(++++) TWO OF THE THREE R’S

How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids. By Thomas C. Foster. Harper. $16.99.

My Weird Writing Tips. By Dan Gutman. Pictures by Jim Paillot. Harper. $5.99.

     Long, long ago, education was supposed to consist of reading, writing and ’rithmetic, which should have been known as “R, W and A” but was in fact called “the three R’s,” presumably to start kids off on the road to misspelling everything. In any case, education has, for better or worse, moved beyond the “three R’s” concept, but there is still something to be said for learning about such topics as reading and writing. Reading is what Thomas C. Foster, who has written How to Read Novels Like a Professor and How to Read Literature Like a Professor for adults, serves up for preteens in How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids. Much easier to read than the books and stories mentioned within it, and much shorter than most of them at 168 pages, Foster’s reading course nevertheless hits a number of the high points of interpretation that young readers will encounter as they read more and more complex books in school and, one hopes, thereafter. Each of the 19 chapters runs just a few pages and gets right to the point. “Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires” explains that vampirism is about, among other things, selfishness and exploitation – not just a good scare. “When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare…” points out that Shakespearean quotations take up 47 pages in Bartlett’s, if any preteens know what that is, and the next chapter, “…Or the Bible,” gives 19 examples of the attributes of a Christ figure and then explains why the protagonist in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is one such. Elsewhere, Foster explains why “it’s never just rain” and why “it’s never just heart disease,” showing how these and other conditions stand for characteristics beyond themselves. And in a chapter called “It’s All Political,” he explains the lurking political and social elements within almost all books, even if not all of them, because “writers tend to be men and women who are interested in the world around them.” Eventually, Foster works up to “A Test Case” in the form of Katherine Mansfield’s story, “The Garden Party,” to which he applies the insights and techniques he has been offering throughout the book. Young readers will not necessarily enjoy learning the extent to which books operate on multiple levels – some will wonder why a good story can’t be just a good story – but Foster does an excellent job of showing how intriguing it is that a book (or story or poem) can indeed be a good story plus a good deal more.

     Now, for preteens who would like to write some of those good stories, Dan Gutman offers tips in a writing style (and an illustrative one from Jim Paillot) straight out of My Weird School! In fact, fans of Gutman’s series are the most likely readers of this guide to the basics of clear, comprehensible, accurate writing, and are likely to enjoy the way Gutman’s style here mirrors that of his fiction: “There’s no extra charge for using periods, folks.” “Yes, people may think you’re crazy while you’re reading out loud. But maybe they think that anyway.” The style enlivens what are basically some simple, straightforward rules about how to write right (which, to be accurate, should be “how to write rightly,” if there were an adequate adverb from “right,” or at least “how to write the right way”). The difference between “can” and “may” is here, and the distinction between “its” and “it’s,” and when to use “who” and “whom.” There are also instructions on the elements of a good story: setting, character, research, goal, etc. And there are sprinkled comments from famous writers to enliven the whole presentation, such as this from Kurt Vonnegut: “No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them.” What keeps this generally admirable book at the (+++) level is that, for all its usefulness, it is not entirely sure whether it is about writing stories or about writing with correct grammar. Furthermore, Gutman himself makes grammatical mistakes: “Well, it looks like [sic] we’ve reached the end of this book.” (It should be “as if,” not “like.”) And he sometimes omits a bit of fairly important information, as when he explains that you lay things down, but you yourself lie down – which is true in the present tense, but which omits the fact that it you lie down today and discuss it tomorrow, you need to say, “I lay down yesterday.” My Weird Writing Tips does not pretend to be comprehensive – hey, it’s only 152 pages long – but it would have been a bit better if Gutman had paid a little more attention to accuracy even if that meant he paid a little less to stylistic brightness.

(++++) FAIRY TALES, SORT OF

Vampirina Ballerina Hosts a Sleepover. By Anne Marie Pace. Pictures by LeUyen Pham. Disney/Hyperion. $16.99.

A Real Prince Is Hard to Find: A Modern Fairy Tale. By Joanna Rivard. Illustrated by Adam Larkum. Bloomsbury. $16.99.

     In one of those wonderful stories whose words are straightforward but whose pictures skew everything quite deliciously, Anne Marie Pace and LeUyen Pham turn Vampirina Ballerina Hosts a Sleepover into a real delight for pre-readers and young readers, ages 3-5. The fun here comes from Pace’s matter-of-fact recitation of sleepover planning and etiquette, plus Pham’s amusingly twisted application of the words to Vampirina’s rather, um, unusual family circumstances. The words simply say that “you’ll need to cook up a menu” for the party, but the picture of the huge-tentacled thing in the stew pot says more than the words do. The words point out that “your friends will be dying to see your room,” while the picture shows what they find there: mummy, skull, coffin, tombstone dresser and more. The guests’ makeovers involve spider slippers, bat wings and such, and after an appropriate scavenger hunt (for a spider, bone, bat, dragon and such), a wonderful foldout portrayal of the whole group dancing – which takes up four full pages – makes a great climax for the evening. Then it is off to bed for everyone except, of course, Vampirina, who cannot sleep in the middle of the night and instead sits quietly reading The Sun Also Rises (presumably a child’s version!). After everyone leaves in the morning, then Vampirina can “rest in peace,” as the inside back cover pages show her and her whole family happily asleep following “the Best Sleepover Ever.” Both as a guide to real sleepovers and as a romp through Vampirina Ballerina’s thoroughly delightful (and not really very scary) world, Vampirina Ballerina Hosts a Sleepover is a winner of a story.

     One of the small amusements of Vampirina Ballerina Hosts a Sleepover is on the cover, where Pace is listed as “Countess” and Pham is identified as “Mistress of the Night.” Not true in either case, of course, but real-world royals are the subjects of A Real Prince Is Hard to Find, a very simple story of Kate and William and, at the very end, their new son, George. The book was written before the baby’s birth, so the gender and name of the baby are absent, but it is clear from Joanna Rivard’s writing where the whole story is going. In fact, it more or less floats in that direction, starting with young William wondering “whether he might be lonely in the palace (it was very large)” and continuing with him meeting “terribly pretty” Kate at university, where she has gone “to learn all kinds of interesting things.” The two soon become “the best of friends” and, in by far the most amusing scene and best Andrew Larkum drawing in the book, they go “on lots of adventures together,” which involve balloons that raise a dog, sheep and even a giraffe into the sky (not to mention that there is a bird, improbably held aloft by one of the balloons). There are celebrations after the two become engaged, and there is a wedding at which they “both said ‘I do’ in the right places (which is the most important part, after all),” and after the honeymoon there is a return to England and to a castle that “still felt quite large” until the book’s inevitable climax with the birth of the royal baby and everyone living happily ever after. The book may be a touch too sweet and a touch too swoony over the royals for some families’ taste, and the comment that “like many little girls, Kate dreamed of meeting a handsome prince” may be a bit much for some adults (if not children) to take; so A Real Prince Is Hard to Find gets a (+++) rating. But it will certainly be a royal treat for those who have breathlessly followed the story of Kate and William and, now, baby George.

(++++) SKEWED SCHOOLS

The School for Good and Evil. By Soman Chainani. Illustrated by Iacopo Bruno. Harper. $16.99.

Scary School 3: The Northern Frights. By “Derek the Ghost” (Derek Taylor Kent). Illustrated by Scott M. Fischer. Harper. $16.99.

My Weirder School #8: Dr. Nicholas Is Ridiculous! By Dan Gutman. Pictures by Jim Paillot. Harper. $3.99.

