(++++) THE TOPIC’S THE THING

Mister Paganini: Homages by Kreisler, Albéniz, and Ysaÿe. Laurent Korcia, violin; Haruko Ueda, piano; Orchestre de Chambre de Paris conducted by Jean-Jacques Kantorow. Naïve. $16.99.

Elliott Carter: 103^rd Birthday Concert. Fred Sherry, artistic director. NMC DVD. $34.99.

Korngold: Opera and Ballet excerpts; “Much Ado about Nothing” Suite; Rubin Goldmark: Plaintive Air; Carl Goldmark: Suite for Violin and Piano; Romanze; Robert Dauber: Serenata. Orsolya Korcsolan, violin; Emese Mali, piano. Solo Musica. $18.99.

The Image of Melancholy. Berit Norbakken Solset, soprano; Jon Balke, organ; Bjarte Eike, baroque violin and conducting Barokksolistene. BIS. $21.99 (SACD).

     Packaging matters. Not just physical packaging, although that can certainly affect the attractiveness of a release, but packaging in the sense of what a particular recording is trying to communicate. When there is not something obvious on which to focus – a complete opera, a Beethoven symphony cycle, whatever – then sometimes it is the packaging that determines whether a release works well, coming across as carefully thought through and unified, or whether it appears to be a hodgepodge. Laurent Korcia’s new Naïve disc is a striking example of how to do packaging well. Instead of calling this a collection of virtuoso violin works by disparate composers – which is what it is – the title “Mister Paganini” focuses on the great and notorious Paganini himself and on those who performed and wrote music in his style or in homage to him. The final work on the CD is actually by Paganini: I Palpiti, an introduction with variations on the aria Di tanti palpiti from Rossini’s Tancredi. It provides a wonderful opportunity to hear Paganini’s own compositional style (which in fact was heavily influenced by Rossini’s) and, through that style, the pyrotechnic technique of the master violinist. The first work on the disc approaches Paganini somewhat differently and in quite a fascinating way. It is Kreisler’s Concerto in One Movement for Violin and Orchestra, transcribed from the first movement of Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1. So the CD’s opening and closing give us Paganini’s own music reimagined and as Paganini himself imagined it. In between these two pieces for violin and orchestra are five for violin and piano, all with roots firmly in Paganinian soil. The Albéniz-Kreisler Malagueña, Kreisler’s own La Gitana and Petite Valse for Solo Piano, and the Paganini-Kreisler La Campanella, from the famous theme of the finale of Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 2, all come across here with just the right amount of glamor and vivacity, very nicely complementing the extremely well-played violin-and-orchestral works. But the real gem of this CD is a work that here receives its world première recording: Ysaÿe’s Paganini Variations, in which the very considerable virtuosity is beautifully tempered by considerable warmth and lyricism. Top-notch playing – Haruko Ueda is a first-rate accompanist for Korcia, and the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris under Jean-Jacques Kantorow sounds very fine indeed – makes this CD a joy to listen to and a disc that comes across as carefully and thoughtfully put together to showcase the music to its maximum benefit.

     The packaging of the DVD called Elliott Carter: 103^rd Birthday Concert seems obvious on its face and from its title, and on one level it certainly is. But what is special in this exceptionally well-produced video from December 8, 2011 – three days before what would prove to be Carter’s last birthday, since he died on November 5, 2012 – is the sequencing of the music and the ancillary material. The whole production fits together exceptionally well. In order, the pieces here are Duettino for violin and cello (2008), Figment IV for viola (2007), Mnemosyné for violin (2011 – receiving its world première here), String Trio (also 2011 and another world première), Rigmarole for bass clarinet and cello (2011 again and yet another world première), Bariolage for harp (1992), Trije glasbeniki for flute, bass clarinet and harp (2011 and a U.S. première), Double Trio (2011 and another U.S. première), Retracing for bassoon (2002), Figment V for marimba (2009), Hiyoku for two clarinets (2001), and A Sunbeam’s Architecture for tenor and ensemble (2010 and a world première). The works’ interplay is marvelous, the sequence of solo instruments apt and sonically delightful, and the showcase of Carter’s talents in writing for numerous individual and grouped instruments makes the tribute all the more telling. The buildup to the six-movement tenor/ensemble work – which at 17 minutes is by far the longest piece here – makes A Sunbeam’s Architecture into a concert climax that nevertheless implies there is still more to come from Carter and from those paying tribute to him. And indeed, the DVD next presents the inevitable “Happy Birthday, Elliott,” followed by five tributes to the composer – from George Benjamin, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Oliver Knussen and Colin Matthews. If the contents of those tributes are scarcely unexpected and their existence at a birthday celebration quite inevitable, they nevertheless form a capstone to this particular gala offering. And the music-making itself, under the overall direction of cellist Fred Sherry, is of uniformly high quality. The other performers here are violinist Rolf Schulte, violist Richard O’Neill, bass clarinetist Virgil Blackwell, harpist Bridget Kibbey, Marie Tachouet on flute and piccolo, Mike Truesdell on percussion, Jim Pugh on trombone, Peter Evans on trumpet, pianist Stephen Gosling, Peter Kolkay playing bassoon and contrabassoon, clarinetists Charles Neidich and Ayako Oshima, Stephen Taylor on oboe, and conductor Ryan McAdams. These are all highly talented musicians and advocates of contemporary music, all familiar with Carter’s works and his unique style, and all giving these pieces finely honed and sensitive readings that clearly show, when taken in toto, just how varied Carter’s music was in the years since his 84^th birthday – since every single piece heard here was written in 1992 or later. This is an exceptional release for anyone interested in Carter and in the variety and significance of his later music.

     The packaging is less successful and the music less compelling in the (+++) disc with the odd title of “KornGOLDmark” – a tortured title that in fact reflects the difficulty of presenting works as disparate as the ones here and pretending that they are related in any significant way. Music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) dominates this very well-played disc, with the nicely constructed four-movement “Much Ado about Nothing” Suite having more substantiality than the four shorter works included: Serenade from the ballet Der Schneemann and three opera excerpts – Ich ging zu ihm from Das Wunder der Heliane, plus Tanzlied des Pierrot and Marietta’s Lied from Korngold’s best-known opera, Die Tote Stadt. The Suite and Romanze by Carl Goldmark (1830-1915), a Hungarian composer whose first name, Károly, is usually rendered as Karl with a K, are pleasant works but not particularly consequential ones, although the lyricism of the suite’s Andante sostenuto is winning. Also here is the world première recording of Plaintive Air by Rubin Goldmark (1872-1936), a teacher of Gershwin and Copland, who on the basis of this piece certainly knew how to write expressive music with surface-level charm but without any great depth. The final piece here, designated as a “bonus track” presumably because it alone has a composer who does not fit the CD’s odd “KornGOLDmark” title, is a lovely Serenata by Robert Dauber (1922-1945) – the only preserved composition by Dauber, who was imprisoned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp and died in Dachau. Orsolya Korcsolan plays all these relatively minor pieces soulfully and with feeling, and Emese Mali provides a solid piano accompaniment. But neither the music nor the packaging of the CD is really enough to make most listeners sit up and take notice of works that the artists presumably regard as undiscovered gems.

