not be tied to any particular day, or for that matter any particular time of day. There is plenty of it in sweet Dreams Lullaby, a lovely little bedtime book in which Betsy Snyder creates imaginary constellations suitable for very young children (Old Owl, Sleepy Snail, Butterfly, Hummingbird) and weaves the creatures into a story about a tired little bunny rabbit getting ready to “cuddle up and snuggle in,/ and let your happy dreams begin.”  Lying quietly in bed, the sleepy bunny  thinks of a mama bird in its nest, of soft flower blossoms, of carrot-shaped clouds, of gentle rain and a pleasantly splashy puddle, of twilight skies and shining stars – lots of soothing, restful images that help lull the bunny into a sweet sleep and sweet dreams at the book’s end.  The word “love” never appears here, but it permeates the book nevertheless.

      And of course love is scarcely confined to board books.  Who Needs Love? is a full-size picture book about two alligator friends named Scarlett Starlet and Simon Greensnout, a giant talking cypress tree with a silver dollar in its top branches, and “a rotten-to-the-core witch” who grabs the coin and flies off, but then drops it. Simon finds it, and refuses to return it even though the tree promises him “something that lasts forever” in return (as the tree had also promised the equally recalcitrant witch).  Simon keeps the coin because he wants to give it to Scarlett as a good-luck piece, since the two of them have dreams: she of being a singing sensation, he of traveling to exotic places and having adventures. Well, the witch comes back for the coin, and when Simon refuses to give it to her, she turns him into a donkey. The witch gets the coin back from Scarlett and in return grants Scarlett’s wish to be a singing star, but this is an evil-witch wish-granting: Scarlett sings so beautifully that she makes people who hear her fall in love, but she herself is without love, without the missing Simon, and eventually finds her life successful but empty.  Elise Primavera’s story is darker and more complex than most picture-book tales, with Laura Park’s illustrations doing a fine job of capturing the back-and-forth contrasts between Scarlett’s bright but meaningless existence and Simon-the-donkey’s life in “the witch’s rat’s nest of a cottage.”  The witch really is evil, making further demands of the old cypress tree and then turning it “into a bare patch of scorched earth anyway.”  The silver dollar, worn down so much that it “was no longer a silver dollar at all,” reappears, and Scarlett uses it to wish that Simon was with her – and that breaks the witch’s spell, although the unrepentant witch flies off into the night with a cry of “AW, MUSH!” as Scarlett and Simon embrace.  Even the giant cypress reappears – or, rather, regrows – eventually, and the unstated moral of the story is that everyone except evil witches needs love…and love is worth more than adventure and career success.  This is a rather mature message for the young readers at whom the book is directed, and in fact Who Needs Love? is a book that parents can not only read with their children but also can take to heart even more thoughtfully than will the kids, who are more likely to be distracted by the fairy-tale elements and miss the impressively serious real-world foundation underlying the story.

(+++) ANIMALS AND ALMOST-ANIMALS

Puppies and Kittens. By Penelope Arlon and Tory Gordon-Harris. Scholastic. $7.99.

Chickenhare. By Chris Grine. Graphix/Scholastic. $10.99.

      There’s just about nothing cuter than a puppy or kitten, and the pages of the new Scholastic “Discover More” book about these animal companions are chock full of cuteness.  Aimed at very young readers, up to about age eight, the book gives simple, basic facts about dogs and cats, and equally basic information about their early lives: “A newborn pup sleeps, eats and poops. …A puppy can bark at about 2-4 weeks old. Before then, it just squeaks.” There is information here on how to hold these small animals and how to take care of them: “Kittens learn to hunt by playing.” There are pictures of many different types of cats and dogs, and of such wild relatives as the wolf and leopard. What is missing in Puppies and Kittens is any discussion of the responsibilities of pet ownership: yes, the book is aimed at very young children, but the pictures are so adorable and the poses in which the animals are shown are so darn winning that many kids will be begging their parents for a puppy or kitten halfway through the book.  Without a firm understanding of the responsibility of caring for an animal that will live with the family for many years, children will be disappointed when their parents refuse to get one – and disappointed in a different way if a puppy or kitten does arrive and not only requires constant care and cleanup but also grows out of its super-cute stage to become a mature animal. Parental discretion with this book is definitely advised.

      Chickenhare is about a bunch of almost-animals and is intended for considerably older readers, as usual with graphic novels. But some discretion is in order here, too. The title character is half chicken, half rabbit, but his origin and reason for being are never explained. His best buddy is a turtle with a beard – again, never explained. As the book starts, the two have been captured (how is never explained) and are being taken to an evil and obviously insane taxidermist (whose craziness is explained and is a big part of the plot).  The crazy guy, Klaus, inspires such loyalty and/or fear in his underlings that they even help him hunt the heroes despite the bad guys’ legs being broken and/or their bodies bleeding internally. Also here are creatures called shromph (never explained). Oh, and Chickenhare and Abe (the turtle) meet and go through the adventure with characters named Banjo and Meg, whose exact origin is never explained.  Then, near the end, Meg tells Banjo, “They deserve to know exactly who and what you are,” and Banjo points out that there are issues with who and what Meg is, too, and then Chris Grine reveals exactly nothing (there is surely a sequel planned, if not several).  Oh – there is also the ghost of a dead goat here as a plot mover; the goat’s relationship with Klaus explains a great deal, or seems to, or in any case keeps the story plunging ahead.  The tale is a simple escape-the-bad-guys one, and the art, while certainly good enough, is not particularly distinctive. The characters are interestingly offbeat, but because readers find out so little about them and their origins, they are less attractive than they could be. Maybe the followup to Chickenhare will play fair, or more fairly, with what readers are, really, entitled to know if they are expected to empathize with characters (even combination-of-animals ones).