     If there seems to be something just a trifle odd about the schools in all these books, that is purely intentional: all of them take the notion of everyday rote learning and turn it inside-out, upside-down and generally into a delightfully unrecognizable variation of itself. This is a fairly straightforward thing to do in creating school-related books for preteens, but when it is done particularly well – as first-time novelist Soman Chainani does it in The School for Good and Evil – the result is very educational indeed, provided that “educational” is rather broadly defined. One reason this book works so well is that Chainani is a novice novelist but scarcely a tyro in producing stories, creating characters and developing intricate plots: he is an award-winning screenwriter. There is in fact something cinematic about this novel for preteens, not in the typical smash-bang-action approach of far too many modern movies but in terms of clearly and simply delineated characters, an easy-to-follow good-and-evil plot, and enough twists to keep everything interesting. In fact, the underlying premise is downright intriguing for anyone who enjoys fairy tales: there are two side-by-side schools, separated by a bridge and a waterway (called “moat” on one side and “lake” on the other), devoted to training the good and evil characters of fairy tales. As wonderfully pictured right at the start by Iacopo Bruno, the schools look suitably dark and light, with the School for Evil devoted to “mischief, malice, vice” and the School for Good focused on “purity, honor, charity, valor” (four attributes to the other school’s three, but who’s counting?). The symbol of the School for Good is a white swan with half a shield; that of the School for Evil is a black swan with the other half of the same shield – whose design makes the two halves mirror images. Into these schools come two friends: Sophie, who is all pink dresses and glass slippers, and Agatha, with a prickly personality and wicked pet cat. It is obvious what will happen – which is why Chainani quickly tosses out the first of many twists by having Sophie assigned to the School for Evil and Agatha to the School for Good. Obviously a terrible mistake has been made – although careful readers will find hints of the girls’ real personalities from the book’s start. In any case, the two girls are sure that there has been a major error and that they need to set things right and get placed where they belong. But wait: there is another twist in the form of the Storian – not “historian,” writing about the past, but Storian, writing tales as they are being lived. Once he (actually it – a clever touch) begins chronicling the girls’ adventures, Sophie and Agatha must live them through to whatever end there may be, and of course the Storian has started doing so. The chance that the girls’ fairy tale will end well for both of them is small, and gets smaller every time either girl tries to break out of the lifestyle into which she has been channeled. And gradually, but with a firm authorial hand, Chainani has readers start thinking more and more that perhaps, despite surface appearances, Sophie and Agatha were placed in the correct schools after all. The whole question of what is on the surface vs. what is in one’s heart – a standard element of fairy tales – is important here, and gives the book more depth than it would have as a straightforward adventure story with a touch of magic thrown in. There are certainly derivative elements in The School for Good and Evil (note that the title says “school,” not “schools,” which should already tell readers something). For example, Mr. Deauville’s Storybook Shop would fit quite naturally into Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter universe, and Bruno’s drawing makes the resemblance even clearer. But all tales of young people and magic share certain elements, and the echoes of other stories are not intrusive here. The School for Good and Evil has enough thoughtfulness piled atop enough adventurousness to prove equally attractive to fairy-tale readers who root for the good guys and those who root (usually in vain) for the baddies.

     Preteens looking for something simpler and funnier will enjoy the third book in the Scary School series, The Northern Frights. The protagonist here is once again Charles Nukid, who is less of a new kid by this time and ends up being nicknamed “noodle-neck” twice, for two separate and equally good reasons. And the narrator is again Derek the Ghost, victim at age 11 of a school science experiment gone wrong. But the focus is not solely or even primarily on Scary School in this installment: Scream Academy is where the action is, after a number of Scary School students go there in a transfer program. This gives Derek Taylor Kent the opportunity to introduce a whole group of new characters, ranging from Scream Academy’s principal (an abominable snowman named Meltington) to the genuinely interesting polter-bears (part poltergeist, part polar bear). There are the usual hijinks (lojinks?) here, such as hall monitor Ms. Hydra almost devouring the class, which she is allowed to do if they are late because “rules are rules.” There are the puns (one student is named Steven Kingsley), the familiar characters (Jason, with “ever-present hockey mask and lumberjack outfit” and, of course, a chainsaw), and the obvious notions (Ramon the Zombie’s idea to counter an acid-rain storm is to “eat the storm’s braaaains”). Then there is the scene in which a troll, killed in a classroom by a falling icicle, is turned into a troll-snowman by the yeti professor and emerges as a snow monster who comments, “I don’t feel nearly as dead as before.” There is also a prophecy (this is scarcely a surprise), and when Charles learns in class about the Elder Dragons that are now all dead, it is pretty obvious where the prophecy and the book are going, which is where they go. Of course, fighting an Ice Dragon requires a Sword of Fire, so of course there is one, and of course Charles finds and wields it – and eventually the threat to both Scream Academy and Scary School is neutralized, and a good time is had by almost all (all the good guys, anyway). The (+++) Scary School series continues to try a little too hard to be amusing, magical and amusingly magical, but fans of the first two books will enjoy the third helping of the characters and storytelling in The Northern Frights.

     The eighth helping in the My Weirder School series is a continuation of a continuation, since this whole (+++) series follows from My Weird School Daze, which consisted of a dozen books. These short paperbacks are formulaic by intention, even to the point of titles that invariably end with exclamation points – hence Dr. Nicholas Is Ridiculous! The teacher of the title is a college professor brought in to teach the kids history after they do really badly on a test. And she is old enough to be a part of history herself: A.J., the narrator, says, “I’ve seen glaciers move faster than Dr. Nicholas,” who has white hair and uses a cane – and turns out to be really good at jumping rope. She also has an offbeat approach to history, preferring to discuss the development of toilet bowls rather than more traditional material. The history of Barbie dolls, the history of Hot Wheels cars, a voyage in a “Time Boat,” and the kids are ready to tackle the history test again – and lo and behold, the oddball historical questions on it reflect exactly what they have been taught by Dr. Nicholas. So all ends well, as usual, in a predictable way, as usual, and Dan Gutman and Jim Paillot can chalk up another modest success in their easy-to-read, moderately interesting and only slightly weird second series of educational amusements.

(+++) TIDBITS

The Frugal Housewife. By Lydia Maria Child. Andrews McMeel. $22.99.

Charlie the Ranch Dog: Where’s the Bacon? Based on the Charlie the Ranch Dog books by Ree Drummond and Diane deGroat. Harper. $16.99.

     Charms old-fashioned and newfangled, some for adults and some for children, are the attractions of these books. The Frugal Housewife is a new entry in Andrews McMeel’s “American Antiquarian Cookbook Collection,” and “antiquarian” it certainly is: originally published in 1829, it was the first thrift-oriented cookbook and became an instant and enduring success – going through three dozen printings. It would be nice to report that the specifics of its frugality are as valid today as they were in the 19^th century, but unfortunately, the cookbook is more an interesting historical document than a timeless classic. It happens to be a lot of fun to read for those so inclined, but most modern cooks will have some difficulty following or even understanding many of the recipes and homespun recommendations. “A few drops of the oil of Cajput on cotton wool is said to be a great relief to the tooth ache.” “A spoonful of ashes stirred in cider is good to prevent sickness at the stomach.” For arrow-root jelly, “Put rather more than a pint of water over the fire, with some white sugar, grated nutmeg, and two spoonfuls of brandy. Stir up a large spoonful of arrow-root powder in a cup of water, pour it in when the water boils, stir it well and let it boil three or four minutes. This is considered nice food in bowel complaints.” There are even some typos that have stood the test of time: “Neat’s tongue should be boiled full thee [sic] hours.” It is fascinating to find out, for those interested in history, that “some people prefer pickled nasturtion seed to capers” and to learn a bit about prices at the time when the book was written: “It is cheaper to buy one large mackerel for ninepence, than two for fourpence half-penny.” A trip to the dictionary or to online history and financial-conversion sites will be necessary to clarify much of what readers will find in The Frugal Housewife, and even the book’s index takes some getting used to: it includes entries for Alamode Beef, Britannia Ware, Cholera-morbus, Elixir Proprietatis and Rusty black crape – plus, rather charmingly, “Horse-Radish, kept all winter,” “Bits of meat and vegetables,” and “Rhubarb, or Persian apple pies.” The modern cook is not likely to find much to emulate here beyond the overall philosophy of frugal living – which is timeless. But a cook, homemaker or any reader with an interest in what people were reading and using to guide their home lives through much of the 19^th century in the United States will find much to enjoy in Child’s book.