     The packaging of The Image of Melancholy is even odder. This (+++) CD offers 20 tracks – all personally chosen by baroque violinist Bjarte Eike – that produce the feeling of melancholy, meditate upon it or reflect it. The works, arranged in no particularly logical order, date from as far back as Shakespeare’s time (John Dowland, Anthony Holborne, William Byrd) and the early Baroque (Dietrich Buxtehude) to our own era (Jon Balke, Eike himself). Whether traceable to strong religious conviction (Heinrich Biber’s Die Kreutztragung) or to the Scottish fiddle tradition (Neil Gow’s Lament), these are mostly pieces in which melancholy means something other than “depression,” for which it is often used as a synonym today. It is actually a bit surprising that Eike chose to omit Handel from this disc, for Milton’s poem L’Allegro, which Handel set, opens with the words, “Hence, loathèd melancholy,” while its counterpoem, Il Penseroso, makes it clear that Miltonian/Handelian melancholy stands for thoughtfulness and inward focus, closer to modern introversion than to any depressive state. Melancholy, in short, is not sadness, or at least not merely sadness. But when music, however well-constructed and well-performed, is consistently downbeat (no pun intended), the impression left behind is quite different from the one that many of these composers themselves intended. The individual pieces here, mostly pretty rather than profound, generally create a pleasant sense of quietude, relaxation and contemplativeness. But 20 of them in a row are a bit much, and the differing styles, juxtaposed for no apparent reason, make the disc an engaging but less-than-enthralling experience. The performances are excellent, but the packaging here falls short.

(++++) VOCALS WITHOUT VOICE

Hindemith: Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra; Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet; Sonata for Clarinet and Piano. Richard Stoltzman, clarinet; Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kirk Trevor (Concerto); Ida Kavafian and Theodore Arm, violins, Steven Tenenbom, viola, and Fred Sherry, cello (Quintet); Yehudi Wyner, piano (Sonata). Navona. $16.99.

The Lyric Clarinet: Vocal Works Arranged for Clarinet and Piano. F. Gerard Errante, clarinet; Philip Fortenberry, Voltaire Verzosa and D. Gause, pianists. Ravello. $12.99.

Brian Noyes: Points of Decision; Shadows of Memory. Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Petr Vronský (Points); St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Lande (Shadows). Navona. $14.99.

Marty Regan: Selected Works for Japanese Instruments, Volume 3—Scattering Light, Scattering Flowers. Navona. $14.99.

Gráinne Mulvey: Akanos and Other Works. Navona. $16.99.

     The tone, timbre and range of the clarinet, from its highest register to its chalumeau depths, make the instrument a particularly adept one for imitating an idealized version of the human voice. And the clarinet’s fluidity – when it is expertly played – enhances the feeling of listening to warm and beautiful singing, at least when that is the experience a composer is trying to evoke. It would be exaggerating to suggest that Hindemith sought vocal-like beauty in his works for clarinet – he was more concerned with counterpoint and structural elements than with the instrument’s sound for its own sake – but Richard Stoltzman certainly extracts all the feeling that is present in the Concerto, Quintet and Sonata on a new Navona CD. Stoltzman has excellent breath control and produces a fine, even tone from his instrument, which cuts through Hindemith’s sometimes-dense scoring while at the same time fitting neatly into the sonic world that the composer sought to create. The Concerto, which Hindemith originally wrote for Benny Goodman, comes across particularly well here, with especially effective contrast between the third and fourth movements – which are marked not with tempo indications but with moods (ruhig, “quiet,” and heiter, “cheerful”). The five-movement Quintet is also very well performed, the musicians emphasizing its rather craggy construction, which still sounds remarkably modern for a work written in 1923 (although Hindemith revised it in 1954). The structure here is quite striking, the fifth movement being an exact retrograde of the first and the third, a pastiche of Ländler tunes, requiring the clarinetist to switch between B-flat and E-flat instruments. Stoltzman is adept at this, and equally so with the demands of the Sonata, in a performance that has particularly interesting resonance: pianist Yehudi Wyner was a student of Hindemith and then a teacher of Stoltzman – and is himself a composer. The result of this Stoltzman/Wyner collaboration is a tightly knit performance that progresses with intelligence all the way from the seriousness of the first movement to the good-natured unpretentiousness of the finale.

     The vocal and lyrical qualities of the clarinet are made more explicit on a Ravello CD featuring F. Gerard Errante and offering clarinet-and-piano transcriptions of works originally written for voice. The musical mixture here of classical songs (from the French and German traditions), songs from North and South America, and one work from the avant-garde (a piece called lunar lace by D. Gause, who provides Errante’s piano accompaniment on that single track) is a somewhat uneasy one. Errante’s playing is uniformly fine, but the interest level of the music is decidedly mixed, resulting in a (+++) rating for the disc. The French-song arrangements, three from Debussy and four from Poulenc, come off best: they are warm, plaintive and emotionally involving by turns. The German lieder – three by Brahms, two by Schumann and one by Schubert – are less successful, the absence of the voice being felt more keenly even though the clarinet’s lines are quite expressive. All the classical songs are well accompanied by Voltaire Verzosa, while Philip Fortenberry is the pianist for the North and South American songs – two of the former and four of the latter (including three South American ones by Carlos Guastavino), plus a final track combining Alberto Ginastera’s Triste with Stephen Sondheim’s Send in the Clowns.. All these songs are affecting, if somewhat on the superficial side, and certainly Errante’s lovely clarinet tone provides a pleasant sound in the absence of voice – but the more-popular music relies for its effect on the singer’s words, not the composer’s contribution, and without those words, there is a formulaic quality to the song transcriptions that renders them less than fully involving. This is a CD offering fine clarinet playing in the service of music that does not always deserve this level of attention and attentiveness.