(+++) ADVENTURES IN STRANGE LANDS

Little Bo in London: The Ultimate Adventure of Bonnie Boadicea. By Julie Andrews Edwards and Emma Walton Hamilton. Illustrated by Henry Cole. Harper. $19.99.

The Beautiful Lady: Our Lady of Guadalupe. By Pat Mora. Illustrated by Steve Johnson & Lou Fancher. Knopf. $16.99.

      There is not necessarily anything especially exotic about England and Mexico, the countries where these books are set, but the strange and surprising things that happen to the characters make both the nations seem wondrous indeed. Little Bo in London is the fourth and final tale of the adventures of a very small cat with the improbable name of Bonnie Boadicea – following Little Bo, Little Bo in France and Little Bo in Italy. The primary author is Julie Andrews Edwards – the actress better known simply as Julie Andrews – and the books, not surprisingly, have a fine sense of pacing and drama (Emma Walton Hamilton is Julie Andrews Edwards’ daughter).  The story picks up after the human and feline protagonists have left Italy aboard the yacht Legend and are enjoying a cruise through the Mediterranean.  Suddenly, the yacht is attacked by pirates, who are foiled thanks to Bo and her friend, Panache.  The result of this adventure is that the cruise is cut short and everyone returns to England, where a still-greater adventure awaits: an audience with no less than the Queen.  But while the humans of the story are taking tea with Her Majesty, Bo and Panache are stuck up a tree, having been chased by four dogs on the palace grounds.  The cats are rescued, of course, and Bo has an unexpected reunion with her brother, Maximillian, and later an even more unexpected one with her parents. “Isn’t life amazing?” asks Bo after all the commotion dies down – and of course it is in these books, for cats and their human companions alike.  The writing keeps the story moving smartly along, although the illustrations by Henry Cole are more of an acquired taste: it is not quite clear whether they are intended to be fully realistic or have something of a fantasy flavor. They are certainly nicely done, in any case.

      The illustrations for The Beautiful Lady are a big part of the charm of this retelling of the legend of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared to a poor farmer in Mexico in 1531 and was canonized in 2002.  Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher do a fine job of showing what the story is all about, creating reverential illustrations that nevertheless convey real-world presence and a sense that real human beings are at the heart of this tale of a 16^th-century miracle.  Pat Mora tells the tale straightforwardly, with a child of today hearing from her grandmother how a man named Juan Diego was walking to church one day when he saw a beautiful, shining lady who asked him to go to the bishop and arrange for a hilltop church to be built. Juan Diego tried, but as a poor man without influence, he was not believed – and told the lady so when she appeared to him again. Eventually, as the bishop continued insisting on some sort of proof, the lady provided it in two forms: flowers out of season, and her own picture on Juan Diego’s cloak, where it can still be seen today.  This is a simple, lovely story with great meaning for New World Catholics; it also has a sort of fairy-tale atmosphere that will appeal to families with different beliefs.  Certainly its gentleness and its notion of someone holy appearing to somebody humble rather than to a person with higher worldly standing will resonate with people of many religions and belief systems, and even with those who do not adhere to any organized religion at all.

(+++) CLIMBING THE READING LADDER

Mia and the Tiny Toe Shoes. By Robin Farley. Pictures by Aleksey and Olga Ivanov. Harper. $16.99.

Mia: The Sweetest Valentine. By Robin Farley. Pictures by Aleksey and Olga Ivanov. HarperFestival. $4.99.

Fancy Nancy: Too Many Tutus. By Jane O’Connor. Cover illustration by Robin Preiss Glasser. Interior illustrations by Ted Enik. Harper. $16.99.

How to Drive Your Sister Crazy. By Diane Z. Shore. Pictures by Laura Rankin. Harper. $3.99.

Batman: Fowl Play. By John Sazaklis. Illustrated by Steven E. Gordon. Colors by Eric A. Gordon. HarperFestival. $3.99.

      The staged reading series from various children’s-book publishers are an excellent way to get kids interested in reading on their own – starting when they are as young as age four. HarperCollins has a series called “I Can Read!” that includes five levels, from “My First” through Level 4 – or as the descriptions put it, from “Ideal for sharing with emergent readers” through “The perfect bridge to chapter books.”  Mia and the Tiny Toe Shoes is at the “My First” level, and like many of these books, uses characters who appear elsewhere and may already be familiar to young children – or may become familiar through this series and attract kids to further books about the same characters.  This particular book has Mia, in ballet class, trying to help the newest would-be ballerinas learn some basic steps – and becoming worried when the new students have a lot of trouble following what Mia suggests. Then Mia comes up with an idea to turn the difficulties the class members are having into a positive thing, and everyone, including the teacher, is impressed and happy.

      Another story about Mia, The Sweetest Valentine, shows one way in which reading can progress. This is an illustration-focused book in the HarperFestival line rather than part of the “I Can Read!” series. The story is somewhat more complicated (although still designed for ages 4-8), and the book includes a page of stickers. Kids who enjoy the simpler Mia story may well move on to this one, in which Mia and her friends inadvertently eat Mia’s mother’s Valentine’s Day gift, a box of candy, so Mia and her father, Mr. Cat, have to come up with an alternative gift in just a few minutes. Their answer: a Valentine’s Day show, featuring Mia dancing and helping her father learn to do all the steps so Mrs. Cat will be both surprised and delighted. And of course everything works out just fine.