     A new Charlie the Ranch Dog book is child’s play – for the modern family. Where’s the Bacon? is a Level 1 book in the “I Can Read!” series, offering “simple sentences for eager new readers.” The cooking element – well, the food element, anyway – is central here as good-natured, self-important and lazy Charlie greets a dog named Rowdy from a nearby ranch. Rowdy is staying at Charlie’s place for a few days while his family is away, and that would be fine with Charlie – except that it turns out that Rowdy has eaten Charlie’s breakfast (which includes bacon); and then Rowdy gets in Charlie’s way; and then he gets a belly rub that Charlie thinks he should be getting; and eventually, unforgivably, Rowdy takes a nap in Charlie’s bed. By then, Charlie has had more than enough of this unruly guest, and he howls so loudly that Rowdy is frightened and runs outside, where he cowers in the outdoor doghouse. Now Charlie feels bad – but he finds a way to make up with Rowdy, thanks to, yes, food. The story is simple and amusing, with editorial and artistic contributions from Amanda Glickman and Rick Whipple being pleasantly layered onto the original writing and art of Ree Drummond and Diane deGroat. Beginning readers with a fondness for dogs and pleasantly underplayed adventures will enjoy Where’s the Bacon? and will likely come back for seconds by re-reading the book and having fun with it yet again.

(++++) BIG AND SMALL AND VERY FRENCH

Auber: La Muette de Portici. Oscar de la Torre, Angelina Ruzzafante, Angus Wood, Ulf Paulsen, Anne Weinkauf, Diego Torre, Gabriella Gilardi, Wiard Witholt, Kostadin Arguirov, Stephan Biener; Opernchor des Anhaltischen Theaters and Anhaltische Philharmonie conducted by Antony Hermus. CPO. $33.99 (2 CDs).

Bizet: Le Docteur Miracle. Marie-Bénédicte Souquet, Isabelle Druet, Jérôme Billy, Pierre-Yves Pruvot; Orchestre Lyrique de Région Avignon Provence conducted by Samuel Jean. Timpani. $18.99.

     How many music lovers today, how many opera lovers, realize that Daniel-François-Esprit Auber – not Giacomo Meyerbeer – created French grand opera? How many realize that Auber wrote no fewer than 48 operas? How many know that Georges Bizet wrote 14 operas besides Carmen and was beholden to Offenbach for his first modest success? New and very well-sung releases of La Muette de Portici and Le Docteur Miracle provide a wonderful opportunity to consider, or reconsider, some byways of opera history – and hear some unjustly neglected music.

     La Muette de Portici, first performed in 1828, was filled with “firsts,” including its grand five-act format, its interplay of personal circumstances with large-scale history, and its use of mime and gesture as integral parts of the plot – since the title character is indeed mute. The libretto was co-written by Germain Delavigne and Eugène Scribe, and while Scribe had previously worked with Auber on eight other operas, it was La Muette de Portici that set the librettist on the road to renown for his work on Meyerbeer's Robert le diable (1831) and Les Huguenots (1836) and Halévy’s La Juive (1835). La Muette de Portici was also the first of four operas written by Auber in this large-scale form, the others being Le Dieu et la bayadère (1830), Gustave III (1833) and Le lac des fées (1839). La Muette de Portici was directly responsible for a revolution, too – not the one portrayed in the opera itself but the 1830 one that brought about Belgian independence, which began after a riot broke out in the wake of Auber’s patriotic/revolutionary duet, Amour sacré de la patrie. None other than Wagner later observed, “Seldom has an artistic product stood in closer connection with a world-event.” And Wagner’s own Rienzi (1842) has more than a little in common with Auber’s opera, not only in scale, format and overall approach – all of which were by 1842 rather standardized – but also because of eerie historical parallels between the behavior of the fisherman/revolutionary Masaniello in Auber’s work and that of the title character in Wagner’s, set 300 years earlier.

     The story of La Muette de Portici interweaves the tale of the mute Fenella, seduced and abandoned by Alphonse, with the story of Naples’ rebellion against Spanish rule in 1647 – led by Masaniello, Fenella’s brother. The opera is by and large through-composed – Wagner noted with approval that it contains only a single prima donna aria, in Act I and written for Elvire, Alphonse’s designated bride and therefore Fenella’s rival. Exceedingly popular for some time, Auber’s opera was eclipsed by later and better-formed works, but its place in musical history, if not on the stage, is quite secure. The performance under Antony Hermus is a very fine one, although the seams of plot and music do, inevitably, show. The key role of Fenella is impossible to capture on CD (it was often handled by a dancer or actress, including Harriet Smithson, who was later to become the subject of Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique and subsequently his wife), but the key singing roles are all well-handled here: Oscar de la Torre as Alphonse, Angelina Ruzzafante as Elvire, and Diego Torre as Masaniello are all well-suited to their roles and clearly involved in the story. The booklet photos of the 2011 stage production from which the CPO recording is taken show an all too typical modern-dress updating that looks distinctly peculiar in several ways, but the music is what matters for listeners, and although it is at times pedestrian, it has many intense and effective moments – not only Amour sacré de la patrie in Act II but also the choral marches in the third and fourth acts and, indeed, the choral passages throughout. This is a stirring and effective opera, and it is easy to see why it was so popular in its time, even though it now pales somewhat when compared with later works in the genre that it created. CPO helpfully provides the entire libretto – something it does not always do, and a decision for which it is to be commended – but the words are given only in French, so English speakers will have to seek a translation.

     Both libretto and translation are provided by the Timpani label for the much lighter and less consequential work, Le Docteur Miracle. This is the sort of short, light, thoroughly unbelievable comedy – with only four characters, as required by the licensing rules of the time – in which Offenbach excelled. It was early in Offenbach’s own career that he came up with the idea of creating a competition for a one-act operetta, eventually giving six composers the same libretto – by Léon Battu and Ludovic Halévy, the latter becoming not only Offenbach’s primary collaborator but also, eventually, coauthor of the libretto of Carmen. Again, the music history here is fascinating, but the music itself is what listeners will find genuinely enjoyable. Bizet shared the prize in the competition with Charles Lecocq, who was six years older and more comfortable in the operetta realm. Bizet himself was just 18 when he wrote Le Docteur Miracle, his second attempt at an opera (the first, La maison du docteur, was never performed). Despite some awkwardness, Le Docteur Miracle is a generally effervescent and effective work, although Lecocq grouchily commented that Bizet “messed up almost all the little couplets,” which despite Lecocq’s obvious self-interest is apparently not entirely untrue, since Offenbach had Bizet rework them before the piece’s first performance. However, Bizet created one piece in Le Docteur Miracle that stands the test of time very well indeed: the “Omelette Quartet,” encored at the opera’s première, in which all the singers praise a yet-to-be-tasted omelette that turns out to be truly awful – and central to the eventual happy ending of the plot. The plot itself is one of those “love conquers all” ones familiar to lovers of comedy, musical and otherwise: the young officer Silvio dons several disguises, including that of the title character, to woo the daughter of the crotchety mayor, who eventually gives his consent to the marriage after the supposed “doctor” cures him of poisoning-by-omelette that is itself a ruse. It is a silly story, intentionally so, and although Bizet’s musical treatment of it does not have the verve and spirit that Offenbach himself brought to many equally frothy tales, the pastiche elements of the scene that includes the “Omelette Quartet” remain quite apt and funny: the scene parodies precisely the sort of grand opera that La Muette de Portici created. Samuel Jean leads the orchestra with a fine light touch in this recording, and all four singers play their stylized roles quite well: gruff mayor (Pierre-Yves Pruvot), his helpful-to-the-young-lovers wife (Isabelle Druet), and of course the lovers themselves (Jérôme Billy and Marie-Bénédicte Souquet). For those two, in their roles as Silvio and Laurette, there is a particularly felicitous duet near the end in which Laurette eventually recognizes Silvio, who is in the mayor’s house in one of his several disguises under the name Pasquin. This is not grand opera and is not intended to be, and it is not mature Bizet, much less anything approaching Carmen. But Le Docteur Miracle is a pleasant, well-composed, nicely turned work with plenty of spirit and an effective handling of operetta conventions that did not, in truth, come particularly naturally to Bizet. Like Auber’s La Muette de Portici, this is a work that earned a place in history because of later musical developments – in this case, in Bizet’s life and Offenbach’s. But also like Auber’s large opera, Bizet’s small one is of more than retrospective interest: both these stage works have a great deal to recommend them simply on the basis of their compositional merits.