     The clarinet is simply part of the orchestral fabric on a new Navona CD featuring the music of Brian Noyes, but here too the music involves words replaced, in a sense, with instruments. The words in this case are those of English poet John Clare (1794-1863), known as the “Northamptonshire Peasant Poet” because of his social class and the area where he lived. Clare led an unhappy life and suffered from what we would now call depression, as well as from alcoholism; he voluntarily went into an asylum in 1837. But in 1841, in the grip of several delusions, he escaped from medical care and walked 80 miles to his home area, where he wrongly believed he had two wives, one being his actual wife and the other a woman who was no longer alive. Noyes finds this period of Clare’s life, which the poet wrote about in Journey Out of Essex, fascinating, and it forms the basis of both Points of Decision and Shadows of Memory. These are purely orchestral works, but both are intended to evoke the words as well as the feelings of Clare. The first, longer piece is supposed to represent the poet’s various moods as he walked away from the asylum; the second is intended to reflect the difficulties of his journey home. To those unfamiliar with Clare – whose work has gained in stature in recent years but remains relatively little-known – the background of these orchestral tone poems will be obscure. The works themselves are well-made but not especially original in the way they seek to portray someone’s emotional state; both get fine performances that do not, however, show convincingly why the music should engage listeners as music – that is, why it should appeal to those who do not know the reasons for its creation. Clare was re-committed to an asylum after five months back home, and eventually died in that second institution; his story in fact has elements worthy of opera, not just of tone poems. But the (+++) CD of Noyes’ music, which contains only two of the works inspired by Clare that Noyes has written, requires too much knowledge of the subject matter underlying the music to be appealing to a wide audience.

     The interplay of voice and instruments is more direct in the title work of a new CD featuring the music of Marty Regan (born 1972). Scattering Light, Scattering Flowers (2011) uses a female voice with shakuhachi (a bamboo flute) and 25-string koto (Japan’s national instrument, derived from the Chinese zheng) to evoke a series of images – and indeed, image evocation, with human voice in this piece and without it in the four other works here, is the main effect of Regan’s compositions for Japanese instruments, of which he has written more than 60. To Western ears, a little of this music goes a long way, since the sounds are quite different from those of Occidental classical music (which, incidentally, is extremely popular in Japan); and those sounds have enough similarity from work to work, and sometimes from instrument to instrument, to make the overall sonic palette of this (+++) Navona CD seem rather bland. In addition to the title track, the works here are Beyond the Sky (2005) and Shakuhachi Concerto No. 1: “Southern Wind” (2008), both for an ensemble of Japanese instruments, the latter featuring a shakuhachi soloist; Phoenix (2009) for flute and shamisen (a plucked three-stringed instrument); and 21-String Koto Concerto No. 1: “Spirit of the Mountains” (2008), which includes not only the instrument of its title but also a 17-string koto and two of the more-typical 13-string variety. There is a certain delicacy of blandness about this music, its lines tending to move sinuously and its sounds and rhythms pleasant and rather “New Age-y” rather than strongly emotionally involving. Much of it comes across a bit like background music, although in fact a series of close hearings – for listeners willing to commit the time and effort – reveals considerable beauty and subtlety here. The disc is nevertheless a limited-interest item.

     So too is the (+++) Navona CD of the music of Irish composer Gráinne Mulvey (born 1966). Here the human voice appears in conjunction with a “voice” of another kind, that of the machine. Mulvey likes to contrast electronic or synthesized sounds with those made by humans, and in two of the seven works on this disc, that contrast is played out between a soprano (Elizabeth Hilliard, handling a challenging role well) and tape: The Gift of Freedom, which is intended as celebratory, and The Seafarer, where hope emerges from a state of mournfulness. Tape is used to contrast instruments elsewhere on the disc, in Syzygy for cello (Annette Cleary) and tape, Soundscape III for flute (Joe O’Farrell) and tape, and – most intriguingly – in Shifting Colours, where O’Farrell’s flute plays against (and is played off against) a synthesized flute, resulting in a dialogue by turns amusing and involving (although at 10 minutes, it does go on too long). The remaining works here are Steel-Grey Splinters for solo piano (Matthew Schellhorn), in which the percussive elements of the piano dominate over any attempt at tunefulness or expressiveness; and Akanos for orchestra, played by the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra under Robertas Šervenikas, in which – as in the piano work – Mulvey’s main concern is the production of widely contrasting sounds and their juxtaposition against each other. This technique, also seen in several of the other pieces here, becomes tiresome after a while – the ear longs for consonance that is very rarely forthcoming. The disc will be of interest primarily to those who want to hear some recent uses of the sorts of strong contrasts and electronic-vs.-traditional instrumental layouts that composers have been using in much the same way since the middle of the 20^th century.

(++++) THE PAST AS PROLOGUE

A Home for Mr. Emerson.  By Barbara Kerley. Illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham. Scholastic. $18.99.

Founding Mothers: Remembering the Ladies. By Cokie Roberts. Illustrated by Diane Goode. Harper. $17.99.

JFK. By Jonah Winter. Illustrated by A.G. Ford. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins. $17.99.

     Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was a seminal writer, philosopher and deep thinker at a time when the United States was finding itself as a nation, trying to determine what sort of country it would be and how its residents would fit in with each other, with their government and with the world. A leading Transcendentalist, Emerson gathered around himself a wide variety of like-minded people, spreading his influence in numerous ways: for example, Henry David Thoreau’s famed Walden Pond was on Emerson’s land in Concord, Massachusetts; Thoreau lived there after Emerson allowed him to build a cabin. But Barbara Kerley’s A Home for Mr. Emerson, intended for middle-grade readers, contains little of what made Emerson famous among his contemporary thinkers and in later generations – although quotations from his works appear on some of the book’s pages and its front and back inside covers. Kerley tells instead a homey story, indeed a very directly home-y one, about the importance of a firm and stable home to Emerson, how he created one for himself, and what happened after he was forced out of it by a fire in 1872, when he was 69 years old. It was that fire, resulting in his home’s destruction, that sent Emerson abroad, to England, Italy and Egypt, with his daughter, Ellen. Scholars of Emerson’s works are interested in how the travel influenced his thinking, but Kerley is more concerned with how eager he was to return home – and how happily astonished he was, when he did so, to find out that his friends and family had rebuilt and re-furnished his house for him. A sweet story about the importance of hearth and home rather than an exploration of a major philosophical system and one of its proponents, A Home for Mr. Emerson is enlivened by illustrations in which Edwin Fotheringham takes the largely true story into the realm of fairy tale or myth: he shows Emerson flying within the pages of an open book, literally leaping inside his book collection (into the pages of a giant volume), and being carried by birds across the Atlantic as Ellen holds his hand. Although Kerley notes some elements of Emerson’s thinking, as when she comments that he and friends “spoke about literature, theology, self-reliance, and freedom, in evenings of grand discussion,” she is more interested in Emerson the homebody and, by extension, in the importance of home as a place to “center” one’s self and one’s life. A Home for Mr. Emerson is a thoughtful book about an important American thinker – if scarcely an introduction to his thinking.