      Back in the “I Can Read!” series, Fancy Nancy: Too Many Tutus also has an obvious ballet connection, but here dancing is not the point – dress-up is. The always overdressed and thoroughly delightful Fancy Nancy loves wearing colorful tutus, and does not even care if some are too small or torn (a torn one makes a great cape, she says).  Nancy’s mother wants to make room in the closet by giving some old or damaged tutus away, but Nancy initially refuses – and then agrees, reluctantly, when she finds out that her class at school will have a swap-and-shop event, with kids bringing in clothing they no longer want and getting points that they can put toward clothes they do want that someone else has donated. This is a Level 1 book (“Simple sentences for eager new readers”), and the plot is clearly more complex than at the “My First” level. It even includes Nancy doing a good deed for one of her fellow students – before getting two more tutus for herself.  Fancy Nancy is a particularly attractive character for little girls: funny and effusive and given to big words that are explained at the end and can help build young readers’ vocabulary.

      For young boy readers, the books in the “I Can Read!” series take on a somewhat different and often more mischievous tone. How to Drive Your Sister Crazy is a Level 2 book (“High-interest stories for developing readers”), and is really a step toward chapter books, since it includes four separate events that are all eventually tied together.  Bradley Harris Pinkerton, who narrates the book, explains in detail how to upset his big sister, Abby – and how other younger brothers can upset theirs, too. The first suggestion is an elaborate one involving a rubber snake that the sister does not know is rubber, and a snake search done while Abby is in the shower.  The second idea involves sneaking into Abby’s room and rearranging a number of her items in suitably upsetting ways. The third is a phone prank , used when Abby is talking with her best friend.  And the fourth is an apparently sincere apology that makes everything all right again – until the middle of the night, when a leftover element from the room-rearrangement plan comes into action.  This is a more-elaborate book than those in earlier stages of the “I Can Read!” series, and unlike those, it does not end happily for all concerned – it ends with Bradley’s sister being driven crazy one more time. Whether that is appropriate for what parents want their young readers learning will be up to each family to decide.

      There are boy-oriented books in the HarperFestival line, too, often involving superheroes – for instance, Batman: Fowl Play, which has the Caped Crusader encounter a nefarious ring of thieving birds, trained through hypnosis by Oswald Cobblepot, also known as the Penguin.  The superheroics are the point here – although in reality, Batman does not have superpowers and solves crimes by investigation, making him (despite the outlandish costume) the most human of the superheroes created by D.C. Comics.  This book features nonstop action and not much of a mystery, since Bruce Wayne (Batman’s alter ego) simply follows a thieving bird that has broken into Wayne Manor and stolen some objects that are conveniently equipped with tracking devices.  Not a very elaborate story, to be sure, but one that kids who already enjoy Batman tales may find interesting enough to encourage them to read about the prime crime solver in Gotham City instead of simply enjoying his adventures on film or in videos.

(++++) SERIES, COMPLETE AND ONGOING

Mendelssohn: String Quartets (complete). Bartholdy Quartet. Acanta. $24.99 (4 CDs).

Mozart: Piano Sonatas (complete). Bart van Oort, piano. Brilliant Classics. $24.99 (5 CDs).

Hummel: Piano Concertos, Volume 1—Concerto in A minor, Op. 85; Concertino in G, Op. 73; Introduction & Rondo brillant in F minor, Op. 127 (“Le retour de Londres”). Alessandro Commellato, fortepiano; Solamente Naturali conducted by Didier Talpain. Brilliant Classics. $7.99.

Johann Strauss Sr. Edition, Volume 23. Slovak Sinfonietta Žilina conducted by Christian Pollack. Marco Polo. $9.99.

      Packaging is an unheralded element of recorded-music production, but it can make a great deal of difference to listeners interested in a set of works. Some such sets lend themselves to single-release boxed offerings; others may work that way as well but be packed as separate, individual discs for reasons of marketing or recording – the creation of the sets may be a multi-year project, for example. Although there are complete boxes of Wagner’s Ring cycle and even of Bach’s organ works, the single-box approach is more often used for music that can fit on three or four CDs, and whose similarity lends itself to their being packaged together. The Mendelssohn set by the Bartholdy Quartet (Joshua Epstein and Max Speermann, violins; Jörg-Wolfgang Jahn, viola; Annemarie Dengler, cello) is a good example of the all-in-one box. These are lovely performances, with fine flow and great rapport among the performers, and in fact the set is more than complete, containing not only all the familiar quartets but also one that Mendelssohn composed at the age of 14 – plus the quartet-in-all-but-name cobbled together from multiple works and known as the Andante, Scherzo, Capriccio and Fugue. The order of presentation of the music is peculiar: the first CD includes Op. 44, No. 1 and Op. 13; the second has the early work, without opus number, and the not-quite-quartet; the third features Op. 12 and Op. 44, No. 2; and the fourth offers Op. 44, No. 3 and Op. 80. Actually, with some judicious juggling, and without caring about presenting the quartets out of order (which is already the case), this could have been a three-CD rather than four-CD set.  But of course what really matters is the music itself and the quality of the music-making that goes into the performances. Mendelssohn’s quartets encapsulate his life in some very remarkable ways. The one he wrote at the age of 14 clearly shows that he had already mastered counterpoint and elegant compositional techniques, while the last quartet, Op. 80 – an F minor work written after the death of his beloved sister, Fanny, and not long before his own death – has drama, intensity and heartbreak far beyond anything else in the quartets or, indeed, in most of Mendelssohn’s other music.  The Bartholdy Quartet members have a talent for nuance, and bring out the differing expressions of the quartets to excellent effect, and the set as a whole leaves a strong impression – and a good sonic one, too, despite the fact that these are remasterings of analog recordings dating to 1973-74.