(++++) ON BEYOND ORDINARY

My New Teacher and Me! By Al Yankovic. Illustrations by Wes Hargis. Harper. $17.99.

123 versus ABC. By Mike Boldt. Harper. $17.99.

     Dr. Seuss may be inimitable, but that has not stopped many other authors of children’s books from trying to imitate him. And Al Yankovic (usually known as “Weird Al”) almost succeeds in capturing some of the things that made the good doctor so good: his tall-tale-spinning and his poetic whimsy. True, Yankovic’s lines do not always scan as perfectly as did those of Theodor Seuss Geisel, but they come mighty close most of the time – and Wes Hargis’ illustrations, which are not Seussian at all, give an entirely original slant to My New Teacher and Me! This is a simple back-to-school book that quickly becomes anything but straightforward, with a theme right out of early Seuss classics such as McElligot’s Pool (1947) and the very first Seuss book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1937). Kids and adults will recognize the rhymes and the story pattern very quickly: “I was digging to China out in my backyard,/ And I almost was there when – I hit something hard!/ Well, I dug, and I dug, and I dug a bit more/ And discovered the skull of a real dinosaur!/ And I would’ve cleaned up, sir, but hey, I’m no fool –/ I just couldn’t be late on the first day of school!” And thus the story’s narrator explains his dirty shirt to his new, very matter-of-fact teacher, Mr. Booth. And when Mr. Booth replies that the boy’s story is highly unlikely, the boy’s response is purely Seussian: “‘Why, of course it’s unlikely!’ I said. ‘Oh, by far!/ The awesome-est things in the world often are!’” And so the boy spins wilder and wilder tales of the world, and out of the world, including everything from a two-headed cow to his grandfather walking on the moon to “an island somewhere between Norway and Guam/ Where the blueberry muffins grow right on the trees,/ And you flip inside out every time that you sneeze.” The absurdity mounts and mounts, as does the frustration of Mr. Booth, as does the amusement of everyone in the class, until the teacher sends the boy to the principal’s office – at which point a little something falls out of the boy’s backpack that changes the tenor of the whole interaction and leads to a happy ending in which readers get to commingle fact, fantasy and the need “to look at the world just a bit differently.” The text is simply marvelous here, and the illustrations – although less distinguished – are quite apt, with the characters’ expressions particularly enjoyable to see. No, it’s not quite Seuss – nothing is – but as an unspoken tribute and a wonderful book in its own right, My New Teacher and Me! does the good doctor proud.

     Of course, it doesn’t actually teach anything, except (indirectly) the power of thought and imagination. But Mike Boldt’s equally clever 123 versus ABC makes up for that by doing the teaching of two books in one. As the title makes clear, this is a counting book, or an alphabet book, or both – the numbers and letters themselves are not quite sure, and spend most of the book disputing just what they are involved in. When one alligator shows up, for example, does that illustrate the number 1 or the letter A? What does it mean when 2 bears arrive in 3 cars (never mind how they manage it)? Is the counting continuing, or is the alphabet progressing? Boldt’s hilarious illustrations get sillier and sillier as the narrators – the number 1 and the letter A – continue arguing about the book’s purpose. By the time readers get to a 10-piece puzzle being assembled by 11 koalas and 12 lions, it is obvious that everything is and will remain in a perfect state of higgledy-piggledy. And it does, with 18 robots managing to wear 19 sombreros and 23 wolves performing on 24 xylophones – until eventually the narrators agree that “this is getting ridiculous,” and cooperate to bring the book to a close, having presented and counted all 26 letters of the alphabet. And that would be that, except for a little surprise that Boldt has in store at the very end of the book. A tad too complicated to be a child’s first alphabet or counting book, this is a great refresher for someone who already knows letters and numbers but could use a delightful reminder about them. And 123 versus ABC is so much fun to read and look at that its educational elements will be absorbed super-easily, almost as if the book is written purely for fun…which, in a sense, it is.

(++++) SHORT AND SWEET

Ollie’s Halloween. By Olivier Dunrea. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $6.99.

Mia Dances Back to School! By Robin Farley. Pictures by Olga and Aleksey Ivanov. HarperFestival. $4.99.

First Day of School. By Anne Rockwell. Pictures by Lizzy Rockwell. Harper. $6.99.

     It is not even back-to-school time yet, and already publishers are offering books with Halloween themes. But why quibble when they are as cute as Ollie’s Halloween? This is the latest in Olivier Dunrea’s series about goslings, and much of the fun here comes from seeing the cute baby geese dressed up in their costumes. Gertie, as a chicken, and Peedie, as a dragon, are particularly amusing in this simple and enjoyable board book; also here are Gossie, dressed as a wizard, and BooBoo, costumed as a bunny. Ollie himself is dressed as a mummy, and tends to get separated from the group as he “stalks in the cornfield” and “stares at a ghost in the open barn door.” Dunrea calls Halloween “a night to beware” and “a night to scare,” but everything is much too good-humored here to be at all frightening, with the atmospherically drawn jack-o-lantern and scarecrow’s head being just out-of-the-ordinary enough without being likely to cause any nightmares. A flash of lightning sends the five goslings scurrying back to the barn, with Ollie ending up standing “alone in the dark” until his friends bring him over to the Halloween treats that everyone shares. A mild and pleasant adventure, Ollie’s Halloween has a little more heft and a little more story than do many board books, and Dunrea’s characters are as much fun to follow as they always are.

     Mia, the kitten ballerina, brings a lot of fun to her fans as well, and Mia Dances Back to School! even has a full page of stickers showing back-to-school supplies that young readers can use to help Mia pack her backpack. The story is on the predictable side, as in many back-to-school books for ages 4-8: this year Mia’s friends, Anna and Ruby, are in Miss Bear’s class, while Mia is assigned to Miss Bunny’s classroom, where she does not know anyone and feels sad and left out. However, she soon discovers that she  can easily make new friends in the new class, and then she learns that Miss Bunny used to be a ballerina, and as all Mia’s fans know, anything ballet-related is the way to Mia’s heart. So she gets to demonstrate a leap for the class, and everyone applauds, and soon Mia is happily fitting right in. This (+++) book can be a good one for pre-back-to-school reading for kids who enjoy Mia’s other stories.

     Same topic, same anticipatory approach, but a series book of a different sort: First Day of School is also for ages 4-8 and also gets a (+++) rating. This too is a pleasantly reassuring story, but it is filled with people rather than anthropomorphic animals. Various friends happily get ready for the new school year by getting haircuts, new backpacks, new shoes, and so on, and recounting their experiences from the previous school year. Like many group-experience books today, this one makes it a point to be multi-ethnic and multicultural, and in this case even multi-aged: one girl has a grandmother who is a crossing guard. Mild worries are quickly conquered, as when two boys say they hope they will be in the same class this year, but even if they aren’t, they will still be friends. The series element in First Day of School comes from the teacher, Mrs. Madoff, who has appeared in other books by Anne and Lizzy Rockwell but plays only a minor role here. No matter – as a short, simple, reassuring summertime book about the coming return to the classroom, First Day of School (originally published in 2011 and now available in paperback) will be enjoyable for kids and families that identify with the characters, their concerns and their straightforward back-to-school preparations.

(+++) FORAYS INTO REALITY

You Are Now Less Dumb. By David McRaney. Gotham Books. $22.50.

Vegan for Her: The Woman’s Guide to Being Healthy and Fit on a Plant-Based Diet. By Virginia Messina, M.P.H., R.D., with J.L. Fields. Da Capo. $16.99.