     Cokie Roberts’ Founding Mothers goes back even further in American history, in fact to a time before the United States existed as an independent nation, to present profiles of 10 important women of the Colonial era and the nation’s early years – plus some history reaching beyond those specific figures. A few of these women are well-known today: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison. The others are probably not, at least not to the young readers at whom the book is targeted: plantation owner Eliza Lucas Pinckney, Deborah Read Franklin (Benjamin Franklin’s wife), independence advocate Mercy Otis Warren, poet and former slave Phyllis Wheatley, Esther DeBerdt Reed (who raised funds for the Continental Army), Sarah Livingston Jay (wife of Continental Congress president John Jay), and Catharine Littlefield Greene (wife of General Nathanael Greene). Roberts is at pains to indicate that even the women profiled because of whose wives they were were not merely those men’s wives: they made important contributions of their own in the early days of the United States. Roberts tries a bit too hard to “prove” the women’s significance, but certainly they are worthy of more than occasional mentions in dryasdust history books, and she does enliven matters with her short biographical sketches. Diane Goode’s impressionistic illustrations add a pleasantly homey feel to the presentations and help compensate for the fact that Roberts sometimes comes across as talking down to her young readers: “The Patriots – men plotting to free the colonies from the British,” she writes at one point; at another, “Women’s private writings – letters and diaries – tell us much more about their lives than anything published for the public. Reading their mail (it’s okay to be nosy – they’ve been dead for a long time!) you learn what women were happy about and worrying about…” But even if Founding Mothers has flaws, it has them in a good cause: showing the importance of women as well as men in Revolutionary days. Readers who find these brief portraits intriguing may well be inspired to learn more about them – and about American history – elsewhere. The list of sources at the back of the book helps, although several of the women in Founding Mothers are omitted from it; still, it is a start, as (in a sense) is the book itself.

     JFK offers more-recent history for even younger readers (ages 4-8). A tribute and a work of hagiography rather than history, Jonah Winter’s book starts when the Dallas-based writer re-creates the scene in that city on the day Kennedy was assassinated there: November 22, 1963. This is a bit of a stretch – Winter was one year old at the time and, as he says, too young to understand what he was seeing; in fact, a one-year-old boy cannot even remember, much less understand, what he has seen. But Winter uses the events of that day to move back farther in time and discuss the Kennedy family, its roots, its commitment to public service, and the way in which the shepherding of the plan to ascend to the presidency was passed to the second Kennedy son after Joe Jr., the oldest, died in World War II. A.G. Ford offers craggy, angular, superhero-like portraits of the Kennedy family members and other figures in the book, accentuating a narrative in which Winter again and again looks only to the positive side of Kennedy and his relatives. For example: “Kennedy’s victory was not just a victory for himself but a victory for words! For intelligence!” And Winter comments that the Kennedy presidency “was the closest America ever came to having royalty,” connecting the “Camelot” designation with a book about King Arthur that Kennedy read as a boy. There is a bit too much mythmaking in this (+++) book to make it a fully satisfying biography even for very young readers: there are no negatives about Kennedy at all, only heroism, and issues involving his scarcely uncontroversial father and his appointment of his brother as atorney general are either glossed over or omitted entirely.  Some people “hated him – because of what he stood for, because of his wealth,” writes Winter, but “even more people loved him – for his intelligence, his courage, his voice.” And this may well be true, but it will surely leave children wondering why, in that case, he was assassinated – a complex story that will be left to parents to try to tell, since Winter never proffers any reason that hatred or anger would have penetrated so deeply against so saintly a man.

(+++) MAGIC, MYSTERY, MORE

Magic in the Park. By Ruth Chew. Random House. $15.99.

The Trouble with Magic. By Ruth Chew. Random House. $15.99.

A to Z Mysteries Super Edition #6: The Castle Crime. By Ron Roy. Illustrated by John Steven Gurney. Random House. $5.99.

Dog Diaries #4: Togo. By Kate Klimo. Illustrated by Tim Jessell. Random House. $6.99.

     Some of the “Matter-of-Fact Magic” books, written and illustrated by Ruth Chew (1920-2010), are now available again for readers ages 7-10; it remains to be seen whether they will enchant a new generation. Magic in the Park, which dates to 1972, is about a girl named Jennifer who moves to the big city (Brooklyn, New York) but misses the countryside where she used to live. Then she meets Mike in a local park and, together, they observe an old man who feeds the birds regularly and seems to appear and disappear whenever they look away for a moment. Also, the park holds a hollow tree that seems to be in a different place every day – but only the two kids notice that. This leads to an everyday adventure, accompanied by magic, featuring a raven named Napoleon, bird transformations, and Mike’s grandmother’s memory of a man who used to feed the birds in the park when she was a young girl. There is a bit of trouble here, involving a stolen and recovered bike, but nothing too challenging and nothing too serious, and all ends happily and warmly. Similarly, The Trouble with Magic, which dates to 1976, shows that spells can be easier to do than undo. Here the central characters are a brother and sister, Barbara and Rick, who are bored in old Mrs. Cunningham’s house – until they open an old bottle and free a wizard, who comes complete with an enchanted umbrella. This is no Mary Poppins tale, though: the wizard, named Harrison Peabody, admits he is “not really a powerful wizard” and “not even a very good one,” and that his umbrella – the source of his power – obeys only when he is very polite to it. Furthermore, it only works when it is raining! Amusing complications naturally follow, but Barbara and Rick do get to make the acquaintance of a sea serpent (in a lake, so maybe a lake serpent?), and the umbrella does indeed make it possible for the kids to fly a bit, and eventually there are problems that are solved by proper politeness to the umbrella. The “Matter-of-Fact Magic” stories are thin, with Chew’s pleasant illustrations making the easy-to-read tales even simpler to follow. But the attitudes of young children toward magic are quite different now from what they were in the 1970s – whether these matter-of-fact books will catch on will likely depend on how un-Harry-Potterish today’s kids want their magic to be.

     Also intended for young readers, in this case ages 6-9, the A to Z Mysteries focus on geography and architecture rather than magic: each features a building, monument or museum in the place where the story takes place. In the case of The Castle Crime, the three central characters – Dink, Josh and Ruth Rose – are going to London, where there are many places of interest to visit and put at the heart of the story. The kids do go to Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, which would seem an obvious location for a mystery, but in fact the story focuses on Windsor Castle, from which some of Queen Elizabeth’s jewels have been stolen. Scotland Yard is on the case, but with the improbability that is characteristic of Ron Roy’s series and others targeting this age group, it is the three children who are the top clue-spotters. They also just happen to run into the queen herself – which is quite impossible but, again, not out of consideration for books like this – and they have quite a pleasant chat, which helps them come up with ideas that, yes, eventually lead them to figure out where the jewels are. And Madame Tussaud’s turns out to have a part in the story after all. The Castle Crime is thoroughly unbelievable but is not meant to be taken seriously: it is a romp of a mystery – with a brief reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s famous story, “The Purloined Letter,” thrown in to make the whole thing seem more important than it really is.