      Bart van Oort’s recording of Mozart’s 18 piano sonatas is newer – it dates to various times between 1997 and 2005 – and digital in origin. It is also expressive in a wholly different way that is just as effective in this music as the Mendelssohn recording is in the later composer’s quartets.  Van Oort performs the works on the instrument for which they were written, the fortepiano, or more precisely on five fortepianos, including modern copies of ones dating to 1785 and 1795 and a 1785 original.  Furthermore, van Oort thoroughly understands the differences in technique and sonority between the fortepiano and its modern descendants, pointing out in the booklet for these performances that “instrument and style were tied together within the spirit of the time.”  These are poised, elegant performances, and van Oort understands the time in which they were written so thoroughly that he does not attempt (as so many other pianists do) to play the notes exactly as written and with metronomic precision. Instead, there is a degree of free-flowing rhythmic liberty here, a suitable amount of ornamentation, and a general fluidity of line that make these works all the more effective.  There is no wholesale rubato, which would be inappropriate in this music, but there is nevertheless considerable tempo variation – usually of a minor sort, providing an instant or two of emphasis and gone almost before the listener realizes it – that sounds just right, as if Mozart wrote the lines precisely that way.  But in fact the opposite is true: Mozart wrote the lines imprecisely, at a time in musical history when improvisatory performance was the norm, and van Oort’s adherence to the expectations of Mozart’s time (rather than slavish reproduction of the scores’ notes exactly as they appear on the page) makes for an altogether involving, even immersive experience in sonatas that are generally considered pleasant enough but not usually thought of as being among Mozart’s more-profound creations.  The sonatas are presented in numbered order, based on their Köchel listings, and that is helpful in allowing listeners to hear Mozart’s progress in this form through the years. For example, van Oort clearly appreciates the fact that K. 284, in D, is a grander and more-expansive work than those that came before (as well as the first sonata in which Mozart included a set of variations). He handles the A minor sonata, K. 310, feelingly, but without overdoing its emotion.  The well-known K. 331 in A, which starts with variations and ends with the “Rondo alla Turca,” fits clearly into the progression; the C minor, K. 457, holds to tragedy throughout and looks ahead structurally to Beethoven’s “Tempest” sonata; and so on.  There are many felicities here and a great deal of delightful – and often moving – music, all handled in a way that preserves Mozart’s intended approach while speaking clearly to 21^st-century listeners.

There is similar sensitivity to period style and instruments in the first volume of Brilliant Classics’ cycle of Hummel’s piano concertos – which actually would make a good boxed set, but is being released a single CD at a time.  The performances by Alessandro Commellato, with Solamente Naturali under Didier Talpain, are the first these works have received on period instruments, and the result is quite delightful: Hummel’s ties to Mozart emerge very clearly in these readings (especially when Mozart’s piano works are also played on the instruments for which they were written), while the forward-looking elements in Hummel (which glance toward the Romantic era) come across even more clearly than they do on modern instruments.  The first CD in this series is actually a bit odd in its selection of music. There is only a single concerto here, and it is No. 4 among the eight that Hummel composed (counting two early, distinctly Mozartean concertos as Nos. 1 and 2).  A large-scale work of considerable drama, as befits its minor key, this is a concerto with breadth as well as emotion, and its ties to the Romantic era are particularly clear. It contrasts very pleasantly indeed with the Concertino, Op. 73, which is sort of a sonatina to the concerto’s sonata – well-constructed, filled with felicitous touches, but on an altogether smaller scale.  And the third piece on this CD, the Introduction & Rondo brillant, is a pianistic showcase – Hummel was a fine and well-known pianist, and this is a work meant for display and virtuosity, although (again) not to the extent that Romantic-era composers would demand just a few years after Hummel’s death in 1837.  Hummel’s concertos are in need of a complete period-instrument recording, and the first disc in this sequence indicates that they are in the process of getting a very fine one.