     One of the most fascinating books about human psychology was written long before there was such a field as human psychology. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay, appeared in 1841 and is every bit as intriguing today as it was in the mid-19^th century, more than 50 years before Freud’s pioneering discoveries about how our minds work. To this day, writers continue trying to address the matters explored in Mackay’s third section, “Philosophical Delusions,” even though the definition of “philosophical” has changed somewhat and even though Mackay’s rather sensationalized presentation would be beneath the dignity of people such as journalist and self-professed “psychology nerd” David McRaney. In You Are Now Less Dumb, a followup to You Are Not So Smart, McRaney sets out to puncture a series of self-delusions and by so doing to show, as the book’s subtitle has it, “How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself.” The book, it must be said at the outset, is hard to read: rather small type, broken up by nothing at all, just page after page of grey, grey, grey. True, the presentation is more soporific than the material presented. However, McRaney is not always sure how to address readers. On one page, he writes, “Primates like you survive and thrive because you stick together and form groups, keeping up with those prickly social variables such as status and alliance, temperament and skill, political affiliation and sexual disposition, to prevent ostracism.” A page later, his tone is: “So, looking back on all this, what about the nutty propositions put forth by Freud?” A paragraph after that, he is discussing a study of prisoner paroles. Yes, the material is connected, but some of the connections are on the tenuous side, and McRaney spins out a lot of his commentary at greater length than necessary. Still, some of the information here is interesting, although scarcely new. “The Sunk Cost Fallacy” addresses our tendency to do things we do not enjoy because we think that will somehow make already-invested time, effort or money worthwhile; McRaney cites the FarmVille game as an example of something that sucks players in and makes them feel they have wasted their efforts if they do not keep playing. This is a perversion – perhaps the better, neutral word is “extension” – of the human tendency to “stay the course,” which is a good thing when not overdone. How to conquer this fallacy? McRaney does not say. Then there is “The Backfire Effect,” in which evidence contradicting your strongly held beliefs fails to undermine them – in fact, it makes them stronger. What to do? McRaney comments, “It requires real changes in the physiology of your brain to accept new information demanding that you see the world in a new way.” Thanks for that! Again and again, McRaney does a far better descriptive than prescriptive job, and in fact there is little truth to the book’s subtitle, since McRaney spends far more time showing all the ways our thinking and feeling processes misfire than he does pointing out ways to correct them. In all fairness, the skewed and illogical way we approach much of life is no easy thing to change – this is one thing that keeps psychoanalysts, whether Freudian or not, in business. But it is hard to escape the notion that McRaney could be more helpful than he is, or at least try somewhat harder. Mackay – who, by the way, was a journalist, as McRaney is – never pretended to be doing more than exploring popular follies through the centuries and into his own time. McRaney promises more by offering to show us where we go wrong and what we can do about it. Unfortunately, he delivers less – considerably less if you count the fact that the design of the book is really subpar, making it more of a chore to wade through than it ought to be.

     Vegan for Her is certainly easier to read, but the question here is who wants to read it. The vegan eating style – which Virginia Messina and J.L. Fields correctly point out is really an entire lifestyle – is a limited-interest area in the first place, and this book specifically targets only women who have an interest in it. Call it a niche within a niche. The early part of the book is actually applicable to anyone interested in becoming a vegan, although it tends to be blasé about things that non-vegans may regard as less than simple – the bland recommendation to “learn to love legumes,” for example, and the description of becoming a vegan as “an easy transition.” The authors do make an effort to have their prescriptions be as simple to see and follow as possible. For instance, there is a “Plant Plate” rather than the traditional food pyramid, and there is useful information on serving sizes, indicating not only what you should eat but also how much of it. The second part of the book begins the focus specifically on women, discussing the diet/hormone relationship at various stages of a woman’s life, issues of birth control and fertility enhancement, vegan eating during pregnancy and breastfeeding, and so on. As always in advocacy books like this one, there is an assumption that readers have plenty of time to implement what the authors suggest. For example, there is a listing of six elements of the Plant Plate for pregnant women, each element being a different number of servings, and then there is a note, “Don’t forget to make sure that at least six of those servings are calcium-rich foods from the rim of the plate.” Dedicated vegans, like people devoted to any other niche system or belief, will be fine with the details here, but those just coming to or considering vegan life may find some of the book rather daunting. Still, the sample menus are clear, and they are nicely varied to target women under different circumstances – pregnant women, vegan athletes, those interested in “MediterrAsian menus,” and so forth. Messina and Fields also discuss vegan eating and breast cancer, skewing their comments in the direction of their beliefs: “The relationship of diet to breast cancer isn’t entirely clear, but the evidence that certain plant foods reduce risk – and that some animals foods raise it – is considerable, despite the fact that there are some real challenges in uncovering links between diet and cancer.” And, a bit later and more generally, “there is evidence that diet might have varying effects depending on the type of tumor,” which is really quite obvious. The point, of course, is to argue that vegan eating is better even if there is no strong evidence for its specific efficacy. So there are chapters on controlling pain, combating diabetes, managing stress and depression, and more – all within a vegan framework, and hedged with a lot of “might” and “could” statements. Readers already convinced to go vegan will find the arguments much more persuasive than will ones who are less certain of what they want to do. The book’s final section is one of the must-have elements in writing about food: recipes. Women not already committed to the vegan lifestyle may find the ease or difficulty of food preparation a significant factor in their decision-making and perhaps the determining one. If you are one of those, look  carefully at the ingredient lists as well as the preparation instructions for such dishes as soy curl cacciatore, portobello mushroom and barley soup, quinoa daiya burger, black-eyed pea and collard green pizza, coconut-gingered black bean brownies, and the rest, to decide just how appealing the food seems to be and how comfortable you will be preparing as well as eating it. Vegan for Her is not particularly persuasive in advocating the vegan lifestyle for women, but women who are already considering becoming vegans will find considerable support for their decision here, as well as practical recommendations on how to adapt the vegan approach to various stages of their lives.

(++++) STRINGS AND THINGS OF NOW AND THEN

Ives: String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2. Juilliard String Quartet (Robert Mann and Earl Carlyss, violins; Raphael Hillyer, viola; Claus Adam, cello). Newton Classics. $12.99.

The Unknown Sibelius: Rarities and First Recordings. Lahti Symphony Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä and Okko Kamu; Helena Juntunen, soprano; Anne Sofie von Otter and Monica Groop, mezzo-sopranos; Gabriel Suovanen and Jorma Hynninen, baritones; Folke Gräsbeck, Bengt Forsberg and Peter Lönnqvist, piano; Dominante Choir; Orphei Drängar. BIS. $21.99.

Grieg: Piano Concerto; Holberg Suite. Antonio Pompa-Baldi, piano; Ohio Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Domenico Boyagian. Centaur. $16.99.

Kaija Saariaho: Chamber Works for Strings, Volume I—Tocar; Vent nocturne; Calices; Spins and Spells; Nocturne; Nymphéa. Meta4 (Antti Tikkanen and Minna Pensola, violins; Atte Kilpeläinen, viola; Tomas Djupsjöbacka, cello); Anna Laakso, piano; Marko Myöhänen, electronics. Ondine. $16.99.

     There are two great composers of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries who lived long lives but created almost nothing new in their final three decades: Charles Ives (1874-1954) and Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). The reasons for their compositional cessation appear to have been different and personal – not, for example, related to World War I, which ended a few years before they stopped writing music but does not seem to have been a precipitating factor. Ives is known to have said that the notes stopped doing what he wanted them to do. Sibelius did make some attempts to continue creating, most famously with an Eighth Symphony that he did not finish and/or destroyed. Both composers did some tinkering with their works after they stopped producing new ones, but the three-decade drought has always been fodder for thoughts about what might have been if these two brilliant and innovative minds had continued along their very different musical paths. Figuring out where Ives might have gone is particularly difficult, given the extraordinary enigma that was his compositional style and his way of hearing and interrelating with the world. His two string quartets, for example, are about as stark a contrast as any in music of their time, yet they were composed not long apart and almost overlapped: No. 1 dates to 1897-1900 but was revised as late as 1909, while No. 2 dates to 1913-15 but has elements dating back as far as 1904. The first quartet, called “From the Salvation Army,” is built around a number of Ives’ beloved hymn tunes and has a warm and fairly traditional Romantic feel, which is interesting in light of Ives’ later decision to turn its first movement into the slow movement of his Symphony No. 4. The second quartet, on the other hand, is atonal, complex and programmatic, being a musical interpretation of an argument (an extension of the idea of chamber music as conversation) that ends peacefully only because the four men involved, represented of course by the four performers, decide eventually to climb a mountain to “view the firmament” and presumably realize just how petty their everyday disputes about politics are in the grand scheme of things. The Juilliard String Quartet recorded these works superbly in 1966 and 1967, and the Newton Classics reissue of these performances is most welcome. The playing is warm, elegant and nuanced, the interpretations knowing and enthusiastic, and the overall effect something close to magical.