     The latest in Kate Klimo’s Dog Diaries series gets some importance by association, too. Here the association is with Balto, the sled dog famous for bringing serum to Nome, Alaska, to stem a deadly diphtheria epidemic in 1925. But the real hero of the serum story is not Balto but another dog, Togo – whose tale is told here. Both Siberians were trained by Leonhard Seppala, whose lead dog, Togo, was already well-known for prowess in racing when the Serum Run became necessary; Balto had never raced. It was Seppala and Togo to whom the officials trying to get the serum to Nome entrusted the longest and most difficult part of the trip; and indeed, Seppala and Togo covered 260 miles, including the most dangerous part of the journey, which involved crossing the ice of Norton Sound two separate times despite repeated warnings that it was unstable and should be avoided. However, the serum transport was a team effort, and as it turned out, a dog team led by Balto – also trained by Seppala – made the final 53-mile run that ended in Nome. So it was that team that got the glory; and reporters covering the event ended up confusing and conflating Balto’s history with Togo’s, attributing feats of intelligence and ability to Balto that Seppala himself said were actually Togo’s. Seppala later tried, with some success, to set the record of the Serum Run straight, and now Klimo does so, too, with this story – narrated, like all the Dog Diaries series, in the “voice” of the dog rather than that of any human. The narrative can be amusing, as when Togo first becomes lead dog and explains that he had a tendency to run in a straight line, often getting the team bogged down in snow and costing time to dig everyone out. “When Sepp [Togo’s name for Seppala] lost time, he got sad. When Sepp was sad, I was sad. When I saved Sepp time by not getting us stuck in the first place, he was happy. It didn’t take me long to learn to stick to the trail.” But by and large, this is a story of the 1925 Serum Run and “what Sepp would come to call the Balto Business.” Togo doesn’t think much of Balto: “Balto couldn’t lead a pack of fleas up a malamute’s leg.” But he also doesn’t care about the confusion between his record and Balto’s: “I was just glad to be home.” Like the other Dog Diaries books, this one mixes fact with fiction, is written at a good level for ages 7-10, and ends with an appendix – in this case, about the Siberian husky as a breed, the Iditarod race, and the pleasures and challenges of having a husky as a pet. And if the book helps correct the still-common belief that Balto rather than Togo was the hero of the Serum Run, it will have done some good beyond simple storytelling.

(++) HEALTHIER HEARTS HERE?

The Heart Health Bible: The 5-Step Plan to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. By John M. Kennedy, M.D. Da Capo. $15.99.

     Plainspoken and intelligent advice from an expert and experienced cardiologist is somehow coupled with errors, omissions and abysmal writing and/or editing that collectively take a book that ought to be celebrated and turn it into one that can barely be trusted. This is more than a shame: it is a genuine risk to cardiac health.

     It is reasonable to come to The Heart Health Bible with high expectations. John M. Kennedy, M.D., sits on the board of the American Heart Association and is a clinical associate professor of cardiology in California – recognized and respected both for his work in invasive cardiology and for his championing of alternative and complementary medicine. On paper, he is just the sort of person to whom one would wish to turn for information on living a life that is better for your heart – and lowering one’s risk of heart disease, the number one killer and leading cause of disability in the United States. The “5-Step Plan” of his book’s title has, as it turns out, an unfortunate acronym and no really new or different recommendations, but it is clearly presented and does contain ideas that, if followed carefully, will improve many people’s heart health. It is, in fact, the reason that this book gets a (++) rating rather than (+).

     Dr. Kennedy’s plan calls for a well-known approach toward lowering cardiovascular risk: exercise and reduce weight, blood sugar, blood pressure and triglycerides. Those are the five elements – one positive and four negative. But in the search for a catchy acronym, Dr. Kennedy has to torture the elements of the program to make them fit. The acronym, which certainly is catchy, is H-E-A-R-T. But here is what the letters mean: Heal blood pressure; Energize your heart through exercise; Act on fat by losing weight; Reduce blood sugar; and Tackle triglycerides. Sorry, but this does not work at all: a good acronym has to have an immediate, clear, readily understandable relationship to its underlying recommendations, and this one is overly complex and not sufficiently clearly connected to be useful.

     It does, however, contain the germ of a good idea – several good ideas, in fact. And Dr. Kennedy says, correctly, that his program requires basic behavioral changes that can be very difficult for people to make; he even tries to come up with ways to encourage people to make them anyway, and ways to lessen the inherent difficulties.

     All well and good. But scattered throughout the book, again and again and most unfortunately, are so many mistakes and instances of poor writing that it is impossible to take anything Dr. Kennedy says at face value – because there is no way to know whether errors have crept in and, if so, how significant they are.

     For example: “Just a decade ago, before the clinical availability of insulin….”  What? Insulin was first given  by injection in 1922, crystallized in 1926, fully sequenced in 1955, chemically synthesized in 1963, manufactured in significant quantities in 1978 (by Genentech), and made widely available (as Humulin) in the early 1980s. A decade ago?

     Or consider this sentence: “Thus, the comparatively primitive brains of our forbearers [sic] may have developed neural pathways that heightened their desire for high calories [sic] foods.” Does writing like this encourage you to follow the author’s recommendations?

     There are also subtler mistakes, apparently born of Dr. Kennedy’s predisposition to favor lifestyle changes over any other approaches to limit cardiovascular-disease risk. In a quiz about modern portion sizes, for example, he compares today’s portions with those of 20 years ago (an interesting idea) and explains how much exercise would be needed to work off the excess calories of larger portions (also an interesting idea). But he does not play fair. One question says, “A muffin 20 years ago was 1.5 ounces and had 210 calories. How many calories do you think are in a muffin today?” The choices are 320, 400 or 500, and the answer is 500 – for a five-ounce muffin. But wait: that means today’s muffins have fewer calories per ounce than those of 20 years ago (100 today vs. 140 two decades in the past). Isn’t that at least worth mentioning? And in another question, he compares a “box of popcorn” 20 years ago with “today’s tub of popcorn,” never explaining how many ounces either contains and not discussing whether the popcorn, either in the past or today, is air-popped, made with oil, coated with butter or artificial butter flavor, etc. Skewing questions this way in order to skew the answers is not medicine – it is propaganda.

     It has to be said that to the extent that The Heart Health Bible is propagandistic, it is in a good cause: heart disease is a huge problem, and finding ways to cope with it is important. But that does not justify serious lapses of accuracy or deliberate omission of alternative approaches that Dr. Kennedy may use himself but apparently does not like. An example of the latter: his 286-page book devotes a mere two pages to statins, which are among the world’s most-prescribed medicines, are specifically designed to reduce heart-disease risk, and are credited by many cardiologists with having such power to lower cardiovascular events that they believe millions more people should take them, beyond the millions who already do. This is an arguable proposition, but not a casually dismissible one – yet Dr. Kennedy does dismiss it, devoting his two pages not to the medicines’ enormous successes and benefits but to the comparatively rare side effect of cognitive impairment (which, unlike other side effects of statins, some cardiologists deem anecdotal rather than proven). Dr. Kennedy prescribes statins himself – he says so, and even affirms that he “feels so strongly” about them because they work so well in certain patients. That being the case, his brief treatment of the statin option and his emphasis on the negatives of this class of drugs seem disingenuous, or at least uncalled-for.