      Speaking of “in process,” the excellent Marco Polo series of the works of Johann Strauss Sr. has now reached its 23^rd volume, with Christian Pollack continuing his wonderfully idiomatic conducting and the Slovak Sinfonietta Žilina still playing with all the upbeat spirit that these works demand. Yet this volume includes pieces from a time of considerable turmoil: 1848, the year of the famous insurgency against the “old order” in the person of Chancellor Klemens von Metternich.  A number of the compositions of Strauss Sr. from this year – the second-last of his life – are in the form of marches celebrating military triumphs or otherwise connected with the uprising.  Most famous of all, and indeed the most famous piece Strauss Sr. ever wrote, is the Radetzky-Marsch, heard here in its first version, with lighter orchestration and without the drumroll for which it subsequently became well-known. The Österreichischer Nationalgarde-Marsch (“Austrian National Guard March”), Marsch der Studenten-Legion (“March of the Legion of Students,” which includes a quotation of a well-known student song – much as Brahms was later to include Gaudemus igitur in his Academic Festival Overture), Freiheits-Marsch (“Freedom March”), and Marsch des einigen Deutschlands (“March of the United Germany”) are further testimony to the turmoil of the times and to Strauss Sr.’s skill in the march form.  Also here are two polkas (Fortuna-Polka and Wiener Kreuzer-Polka, the latter named for the Viennese Kreutzer Society, which collected funds for the needy), and a quadrille that, like the marches, reflects the times in its title: Quadrille im militärischen Style (“Quadrille in the Military Style”). Yet despite the tensions, Strauss Sr. did continue to produce some excellent waltzes: Aeaciden (“Aiakos,” a title referring to a judge in the Greek underworld), Amphion-Klänge (“Amphion Melodies,” another Greek reference – this time to a famed mythological lutenist), Aether-Träume (“Ether-Dreams,” written for a doctors’ ball at a time when the anesthetic was still experimental), and Sorgenbrecher (“Stress Relievers,” a title surely much appreciated by Strauss Sr. himself as well as by the Viennese populace at large).  Like the other volumes in this ongoing series, this one shows again and again just how skilled Strauss Sr. was in the musical forms of his time, and just how little he deserves to have been so thoroughly eclipsed over the years by the triumphs of his eldest son, Johann Strauss Jr.

(++++) GOING, GOING BUT NOT GONE

Everything Goes: In the Air. By Brian Biggs. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $14.99.

Everything Goes: 123 Beep Beep Beep!—A Counting Book. By Brian Biggs. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $7.99.

Everything Goes: Stop! Go!—A Book of Opposites. By Brian Biggs. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $7.99.

The Runaway Bunny, The Story of Babar and Goodnight Moon. Read/sung by Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michael Douglas and Mark Stone. GRP Records. $16.99.

      Brian Biggs’ Everything Goes books continue to be a great mixture of information and enjoyment, tackling subjects that young children will frequently encounter in everyday life and explaining them amusingly and accurately in a delightful combination of fact and fiction. In the Air, for ages 4-8, for example, explains that “some things have changed, but airplanes basically work just as they did a hundred years ago” – which may be a revelation to some parents as well as children. The parts of a plane are clearly labeled, and various types of planes – new and old – are shown in ways that make perfect sense: a stunt plane is not only shown upside-down but also identified with upside-down lettering.  Nor are planes the only flying machines shown here – kids and, again, adults may be surprised to see how many types of helicopters there are. Biggs is careful not to overdo the specificity of his drawings and words – for example, he shows the interior of the cockpit of a passenger jet, but although he labels some parts individually (thrust lever, yoke, altimeter), he also includes the label “various indicators & gauges.”  The simple story underlying the book is that of a family plane trip, and the foldout pages near the book’s end provide the climax of a smooth takeoff before the inevitable “are we there yet?” question that concludes In the Air.  This is another virtuoso performance by an author with exceptional real-world communications skills.

      Biggs’ abilities translate well into board books for kids up to age four, with the result that 123 Beep Beep Beep!—A Counting Book and Stop! Go!—A Book of Opposites work well by using Biggs’ simple style and drawings and making them even simpler. But not too much simpler: the books get their information across with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of clarity. The counting book, for example, starts with one bus, continues through such vehicles as four vans and seven motorcycles, and ends up with 10 bicycles – and when all the vehicles are combined, what do you get? “1 BIG traffic jam!”  The opposites book is equally clever and well done. Up/down, dirty/clean, full/empty and so forth are nicely and very clearly illustrated, with cars, trucks, motorcycles, even unicycles being used to show the meanings of opposite words. The final contrast here uses the book’s title – with a police car waiting at a stop sign while a convertible painted to look like a flame rushes past…leaving kids to figure out, or adults to explain, what is likely to happen next.  Like Biggs’ other books, these are age-appropriate, amusing, informative and thoroughly enjoyable.

      Reading books aloud to children is one of the best ways to make them into lifelong readers – and help them absorb new information. But having kids hear professionals do the readings of favorite stories is a different kind of joy – and a very substantial one in a new GPR Records release featuring three of the best-loved books for children. This is a thoroughly marvelous mixture of good reading, pleasant singing and delightful music, all built around The Runaway Bunny, The Story of Babar and Goodnight Moon. Catherine Zeta-Jones reads Margaret Wise Brown’s The Runaway Bunny to a piano trio composed by Glen Roven, and the story is offered in its full version and also in a shorter one for younger children. Younger listeners also get not one but two versions of Brown’s Goodnight Moon, again with music by Roven, with performances by baritone Mark Stone and the GPR Festival Choir. Slightly older children get a different treat: The Story of Babar read by Michael Douglas, with music by Francis Poulenc. This is one of those CDs that are a collaborative effort among many talented people: composer Roven is artistic director of GPR Records; his music for The Runaway Bunny is played by Trio 21 (pianist Jeffrey Bigel, violinist Kinga Augustyn and cellist Robert deMaine); and Poulenc’s music for The Story of Babar is played by pianist Jason Wirth. Interestingly, though, it is not the star-studded cast that matters here, because Zeta-Jones and Douglas do a fine job of focusing attention on the stories they are reading, not on themselves – which is, in its own way, just what parents ideally do when reading these books to their own children.  A portion of the profits from this recording is being donated to a school that helps children who have language-based learning disabilities, too – a nice bonus, although not a reason in itself for parents to buy the CD. What is reason enough is the excellent combination of words and music and the sensitive but not overdone readings that will result in children enjoying hearing these books over and over, and hopefully encourage them to read the books themselves when they are able to do so.