     There is nothing this lofty on a fine new BIS disc called “The Unknown Sibelius,” but there is plenty of fascinating material here for those who regret the composer’s early  conclusion of his compositional career and wish there were more of his music readily available than the seven symphonies, theater music and major tone poems. This CD features a potpourri of performers from as long ago as 2000 and as recently as January 2013. Scarcely unified in music or performances, the disc is nevertheless fascinating for the opportunity it provides to hear Sibelius works that range from the little-known to the wholly unknown: seven of the 20 pieces are world première recordings, including four very short orchestral fragments that may (or may not) have been part of, or intended for, the Eighth Symphony. Of interest in other ways are a preliminary version of Finlandia called Finland Awakes, the first version of the tone poem The Oceanides, and the incidental music for a play called Ödlan (The Lizard) – this last material, for chamber orchestra, being not very substantial but nevertheless featuring the expressive, meandering characteristics of Sibelius’ middle compositional period (the work dates to 1909). There are a number of short vocal pieces here as well, a lovely Serenata for two violins and cello, a heartfelt Adagio dedicated “to my beloved Aino,” and a concluding Masonic work that Sibelius orchestrated as late as 1938, long after he stopped creating new music. This CD beautifully fills out the portrait of Sibelius for those who love his music and wish there had been more of it.

     There is nothing particularly revelatory about another Scandinavian composer, Edvard Grieg, on a new Centaur CD, simply because the Piano Concerto and Holberg Suite are entirely familiar – delightful to hear when well played, as they are here, but certainly not new or surprising. This disc of tried-and-true Grieg lasts just 50 minutes and gets a (+++) rating – simply because the material is so well-known and neither Antonio Pompa-Baldi nor Domenico Boyagian proffers anything particularly insightful about it. There is nothing at all wrong with the performances: Pompa-Baldi brings forth a very big sound when it is called for and does particularly nicely with the dancelike finale of the concerto, while Boyagian and the Ohio Philharmonic provide fine backup in that work and a sensitive, well-paced and nicely played Holberg Suite. There is some genuine excitement and involvement in this live recording from May 2012, but there is nothing interpretative in it to make listeners familiar with the music sit up and take notice. Both Pompa-Baldi and Boyagian are up-and-coming performers, and listeners specifically interested in one or both of them will enjoy having this recording as a souvenir of a well-mounted collaboration between the two. However, anyone who already owns one or more recordings of these pieces will find little reason to add this one to his or her collection.

     In contemporary Scandinavian music, one of the major composers is Finland’s Kaija Saariaho (born 1952). She is not generally considered as important as Einojuhani Rautavaara, but she has developed a niche – a series of niches, really – all her own, moving from serialism and small forces in the direction of larger works containing a mixture of styles, without slavish adherence to any particular one. She does retain her fondness for mixing electronics with traditional instruments, however. Ondine’s first volume of Saariaho’s chamber music includes works spanning more than two decades, from Nymphéa for string quartet and live electronics (1987) to Tocar for violin and piano (2010). Between these two pieces fall Nocturne for violin solo (1994), Spins and Spells for cello solo (1997), Vent nocturne for viola and electronics (2006), and Calices for violin and piano (2009). Nymphéa is the longest work here and one of Saariaho’s better-known ones, but it does not wear particularly well, sounding as if it is trapped in a kind of time warp beyond which contemporary composers, Saariaho herself included, have since moved. The two solo-instrument pieces are in many ways the most satisfying works on the disc, using the violin and cello in some interesting ways that include elements of expressiveness as well as sonic experimentation. This (+++) CD will be attractive to listeners already familiar with Saariaho’s works as well as ones interested in hearing one direction in which Finnish music, so strongly identified with Sibelius, has gone in the half-century since the great composer’s death.

(+++) MULTIDIMENSIONAL STRINGS

Jean-Marie Leclair: Violin Sonatas, Book 2—Nos. 1-5 and 8. Adrian Butterfield, violin; Jonathan Manson, viola da gamba; Laurence Cummings, harpsichord. Naxos. $9.99.

Amandine Beyer: Portrait—Music of Bach, Corelli, Vivaldi and others. Amandine Beyer, violin. Zig-Zag Territories. $18.99 (2 CDs).

Jennifer Higdon: Amazing Grace; Sky Quartet; Sonata for Viola and Piano; Dark Wood; String Trio. Serafin String Quartet (Kate Ransom and Timothy Schwarz, violins; Molly Carr, viola; Lawrence Stomberg, cello); Charles Abramovic, piano; Eric Stomberg, bassoon. Naxos. $9.99.

Shostakovich: Cello Concertos Nos. 1 (two performances) and 2; Sonata for Cello and Piano. Mstislav Rostropovich, cello; Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Kirill Kondrashin and Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Aleksandr Gauk (Concerto No. 1); Prague Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yevgeny Svetlanov (Concerto No. 2); Dmitry Shostakovich, piano (Sonata). Supraphon. $22.99 (2 CDs).

Anima del Sur: Milongas & Tangos for Two Guitars. Joanne Castellani and Michael Andriaccio, guitars. Fleur de Son. $18.99.

     Here are many aspects of many stringed instruments in many forms from many musical eras – all presented with aplomb. Adrian Butterfield is particularly adept with the Baroque violin in the first volume of the second set of sonatas by Jean-Marie Leclair (1697-1764). Butterfield previously recorded the Op. 1 sonatas of 1723 for Naxos and now turns his attention to Op. 2 of 1728. These are equally inventive works, all in four movements, with attractive slow movements and plenty of verve and spirit in their outer movements, especially the finales. The first sonata of this group is in E minor and, although it does not have any particular additional weight or profundity as a result, it does offer an attractive wistfulness that contrasts well with the greater brightness and openness of the major-key Nos. 2-5 and 8. Jonathan Manson and Laurence Cummings ably support Butterfield’s playing, which is suitably virtuosic but never overwhelms the music with greater intensity than it can bear. Compositionally poised, these Leclair sonatas lie firmly in the Baroque realm; played with elegance, they offer listeners an attractive opportunity to hear some lesser-known music of the early 18^th century.

     There are also some less-known pieces on the two-CD set from Zig-Zag Territories featuring violinist Amandine Beyer. But most of the music here, in particular the concertos that take up the second CD, will be familiar to listeners. Beyer, like Butterfield, is a Baroque violinist, and the primary attraction of the recording will be in hearing her personal technique – which is nuanced and attentive to details – and her approach to the works. The suites and sonatas on the first disc, by J.S. and C.P.E. Bach and Rebel, may be somewhat less familiar material than the concertos, but the pieces here by less-known composers – Nicola Matteis and Robert de Visée – are not substantial enough to draw listeners to the set on their own. Certainly Beyer performs everything quite well, especially when joined by her own ensemble, Gli Incogniti. She handles the stylistic differences among French, German, Italian and English compositions with sensitivity, proving herself adept in chamber music by ably managing the give-and-take of Baroque-era forms with various partners. This set is actually a compilation of recordings previously made by Beyer, mixing chamber works with somewhat larger-scale material. Everything here is nicely balanced and played with finesse, although there are no significant revelations in the performances and there is thus no particular reason to choose these renditions over others – except for listeners who find Beyer’s style particularly winning. Her existing fans will be the most likely buyers of this two-disc compilation, which really does come across more as a portrait of the artist than as a recording focused on the music being performed.