     Dr. Kennedy has enormous knowledge and experience in cardiovascular disease, and clearly is on a mission to help people reduce their risk of developing it. But The Heart Health Bible, because of its errors and the skewed elements of its presentation, unfortunately undermines that mission more than it advances it.

(++++) SPARKLING PIANISM

Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1; Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Natasha Paremski, piano; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Fabien Gabel. RPO. $16.99.

Stravinsky: Solo Piano Works. Jenny Lin, piano. Steinway & Sons. $17.99.

An Amadeus Affair: Music for Two Pianists by Mozart, Busoni, Liszt, and Anderson & Roe. Anderson & Roe Piano Duo (Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe). Steinway & Sons. $17.99.

     It doesn’t get any better than this: tremendously talented young pianists bringing musicianship, flair and quite extraordinary technical prowess to bear on repertoire ranging from the highly familiar to the little-known to works of their own creation. Natasha Paremski’s pairing of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff would seem on the face of it to be worthy mostly of a yawn, there being so many outstanding performances of both works available – but it takes only about 30 seconds of listening to realize just how special this CD is. The Russian-American Paremski has quite an extraordinary feel for this quintessentially Russian music, and she has so much technique that she can focus on extracting the pieces’ emotional connections without sounding as if she is working hard on surmounting their technical complexities. Her Tchaikovsky First is fluid, involving, expansive and focused more on lyricism than display – a more-intimate version of this concerto than most pianists offer, although Paremski has no problem delivering fireworks in the finale. Fabien Gabel and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra provide warm, flowing accompaniment that belies the fact that they have performed this concerto innumerable times – here it sounds freshly forthright, without a hint of the formulaic treatment that orchestras sometimes give it. And orchestra and soloist are even better, even more convincing, in Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Variations, which here receive a quite wonderfully musicianly treatment instead of sounding like a mere display piece – although the “display” elements certainly come through forcefully as well. Paremski and Gabel seem to have agreed that this work deserves to be handled with all the serious sumptuousness of the composers’ piano concertos – all of which were written earlier than these variations were. As a result, although the variations flow seamlessly from start to finish, each gets highly individualized treatment that pays especially large dividends in the 18^th and 19^th variations, the latter offered with gorgeous expansiveness that is wholly unapologetic for the composer’s swooning Romantic temperament. The contrast between the slower variations and the ones that sparkle as the work comes to an end is especially clear here, with Paremski handling the final variation with absolutely bravura flair and then tossing off the intended-to-be-tossed-off final notes so amusingly that listeners will be left smiling, if not laughing outright. Far too many performances of standard-repertoire works come across as dutiful rather than deeply involving. This one shows what newer top-notch artists can do with the familiar: make it new and make it splendid.

     Matters are somewhat lower-key (no pun intended) but no less intriguing in Jenny Lin’s handling of Stravinsky’s solo piano music, which is by no means as well-known as it deserves to be. Piano versions of Stravinsky’s orchestral works have been on something of a roll lately – the striking five-piano version of The Rite of Spring performed by the 5 Browns comes immediately to mind – and one such piano transcription appears here: Guido Agosti’s rendition of the Danse infernale, Berceuse and Finale from The Firebird, a fascinating and fireworks-filled invitation to display one’s virtuosity, which Lin does with admirable abandon. But Lin is equally capable of restraint, and that is what serves her well in much of the other music on this Steinway & Sons disc. Like his orchestral works, Stravinsky’s pieces for solo piano appear in various styles and require different handling according to whether they are more traditional in orientation (the four Etudes of 1908), neoclassical (the Piano Sonata of 1924), lighthearted and angular (Circus Polka of 1942) or late and unfinished (Two Sketches of a Sonata, together lasting less than one minute and dating to 1966-67). What Lin does so well here is plumb the character of each work, delving into what it is designed to communicate and pulling out that expressiveness with fine attention to pianistic detail and to Stravinsky’s frequently changing compositional style. Aside from the sonata and Agosti’s Firebird arrangement, the only work here lasting more than 10 minutes is the four-movement Serenade in A, but even the smaller pieces and out-and-out trifles get knowing, elegant handling at Lin’s, well, hands. Here are a one-minute Polka, a two-minute Valse (both from Trois Pièces Facile and arranged for two hands by Soulima Stravinsky), and a three-minute Tango, plus a nicely polished Ragtime for 11 Instruments (arranged by the composer) and Piano-Rag-Music. Also offered is Stravinsky’s deliberately simple arrangement of the Prologue to Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, which in 90 seconds sets the basic tone of that gloomy and sprawling opera. All the works show Stravinsky’s ear for detail and fine workmanship, and all Lin’s performances display involvement, sensitivity and a thorough understanding of the music.

     Equally impressive but much harder to classify, the Steinway & Sons CD entitled An Amadeus Affair is simply – or not so simply – a celebration of the sheer delight of music-making, and of Mozart and his influence. Duo pianists Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe really go to town with some works by composers of the past and some they have created themselves. The centerpiece of the disc is Mozart’s own Sonata for Two Pianos in D, K. 448, which here gets a firmly rooted, well-paced and knowing performance that does not veer too far into virtuosity for its own sake. Oh no – that is reserved for Liszt’s Réminiscences de Don Juan, one of that composer’s wonderful operatic mashups designed both to familiarize audiences of his time with works they may not have known well and to show the piano as an orchestra in miniature and the pianist as its absolute ruler. The contrast between Mozart’s work and Liszt’s is extreme, yet Liszt’s piece comes across as a fond tribute and not merely a surface-level bit of flippancy. It is in fact a substantial work in its own right, and Anderson and Roe certainly give it its due. They bring equal skill and sensitivity to Busoni’s Duettino concertante, which is based on the finale of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 19, K. 459. But the Mozart, Liszt and Busoni works are scarcely the only attractions here: Anderson and Roe turn this disc into a showpiece for themselves as arrangers and composers, not just interpreters. Two short arrangements of Mozart works are very well put together and very nicely performed: Soave sia il vento from Così fan tutte and the Chorale Prelude from The Magic Flute. Even more interesting, though, are two pieces composed by the duo pianists using Mozart’s music as a jumping-off point, much as Liszt did. One is an extended and very impressive Grand Scherzo based on the finale of the first act of Così, and the other is an absolutely delightful encore called Ragtime alla Turca, based on the famous third movement of the piano sonata K. 331. The wit and playfulness of Mozart are the primary elements on display here, both in the interpretations and in the performers’ arrangements and compositions: this is Mozart for fun, despite all the seriousness that Liszt and Busoni brought to Mozart’s music and the equal seriousness with which Mozart himself wrote it – although it is worth remembering that the composer was known in his own lifetime for somewhat crude humor and a certain level of immaturity. There is nothing at all crude about what Anderson and Roe deliver here: everything is polished to a fine sheen and delivered with panache. But it all twinkles nevertheless.