(++++) GRAMMAR GOODIES

Exclamation Mark! By Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Illustrations by Tom Lichtenheld. Scholastic. $17.99.

Pigs in Pajamas. By Maggie Smith. Knopf. $15.99.

Miss Pell Never Misspells. By Steve Martin. Illustrated by Martin Remphry and Michael Garton. Scholastic. $9.99.

      The simple, hilarious yet touching tale of a punctuation mark that, unlike all the round periods, sports a long line atop his head, Exclamation Mark! is all about finding fulfillment at the end of a sentence and accepting that different characters all have their place in life (and writing) and are all well-equipped for their purposes. The title character in this latest delightful collaboration between Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld has the usual concerns of young children: he just doesn’t fit in, isn’t like everyone else, and is “confused, flummoxed, and deflated” (with each of those words causing his usually straight above-the-head line to droop in a different way).  Then the exclamation meets someone (something?) else with an atop-the-head drawing, but while the exclamation’s is straight, this one is hook-shaped. Yes, it is a question mark, talking entirely in questions – incessant questions, repetitious questions (“Is there an echo in here?” needs to be asked twice), an endless stream of questions that becomes so out-of-control that the exclamation point eventually yells, very loudly, “STOP!” Well, “He didn’t know he had it in him,” but now he does, and as the questions continue (at a slower pace), the exclamation mark “pushed himself a bit more,” exclaiming more and more emphatically in “a world of endless possibilities,” and then he rushes to all the periods to show them what he can do.  Everyone is delighted, everyone is happy, the anthropomorphized punctuation marks are adorable and genuinely funny, and the book manages both to show how exclamation points and question marks are used and to make an effective point (that is, a punctuation point) about the importance of being an individual and living up to your particular role in life. Clever, very clever, from start to finish!

      The story is more straightforward in Pigs in Pajamas, but this tale too has a lesson behind it: the many and varied uses of the letter p. Penelope Pig has a sleepover party, for which she prepares with her parrot watching all the activity and exclaiming, “Polly loves a party!” “Polly wants a present!” “Polly wants a peanut!” The piggies at the party bring presents, eat punch and pies and pudding, have pizza topped with pickles, pin tails on a pony, play piano and prance about, then get so pooped that they pick plop-down spots where they plump up pillows and fall asleep – without the usual “z’s” indicating sleep because, as a mouse in the corner of the room points out, “This book is about the letter P!”  And there is more here than just the story: the final page invites young readers to search for many “p” objects in the illustrations – penguin, pillows, pick-up sticks, pansies, piano, pancakes, pineapple, pigeons, perfume, pincushion, and so on.  Maggie Smith keeps the poetry (another “p” word!) light and lively, the illustrations amusing, and the whole production’s pacing perfectly pleasant.

      Miss Pell Never Misspells is a more overtly instructional book, offering memory techniques for language, math, geography, science, history and other subjects. The book’s title shows its approach: the word “misspell” is easy to misspell, but not if you think of it as “Miss Pell.” Along the same lines, when learning a foreign language, you can remember that the Spanish word for “whale” is “ballena” by picturing a whale dressed as a ballerina. The sillier the association, the better, because it is the silliness that jogs your memory.  Subtitled “More Cool Ways to Remember Stuff” and also published under the title In 1492, Columbus Sailed the Ocean Blue, this book offers acronyms (PEMDAS [or Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally] for the order of operations in a math problem: parentheses, exponents, multiplication and division, addition and subtraction ); mnemonic images (to recall that the Antarctic is the south pole area, not the north, imagine an ant heading south for vacation); and absurd sentences (energy from the longest wave to the shortest can be recalled with “Rich Men Inflate Vegetables Lovingly Using Xylophones. Great!”  (The first letters stand for radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays and gamma radiation.)  These techniques are applied to all sorts of information: “Symphonies Played With Brilliance,” for example, to remember the instrumental sections in an orchestra – strings, percussion, woodwind and brass. But some memory aids are easier to use than others: there is a perfectly reasonable poem containing the names of all of Shakespeare’s 38 plays, but remembering the poem is itself a considerable chore.  Still, the basic approaches here are usable in a wide variety of situations, and the discussion of techniques at the book’s conclusion (explaining chunking, the memory palace and other approaches) can help young readers construct their own memory aids for use in many circumstances. There are also suggestions for memory games to play on your own or with someone else – a way to make memorizing, which can easily descend into drudgery, considerably more interesting and enjoyable.

(+++) RELATING TO YOURSELF AND OTHERS

The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t—What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, but Does. By Sonja Lyubomirsky. Penguin. $27.95.

Talk to Me Like I’m Someone You Love: Relationship Repair in a Flash. By Nancy Dreyfus, Psy.D. Tarcher/Penguin. $17.95.

Talk to Me Like I’m Someone You Love: Relationship Repair in a Flash—64 Flash Cards for Real Life. By Nancy Dreyfus, Psy.D. Tarcher/Penguin. $15.95.