     On the other hand, the modern chamber music of Jennifer Higdon (born 1962) is very much the focus of a new Naxos CD featuring the Serafin String Quartet, pianist Charles Abramovic and bassoonist Eric Stomberg. All these works’ recordings are world premières, and the pieces as a whole provide a chance to hear ways in which Higdon developed as a composer between 1988 (the String Trio, a well-made work but one in which she has not yet found an expressive voice of her own) and 2001 (Dark Wood, for violin, cello, piano and bassoon, an unusual combination of sonorities that Higdon uses to mingle a bouncy piano part with the “dark wood” of the bassoon, from which considerable virtuosity is required).  Between these two works chronologically are the Sonata for Viola and Piano (1990), which displays the influence of Copland and Prokofiev; Sky Quartet (1997/2000), inspired by the sky of the western United States and employing its four movements evocatively, in some respects along the lines used by Debussy to portray the moods of the ocean in La Mer – Higdon’s  final movement’s expansiveness is particularly notable; and Amazing Grace (1998/2003), a short and effective quartet treatment of the popular hymn. Higdon has become rather popular by the standards of contemporary composers, but her earlier chamber music remains little-known. Those who have been intrigued by her Percussion Concerto or Violin Concerto, for example, may find her explorations of smaller forms to be worthwhile examples of equally well-constructed music on a more-modest scale.

     Both chamber and orchestral music of Shostakovich are celebrated in a new two-CD set featuring cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Supraphon, a well-known Czech music label, has long had a catalogue more distinguished for the artists represented than for the sound quality with which the performances are presented – and this set, despite a good remastering job, is no exception. It is an important release in the Shostakovich discography and will be of tremendous interest to those following the composer and his relationship with Rostropovich, his onetime pupil. And many strengths of the readings do come through – but not enough to make these authentic performances must-haves for the more-casual listener. The CDs include two of the earliest performances of the Cello Concerto No. 1, which was written for Rostropovich. The work’s première was on October 4, 1959, conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky; two days later, Rostropovich played the concerto again, with the Moscow Philharmonic under Alexander Gauk, and that is one of the performances heard in this set – a live recording here released for the first time. It is not a very good recording from a technical standpoint, with little differentiation among orchestral sections, but it does offer a chance to hear Rostropovich’s early approach to the concerto – an approach that became deeper and more thoughtful over the years; here it is somewhat surface-level, even though the playing itself is exemplary. The other version here, also a live recording, dates to May 29, 1960. It offers a somewhat better sonic experience and features a better conductor: Kirill Kondrashin is strongly involved, while Gauk seems more workmanlike in his approach. Rostropovich is already finding greater depth in the music only seven months after the prior recording, and although the two performances differ in length by only 20 seconds, the later one feels more fully integrated and better thought-through. In later years, though, Rostropovich was to move well beyond both of these interpretations. He matured in the Cello Concerto No. 2 as well, but this more-contemplative concerto still fares well in the live recording heard here, which dates to December 11, 1967 – just 14 months after the concerto’s première. Rostropovich is thoroughly in command of the music throughout, and so is conductor Yevgeny Svetlanov, who had led the orchestra at the concerto’s first performance. The recording here, from a Prague Spring concert, is adequate if scarcely outstanding. As for the fourth offering here, it is one of genuine historical importance that has been released before: a studio recording, made in 1959, of the 1934 Cello Sonata – in which Rostropovich is accompanied by Shostakovich himself. The composer was no longer performing as a pianist by the time of this recording, but his skill with his own works had in no way diminished, and this finely detailed reading, with onetime teacher and onetime pupil plumbing the sonata’s depths while highlighting its rather spare lines, is an outstanding one from start to finish. Although it falls short of being aurally pleasant to experience, this Supraphon release is packed with performances both interesting and significant – a major release for collectors if not for audiophiles.

     On the much lighter side, the Castellani Andriaccio Duo focuses not on violins or cellos but on guitars – which tend to be considered less consequential than members of the violin family, but to which no less a violinist/violist than Paganini accorded considerable respect. Still, this release on the Fleur de Son label is by and large upbeat and lighthearted, with attractive music whose composers are not household names but whose rhythmic vitality is proffered in abundance. The 10 composers represented here are Adrien Politi, Marcelo Coronel, José Rafael Cisneros, José Luis Merlín, Roland Dyens, Celso Machado, Alfonso Montes, Ernesto Cordero, Jorge Cardoso and Paolo Bellinati. Among the CD’s highlights are Cordero’s Sonatina Tropical, the longest work on the disc, with three atmospheric movements lasting 12 minutes; Politi’s Tango Duo, whose four short sections give the performers plenty of rhythmic and expressive challenges; and Montes’ Milonga (a Piazzolla), which pays homage to the modern master who rethought the tango and brought it out of the dance hall and into the concert hall. Joanne Castellani and Michael Andriaccio play with energy and constant enthusiasm, and if none of the music here is particularly consequential, the performers treat all of it with so much affection and respect that guitar-oriented listeners who like contemporary handling of some old dance forms will enjoy the CD from start to finish.

(++++) THE USUAL SUSPECTS

Your New Job Title Is “Accomplice”: A “Dilbert” Collection. By Scott Adams. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

The Birth of Canis: A “Get Fuzzy” Collection. By Darby Conley. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

Beginning Pearls. By Stephan T. Pastis. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

     “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. But a consistent foolishness is the angel of first-rate cartooning, and if you don’t believe that, then maybe you will be convinced by the latest Scott Adams and Darby Conley collections. Adams’ Dilbert has been consistent for two decades (after flailing about somewhat for the first few years after its 1989 debut). It has now reached the point at which the greatest exaggerations in the strip seem entirely logical within the context of big-company business, where Dilbert’s misadventures take place. Thus, in Your New Job Title Is “Accomplice,” it makes perfect sense for Alice to claim “territorial waters” extending 12 feet from her cubicle, build a robot shark to patrol the area, and then claim it is only a dolphin when people complain. It makes sense for Dilbert to be named Project Leader and told that the title gets him a three-inch-wider cubicle, but since the company does not have any, he has to lose weight so his current cubicle appears bigger. There is a “cash cow” wandering the hallways – that seems right, too. Speaking of cash, Wally gets a billion-dollar settlement when he claims the company discriminates against “short, bald, nearsighted guys,” is admitted to the “top 1% club,” but then soon finds himself right back where he started – yup. Asok the intern reads the Pointy-Haired Boss’ list of “25 focus areas for next year” and decides that “this misunderstood man is a brilliant comedian. He is only pretending to be an angry idiot.” Dogbert continues to exhibit his consulting prowess while showing the boss how to “imbue your staff with a sense of urgency” while avoiding “a creepy vibe.” Catbert tells Dilbert that the poor employee parking arrangement is designed to prevent people from running personal errands, and when Dilbert asks if he is intentionally making life more difficult, Catbert responds, “What do you think management is?” Ah yes, this is reality – filtered and refined and perhaps skewed just a little bit, but consistently skewed, so that any relationship between Dilbert and the real working world is purely intentional.

     The world in which Get Fuzzy takes place is a little harder to pinpoint. On the surface, it is the workaday (rather than working) world, with the activities of Bucky Katt, Satchel Pooch and hapless human Rob Wilco taking place in an ordinary Boston apartment. But there is something consistently skewed here, too, and it is not just the fact that the cat and dog converse with the feckless Rob and every other human who shows up in the strip. Darby Conley has solidified the odd relationships among his characters at this point and now turns his strip into an ongoing series of puns (some of them barely comprehensible) and riffs on peculiar interactions. In The Birth of Canis, for example, the longstanding dispute between Bucky and Fungo Squiggly, the ferret in a neighboring apartment, advances to the point at which Bucky creates his own reality TV show – which is a predictable mess – while Fungo manages to set up a genuine reality show on the Ferret Television Network by planting tiny cameras in the walls of Rob’s apartment and letting viewers (other ferrets) observe the goings-on. This results in Bucky getting fan mail, which makes him happy, until he finds out it is from ferrets, which makes him ill. And Rob’s role in all this is to act as dumb as usual, with lines such as, “Shhhh! Man, the walls will hear you!” and “We have to get out of here!” Rob is supposedly an advertising executive, but given the fact that his intelligence and creativity are well below those of Bucky (even though Bucky’s abilities are always misused), there is room for a role reversal here. It won’t happen, though, because Conley has settled the characters so comfortably into their roles and their appearances. When there are personality changes, they are invariably incremental: Satchel talks back (and talks smack) to Bucky more often now, although Bucky still gets the better (or worse) of him more often than not. Conley enlivens the strip these days with a series of subsidiary characters, the most notable being Mac Manc McManx, a scene-stealing British feline and distant Bucky relative who talks a nearly incomprehensible blend of Cockney rhyming slang and Manchester idioms. The Birth of Canis introduces Ibid Q. (that is, I.Q.) Muttly, a strange little dog who speaks more intellectually than all the other characters put together, calling Bucky “a textbook delusional egotist with anger management issues,” which pretty much nails it, especially when I.Q. adds, “You exhibit symptoms of being what is colloquially known as a ‘jerk,’” which nails it even more strongly. Throw in some Bucky-designed composites – mixed-genre movies such as “Freaky Friday the 13^th” and mixed-use inventions such as a fork attached to a lamp cord so you can plug in the sofa and drive it around the house – and you have consistently offbeat and consistently entertaining silliness occurring in a world very much like ours, and very foolish indeed.