(++++) JOURNEYS

Dvořák: “American” String Quartet; Copland: Two Pieces; Hoe-Down; Barber: String Quartet; Gershwin: Lullaby; Brubeck: Regret. Brodsky Quartet (Daniel Rowland and Ian Belton, violins; Paul Cassidy, viola; Jacqueline Thomas, cello). Chandos. $18.99.

Britten: The Ascent of F6; An American in England; Roman Wall Blues; On the Frontier; Where do we go from here? Samuel West, narrator; Mary Carewe and Jean Rigby, mezzo-sopranos; Andrew Kennedy, tenor; Mervyn Cooke and Lucy Walker, pianists; Ex Cathedra Choir conducted by Jeffrey Skidmore; Hallé conducted by Sir Mark Elder. NMC. $18.99.

Delius: Norwegian Bridal Procession; Paa Vidderne (On the Mountains);Two Songs from the Norwegian; Sleigh Ride (Winter Night); Folkeraadet (The People’s Parliament); On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring; Eventyr (Once upon a Time). Ann-Helen Moen, soprano; Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. Chandos. $19.99 (SACD).

Jason Vieaux: Play. Jason Vieaux, guitar. Azica. $16.99.

     In these times, when many classical composers draw influences from all over the world and from all sorts of music, it is worth remembering that composers of earlier days also sought to capture the sounds of places outside their homeland. There are a few cases in which this is well known: Mendelssohn’s “Italian” symphony and Mozart’s use of “Turkish” sounds, for example. And of course there is Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.” But that symphony is in fact a very Bohemian work that just happens to include various themes that Dvořák picked up in the United States – and this points to the reality that composers who travel bring their own musical conceptions and predilections along as baggage. Dvořák is actually an excellent example of this, as the Brodsky Quartet shows in its very fine performance of the composer’s 1893 work in F, the “American” quartet. There is very little that is overtly American in this, the composer’s 12^th quartet, even though Dvořák said he would not have written the piece or his other American compositions quite the same way had he not composed them in the United States. The work has a simple, open, fresh feeling that the Brodsky Quartet communicates clearly, and perhaps it is this refreshing element rather than anything specifically thematic that makes the quartet “American.” The Chandos CD on which it appears is entitled “New World Quartets,” and the remaining works on the disc are by American composers – for whom whatever may be “American” comes naturally rather than through a visit. Samuel Barber actually started writing his only quartet – which is best known for the Adagio for Strings that he created from its second movement – when he was in Austria, but the work is neither especially European nor especially American. It is a lovely piece that flowers in the Brodsky Quartet’s interpretation, in which the famous central movement is clearly part of a larger whole. The remaining works on the CD, all equally well played, are smaller: Gershwin’s rather extended and very pretty 1920 Lullaby, Copland’s Two Pieces (1923-28), and two of the Brodsky Quartet’s own arrangements – of Hoe-Down from Rodeo (1942) and of Dave Brubeck’s Regret (1999). Hoe-Down and Regret here receive their première recordings as quartets, and they work very well in the form; indeed, they are the most consciously, perhaps even a trifle self-consciously, “American-sounding” music here.

     Like Dvořák, Benjamin Britten had a American period, and the NMC disc called “Britten to America” focuses on the radio and theater music he wrote during or in connection with his travels in Canada and the United States from 1939 to 1942. Very little of this music has been heard since its original performances during World War II, although the “Blues” number “Stop All the Clocks” from The Ascent of F6 was later arranged as a cabaret song that enjoyed some popularity. There is no particularly profound music here, but all the works are vigorous and accessible, betraying their origin as incidental music to plays or radio shows and being, for that very reason, attractive in their lack of “serious” ambition and pretension. This is not to say that the music is overly simple: it is in fact both elaborate and dramatic, and looks ahead in some respects to the opera Peter Grimes and the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, in the latter case because Britten at this time first met the superb French horn player Dennis Brain, then principal horn of the RAF Orchestra, and wrote the horn parts with him in mind. The specific wartime topics of these works are dated now, but it is interesting to note the high quality of some of the creative teams brought together to produce the plays: W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood wrote the text for The Ascent of F6 and On the Frontier, and Auden’s words provide the text for the short song called Roman Wall Blues. The performances are all sincere and thoughtful, with Samuel West an impressive narrator and Mary Carewe a particularly expressive mezzo-soprano. This is not “major” Britten, but it is affecting and well-crafted music that still has impact even though the occasions for which it was created are long past.

     Another British composer’s travels – in a different direction – are the subject of an SACD from Chandos with the title “Delius in Norway.” This is a generous helping of British music featuring a top British conductor and first-rate Norwegian orchestra – under the circumstances, a particularly happy combination. Norway gained its independence in 1905, and the works here span the period from before that event to a decade after it.  They all have Delius’ immediately recognizable combination of impressionism and delicacy, almost wispiness, of orchestration. A little of Delius tends to go a long way, and non-enthusiasts may find this disc a bit much to sit through from start to finish, especially since the shorter works come off best. Norwegian Bridal Procession (1889) is a gentle rather than raucous celebration; Two Songs from the Norwegian (1889-1908) offer pleasant and forthright folk melodies; and the most-familiar piece here, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring (1912), weaves its usual languorous charm.  Sleigh Ride (1887-89) is effective and pleasant, too, although it exists in a world quite different from Leroy Anderson’s. The three longer pieces are altogether less successful. Paa Vidderne (1888-92) is suitably redolent of mountain air, but goes on rather too long at the same height. And two suites edited by Sir Thomas Beecham – a longtime champion of Delius’ music – are even more tiresome. Eventyr (1915-17) lasts just 15 minutes but seems much longer, and Folkeraadet (1897), a 25-minute suite taken from a play satirizing Norwegian politics, seems pointless as well as long outdated. Delius aficionados will welcome this (+++) CD for the excellent performances and substantial selection of the composer’s works, but other listeners will likely find themselves realizing all too clearly how fine a line there is between Delius at his best and worst – whether in Norway, which the composer considered his spiritual home, or anywhere else.