      The “I’ll be happy when” mentality is the enemy of happiness, argues psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky in The Myths of Happiness. A happiness researcher – yes, there are such people – Lyubomirsky says that expecting happiness upon attainment of certain milestones, such as wealth or professional accomplishment, leads only to disappointment when those events do not in fact “:automatically” produce a feeling of happiness. And the same is true of negative events that we expect to destroy or prevent happiness. As Lyubomirsky puts it, “Research on hedonic adaptation shows that we swiftly grow accustomed to most negative events.” In fact, she argues that humans’ adaptability prevents us from becoming supremely happy under certain circumstances and wallowing in misery under others. Thus, there is no doubt that we tend to feel happy after getting a raise or beginning a new romantic relationship, but the increased happiness does not last for long, and we soon return to our individual happiness level, the one at which we were living before the pleasurable occurrence.  This sounds fatalistic, and indeed there is some level of fatalism underlying The Myths of Happiness, as if there is not much we can do to make ourselves happier because we tend to return to our “default happiness setting” whether good things or bad befall us.  But Lyubomirsky takes pains to indicate that this is not so – after all, this would not be much of a self-help book if it reveled in “happiness predestination.” Lyubomirsky says research suggests that unanticipated pleasures are the most rewarding, so we should enjoy them when they occur, even if the pleasant feelings they engender do not last; friendship is a great leveling agent for the ups and downs of life, so we should focus on building and maintaining social relationships – which, for humans as for other primates, are crucial to our happiness; the frequency of positive emotions is good for health, but the intensity of positive feelings is less important; remembering and replaying positive experiences without analyzing them leads to happiness, while analyzing rather than reliving negative events is a key to absorbing them and boosting happiness; and so on. Some of these arguments are more convincing than others, and some of Lyubomirsky’s statements are marred by either careless writing or careless editing, as when she asserts that divorced parents have difficulty “diffusing [rather than “defusing”] parent-child conflict.”  And some of the methods Lyubomirsky recommends to increase happiness fail to take into account significant differences in people’s psychological organization. For example, she says to “spend your money on experiences rather than possessions,” which sounds fine, but other research has shown that people who are more strongly extroverted are more likely to find experiential spending rewarding – which means that introverts who try this prescription are likely to “go against the grain” of their personalities, raise their stress and decrease their happiness.  Her recommendation that people take more risks (she suggests one per month) is similarly more readily applicable to the extroverted than the introverted.  Lyubomirsky deserves credit for trying to find ”action items” that people can use to boost happiness – in light of research by herself and others showing that happiness tends to return to a not-always-golden mean whether one’s experiences are positive or negative.  However, her explanation of the reasons that apparent happiness boosters and happiness suppressors both tend to have minimal long-term effect proves more interesting and valuable than her prescriptions for going beyond one’s individual normal setting for happiness.

      Relationships, to which Lyubomirsky pays some attention, are the entire focus of Nancy Dreyfus’ Talk to Me Like I’m Someone You Love, whose newly revised edition incorporates two additional sections. The book dates back to 1993 but retains an up-to-date feel, because Dreyfus focuses not on building a relationship and not on whether a new or enduring relationship brings happiness, but on the inevitable bumps in the relationship road and ways to use flash cards to smooth them.  Yes, the “in a flash” portion of the subtitle refers to flash cards, and yes, there is a new version of the book that is a set of flash cards -- although there are just 64 of them, compared with 127 entries in the book itself.  Dreyfus’ book has a strong and focused layout: simple, direct statements on red left-hand pages are followed by explanatory material and usage suggestions for the statements on more-traditional-looking right-hand pages. In the card deck, the simple statements appear on the front and the more-extended discussions on the back.  Dreyfus, a psychotherapist and couples therapist, divides her book into 11 sections: Shifting Gears, Setting Limits, Feeling Vulnerable, Taking Responsibility, Giving Information, Getting Clarification, Apologizing, Loving, Making Up, Making Love, and Deepening Trust. The last two sections are new.  A sample flash card may say, “I want us to stop what we are doing to each other. Both of us. Now.” Among the comments on this is, “This is a willingness to honor your partnership when it would be so easy to take sides, as it were.”  Another example: “Your behavior embarrassed me. I’m trying to tell you, not to make you feel bad, but so I can feel close to you again.” Part of the discussion: “This flash card is for when you end up, say, haranguing your partner on the car ride home from the scene of your embarrassment.”  One more: “Right now, I’d do anything for you to know how much I love you.” Commentary: “This card was not designed to be a profound declaration of love to a partner who may be doubting it. It was designed to infuse your interchange with a dose of goodwill…”  The whole setup of Dreyfus’ book is artificial and gimmicky, and will not appeal to many couples, especially since it requires each party to decide, during a stressful time, just which section that particular stress fits into and just which flash card is most appropriate to offer.  On the other hand, the very artificiality of the approach will have a cooling effect on many arguments, and couples who are willing to try it may find that the need to pause and reflect on just what to say via flash card actually helps defuse volatile situations. The actual flash-card deck is even more gimmicky than the book, but has the virtue of presenting less discussion and less information on each card – making these cards more usable for quick responses to explosive or potentially explosive situations. Couples willing to try an approach that seems facile on its face but that has some good thinking behind it may find Talk to Me Like I’m Someone You Love, in either of its forms, a worthwhile way to attempt at least partial relationship repair – maybe only temporarily, maybe not “in a flash,” but maybe for long enough to provide a chance to get through the surface-level difficulties and try to handle their underlying foundations.