     The world of Pearls Before Swine is a lot like ours, too, but even darker and simultaneously funnier for anyone who enjoys the frequent death of cute comic-strip characters, god-awful puns, lots of beer drinking, herbivore-carnivore conflict, homicidal gingerbread men, homicidal sea anemones, and….hmm. This seems like one comic strip that is emphatically not for kids, which makes it somewhat odd to discover Beginning Pearls, an entry in Andrews McMeel’s “amp! Comics for Kids” series for middle-grade readers. What will the kids introduced to Pearls Before Swine through this book be reading and/or doing by the time they reach high school? (Shudder.) Well, Stephan Pastis (who includes the middle initial “T.” in his name here, but not in his regular collections – presumably looking for some sort of deniability) does manage to select some of his more kid-friendly offerings for this book (in fact, he selects one twice and another out of order, repeats a panel within one strip, and omits some of Zebra’s introductory words – does he think kids don’t pay attention, or do his editors think that?). Anyway, among the child-safe strips here are ones about Rat’s “temper-prone sock puppet, Pepito,” one in which Death announces that the strip is not “dark and grim,” one in which Danny Donkey steals a Game Boy, ones in which Zebra’s relatives are devoured by crocodiles and lions, one in which one croc kills another and makes him into boots, and….wow. What will kids who read this book be doing in a few, a very few, years? Best not to think too much about that – best just to enjoy the book’s layout in five sections (focused on Rat, Pig, Goat, Zebra and the crocs), the introductory material for each section “written by” the relevant characters, and the generally skewed and sometimes overtly weird worldview that Pastis, with or without the T., creates and disseminates day after day. Pearls Before Swine remains a love-it-or-hate-it strip – it’s difficult to be indifferent to Pastis’ and the strip’s oddities – and presumably Beginning Pearls is intended to capture a whole new audience that will allow Pastis to continue creating the strip and not have to return to his former work as a lawyer. In fact, parents really ought to think seriously about buying more than one copy of the book, at least one per child – because would you really want someone like Pastis to go back to practicing law?

(++++) SCHOOL DAZE

Splat and the Cool School Trip. By Rob Scotton. Harper. $17.99.

Pete the Cat: The Wheels on the Bus. Based on the creation of James Dean. Harper. $9.99.

Clark the Shark. By Bruce Hale. Illustrated by Guy Francis. Harper. $17.99.

Charlie Goes to School. By Ree Drummond. Illustrations by Diane deGroat. Harper. $17.99.

     Summertime is anticipation-of-school time in the publishing business, and as a result, there are some delightful new picture books using familiar characters – and some unfamiliar ones – to celebrate the early-grade school experience. Things are really cool for Splat the Cat in Rob Scotton’s latest adventure, for example. Splat and his class will be going to the zoo, but Splat’s best friend, Seymour the mouse, cannot come – because everyone knows that elephants are afraid of mice (they aren’t, in reality, but this is a standard plot element in many kids’ books). The absence of Seymour is all right, though, because Splat is so enthusiastically looking forward to seeing his absolutely favorite animals, the penguins. But Seymour’s absence is not all right with Seymour himself, and he comes up with a clever plan to join Splat after all – a plan that goes awry because of, yes, an elephant. And the elephant’s fright leads to a penguin crisis – this all makes sense in the book, really! So Splat never gets to see the penguins, and feels very unhappy as he drags himself home after the field trip. But Seymour, who feels bad about spoiling Splat’s day, has an idea, and his solution to the penguin problem is simply hilarious – the illustration of Seymour waddling so the penguins will follow him in a long waddling line is one of the many high points here. If school were this much fun for kids, parents would have trouble keeping them at home in the summer – they would want to hang out at the school building all the time. It is certainly worth considering a summer trip to the zoo, in any case, since kids who read Splat and the Cool School Trip will likely want to go there, whether they are in school or not.

     Another popular feline character, Pete the Cat, is at the center of a simpler book that uses the words of the familiar song, “The Wheels on the Bus,” as an excuse to show Pete, other cats and a dog riding in a school bus that does all the things the song describes: the horn beeps, the wipers swish, the signals blink, the motor zooms, and so on. Huge-eyed (and always rather sleepy-looking) Pete is a perfectly fine bus driver, not rattled at all even though the kitties on the bus say, “Come on, Pete!” all day long. The words of the song may not be quite what all parents remember, especially for the illustration in which the dog has taken over as bus driver while Pete sits atop the bus, electric guitar in his paws, and the cats are shouting “Let’s rock out!” (all day long). As an enjoyable variation on a well-known school-related song, Pete the Cat: The Wheels on the Bus has plenty of enthusiasm and will be fun for kids who enjoy Pete as a character.

     For fun with an entirely new character, young readers can turn to Clark the Shark, whose joy at school is as oversize as his, umm, teeth. There’s nothing dangerous about Clark, and he’s not a bully, even though he is enormous in comparison to all the other students. He simply likes everything about school too much and cannot control his enthusiasm. Bruce Hale plays with the idea of a shark student for laughs, and Guy Francis offers super-toothy drawings (and one probably inevitable parody of the famous poster for the movie Jaws) in showing why the other kids end up refusing to play with Clark. “Clark loved his life,” writes Hale, but there is just so much of him! He shouts out enthusiastically about a book, leading the teacher, Mrs. Inkydink, to say, “Less shouting, more reading.” He eats the others kids’ lunches (but not the other kids!), he plays too roughly at recess, and his motto, as he explains to Mrs. Inkydink, is, “But life is SO exciting!” Well, clearly Clark needs a lesson in taking it easy, so Mrs. Inkydink provides the suggestion, “Stay cool!” And Clark figures out a way to do just that: “Maybe if I make a rhyme, I’ll remember every time!” So whenever he is about to overreact to something, Clark instead invents a short rhyme reminding himself to stay cool – and sure enough, the teacher and other students appreciate everything he is doing, and everybody learns and plays happily together. But there is a twist here, in the form of a very large new student who scares everyone and is so big that he even breaks the playground equipment. Clark to the rescue! He goes back to his hyper-enthusiastic ways just long enough to engage the new student – a squid – and the whole school learns that sometimes there is a time for overdoing things. This offbeat book should rev up kids’ enthusiasm for school, or at least for sharks – make-believe ones, anyway.

     The antithesis of Clark is Charlie the ranch dog, who is as laid-back and calm as can be under any and all circumstances. Ree Drummond’s stories about Charlie are fun because what Charlie thinks of himself is so far out of alignment with what he really is and does. And yes, that applies to school as to everything else. Charlie Goes to School starts with Charlie being his usual “helpful” self around the ranch, napping while a tractor tire is repaired and a ranch hand is shoeing a horse, explaining that he is indispensable to getting the work done. Then Charlie wanders into the house, where kids are busy in the home-school classroom. Watching them – including snack time, in which he participates, and exercise, in which he does not – Charlie comes up with the idea of starting his own ranch school for his fellow animals: dogs, kitten, horses. And of course everything goes beautifully – or not. The animals just don’t appreciate the nuances of schooling the way the kids in the house do, and Charlie soon has a major mess on his hands…err, paws. Urging the other animals to handle cleanup, Charlie decides that he has worked so hard that he deserves a recess, and promptly flops into his dog bed for one thing at which he is really good: a nap. An end-of-book recipe for “Charlie’s Favorite Strawberry Oatmeal Bars” is a delicious concluding touch for a book that may not reflect the reality of school, but that certainly shows the world as Charlie the Ranch Dog sees it.