(+++) SPECIALTY FOODS

Skinny Smoothies: 101 Delicious Drinks That Help You Detox and Lose Weight. By Shell Harris and Elizabeth Johnson. Da Capo. $16.

Paleo Desserts: 125 Delicious Everyday Favorites, Gluten- and Grain-Free. By Jane Barthelemy. Da Capo. $18.99.

      It is one of the most-common New Year’s resolutions, and one of the greatest sources of frustration when it is broken, as it so often is: to lose weight.  There really is only one way to reduce body mass: eat less and exercise more. But that simple-sounding prescription is very difficult indeed to implement, and as a result, there is quite an industry out there of books purporting to make the whole process simpler: quick and painless exercise, delicious foods that prevent you from feeling deprived but that help the pounds melt away, etc.  Skinny Smoothies is no different from many other “easy diet” books in its proclamations: “We’re not recommending a radical program that includes deprivation and starvation,” write Shell Harris and Elizabeth Johnson. “We’re recommending a lifestyle change that you can stick with for the rest of your life.”  Smoothies should not be the only thing you consume, the authors say (rather obviously), but they can be the cornerstone of a diet that is better for you, helps you lose weight, and rids your body of toxins – one of those “food fad” prescriptions currently in vogue.  True, the authors recognize that “there are so many ‘cleansing’ and ‘detox’ diets out there that it is hard to know what is healthy and safe and what is dangerous,” and they are careful to include the usual see-your-doctor disclaimers and warnings to seek medical advice if you notice health symptoms or if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, under 18, over 65, ill, recovering from illness, or left-handed (all right, they don’t mention that last one, but these lawyer-driven admonitions do become very tiresome very quickly).  The meat (so to speak) of this book, though, is not the popular-health-science approach but the smoothie recipes themselves. They are decked out in all sorts of prescriptive clothing: best for different budgets, best for detoxing, best to get the day started, best for workouts (before and after), and so forth.  But the reality is that this is a book for people who simply love smoothies: Harris runs the Web site www.smoothieweb.com.  It can be fun to page through the book (or open it at random) and find different recipes that you may want to try. “The ‘Basic’ Weight Loss Smoothie,” for instance, includes skim milk, plain yogurt, banana and berries; the health-oriented “Peachy Fling” has peaches, lemon yogurt, protein powder and brewer’s yeast; “Tropical Ginger Smoothie” includes apple juice, coconut milk, banana, pineapple and ginger root; “Green Dew Mint Smoothie” contains cucumber, honeydew melon, pear juice, lime juice and mint leaves.  A big attraction of all these recipes is that, once you assemble the ingredients, preparation is a snap: just blend together. There are no elaborate cooking requirements here.  And since Harris and Johnson provide complete nutritional information about each smoothie, you can make your own decisions about which ones to try, when, and for what purpose.  The health-related claims may or may not have value: “Ginger helps speed up your circulation, promoting healthy sweating and supporting liver function, therefore helping your body in its efforts to detoxify.”  But smoothies themselves can be delicious as part of a balanced diet, and their ease of preparation makes them ideal for a quick breakfast, lunch or pick-me-up.  They are really not ideal diet foods or solutions to a range of health problems, but they are tasty and easy to make, and the recipes in Skinny Smoothies certainly offer smoothie lovers a wide variety of possibilities.

      A dietary-advocacy book of a different sort, Paleo Desserts is based on the Paleo diet, which supposedly helps modern people eat as hunter-gatherers did 10,000 years ago – ignoring inconvenient questions such as what a modern urban or suburban lifestyle has in common with a hunting-and-gathering, nomadic existence.  Paleo advocates consider their approach more “natural” than that of modern diets, with an emphasis on fresh produce, nuts and roots, wild-caught fish, free-range poultry, grass-fed beef, and all the other trappings of the trendy (in fact, hunter-gatherers ate pretty much whatever they could grow or catch that appeared even reasonably edible; theirs was not an existence to be envied by today’s smartphone-equipped, computer-savvy food consumers). Paleo Desserts is interesting primarily because it applies the Paleo principles to desserts, offering gluten-free, grain-free, low-carb, diabetic-friendly meal-enders and taste treats such as Raspberry Rose Delight Mousse, Mocha Mudd Milkshake and Mint Grasshopper Ice Cream.  Jane Barthelemy’s recipes are the antithesis of those in Skinny Smoothies, requiring a wide range of sometimes-exotic ingredients and often needing considerable preparation time and a fair degree of kitchen skill.  Barthelemy’s inclusion of a where-to-buy section to find some of those specialized ingredients is quite helpful, but it also draws attention to just how many such ingredients there are.  This is not a book for the time-pressed: even the chocolate-chip-cookie recipe requires 13 ingredients and contains the admonition to use medium-shredded unsweetened coconut flakes, not coconut flour.  Committed Paleo enthusiasts will not mind being told, when making “Gell-o with Fruit and Whipped Cream,” to use “Just Like Sugar Table Top natural chicory root sweetener (not Baking) – I do not recommend any other sweetener for this,” but anyone who is not already devoted to Paleo beliefs will likely find the instructions on the overbearing side.  Paleo Desserts is preaching to the choir: it is written for people so immersed in one particular style of eating that they accept as matters of course ingredient lists and preparation instructions that the majority of cooks and bakers will likely find overdone.  For its intended audience, the book is just fine, and certainly the 16 pages of color photos make everything look scrumptious.  But if you are not already a Paleo enthusiast, you will find plenty of other dessert books more appetizing.