     Another (+++) CD is also played very well but also offers music of varying quality and interest. This is guitarist Jason Vieaux’ Azica disc simply entitled Play. Not a recording based on a single composer’s travels but one celebrating Vieaux’ own worldwide wanderings and interests, the CD includes 17 short pieces by composers who in most cases are virtually unknown  outside their countries or, in some cases, their regions: Brazil, Argentina, United Kingdom, Spain, Cuba, France, Paraguay, Venezuela, Mexico and the United States. The works here range from Stanley Myers’ Cavatina from The Deer Hunter to Vieaux’ own arrangements of Duke Ellington’s In a Sentimental Mood and Andrew York’s Sunburst, and from traditional folk music to works redolent of the South American countries where the guitar is deeply embedded in the social fabric. Among the highlights are Andrés Segovia’s Estudio Sin Luz, Manuel Ponce’s arrangement of Por Ti Mi Corazón, Francisco Tárrega’s Capricho Arabe, and Leo Brouwer’s Danza Caracteristica from Cuba. Vieaux is not only a virtuoso but also an artist of considerable expressiveness, bringing his finely honed technique to showpieces and lesser music alike. There is a certain sameness to some of the works, for all that Vieaux does his best to highlight their differences and produce a sound with both clarity and rhythmic vitality. The CD will be a great pleasure, if scarcely a revelatory one, for fans of classical guitar music and of its top performers; for others, it, like the Delius disc, may be more enjoyable if heard in small sections than if listened to from start to finish.

(++++) LOVE IT!

Tulip Loves Rex. By Alyssa Satin Capucilli. Illustrated by Sarah Massini. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins. $17.99.

Foxy in Love. By Emma Dodd. Harper. $17.99.

Pete the Cat: Valentine’s Day Is Cool. By Kimberly and James Dean. Harper. $9.99.

Love Is Real. By Janet Lawler. Illustrated by Anna Brown. Harper. $15.99.

Just a Little Love. By Mercer Mayer. Harper. $16.99.

It’s Valentine’s Day. By Jack Prelutsky. Pictures by Marylin Hafner. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $16.99.

     Valentine’s Day is a particularly good time to be in the 4-8 age range, or have a child in that age range, because the Valentine-related books made just for preschoolers and early-grade-schoolers are so varied and so much fun, mixing serious messages with entertainment in a near-irresistible potpourri of delight. Tulip Loves Rex is a book that trips the light fantastic, because that is what Tulip does: she dances all the time, everywhere, and has done so since birth – and her parents, as Alyssa Satin Capucilli explains, “didn’t mind a bit” that their daughter was not quite like other children. Then one day, at the park, Tulip meets Rex, a “rather large” and rather ungainly-looking dog wearing a sign that says “I am not quite like other dogs.” Indeed, he is not: he licks Tulip’s face, which she enjoys tremendously, but he is not so good at fetching a stick, catching a ball or sitting when told. He is, however, good at appreciating Tulip’s dancing – and, it turns out, at doing a doggie dance of his own. Clearly these two are meant to be together, and thanks to Tulip noticing the back of the sign around Rex’s neck – where it says “Will you take me home?” – they do indeed get to go home together, because when the question of taking Rex into the family comes up, Tulip’s loving and indulgent parents yet again “didn’t mind a bit.” Gentle, sweet and happily unrealistic, with attractive motion-filled illustrations by Sarah Massini, Tulip Loves Rex is a lovely tale for Valentine’s Day or anytime – but parents should be careful not to let kids use it to lead the family into instant acceptance of a rather large dog!

     Foxy in Love, which Emma Dodd intends specifically for Valentine’s Day, features both the magic of love and the magic of, well, magic, since Foxy can wave his magical tail and bring little Emily just about anything that she would like. He does mis-hear, though, with the result that she asks for balloons and gets raccoons, asks for flowers and gets a huge bag of flour, and so on. More importantly, Foxy becomes increasingly sad when he talks with Emily about what she loves and she does not mention him. She talks only about things she loves, until Foxy tells her, “I think you forgot something important” – at which point Emily, understanding that Valentine’s is about whom you love, not what you love, immediately exclaims, “I love YOU, Foxy!” And so everything ends with a hug and in a burst of hearts, with the final red-and-pink illustration making the Valentine’s Day point colorfully as well as very clearly.

     A participatory approach to Valentine’s Day is at the heart of Pete the Cat: Valentine’s Day Is Cool, in which Kimberly and James Dean manage both to tell a story and to provide kids with plenty of things to do to celebrate the day: the book includes a large fold-out poster; a page of stickers (“I Meow You” within a heart, Pete on a skateboard, “I Love Pete,” “Here Kitty Kitty,” and so forth); and two pages containing a total of 12 small Valentine’s Day cards to cut out and give out (Pete holding a rose, Pete with Cupid’s wings, Pete holding a heart that bears the word “Love,” etc.). Wrapped around these bonuses is a story in which Pete makes Valentine’s Day cards for all his friends, starting with all the boys and moving on to all the girls – then realizes there are people he has forgotten, including the school-bus driver and school crossing guard, so he has to hurry to make cards for them as well. Eventually he realizes that he has also forgotten to make a card for his friend Callie, who first got Pete involved in card-making and helped him get everything done. But Callie assures Pete that hanging out together is even better than any card – so of course everything ends happily and only slightly mushily.

     The emotional quotient is considerably higher in Janet Lawler’s Love Is Real, which uses Anna Brown’s illustrations of families of bunnies, foxes and bears to tell a warm and forthright tale of what love means in human families. There is no humor in the words here – only sincerity. “Love is in the little things/ that fill my heart until it sings,” the book begins, continuing with a whole series of examples: “Love puts sprinkles on the top./ Love can dance the bunny hop.”  “Love will listen when you tug./ Love swoops down to give a hug.” And much more. There are touches of humor in some of the pictures – those “sprinkles,” for example, are actually acorns – but by and large, this is a book that practically oozes sweetness and sincerity. It may in fact be a bit too sweet for at least some kids at the upper end of the 4-8 age range, but for parents and children who remain very much in the snuggling and cuddling stage, it should be highly pleasurable – and can make a lovely bedtime book, since it ends with cuddles and then with sleepy time for a little bunny.

     Valentine-themed or simply love-themed books can also be fun for kids who are learning to read: Mercer Mayer’s Just a Little Love and Jack Prelutsky’s It’s Valentine’s Day are both in the “I Can Read!” series, at two different levels. Mayer’s book, which is not specific to Valentine’s Day, is about Little Critter and his family going to cheer up Grandma after Grandpa calls to say she is not feeling well. A series of misadventures requires the use of love to make everything better in this book at the “My First” level (“ideal for sharing with emergent readers”). For example, Little Sister is stung by a bee when picking flowers for Grandma, but Mom gives her a little love and she feels better; and when Little Critter falls off a ladder while picking apples, Dad gives him a little love to make everything all right. Mom and Dad turn out to need a little love, too, and when the family eventually gets to Grandma’s house, she is feeling better because what she needed was a little love. This is a sweet, simple story suitable for just about any day.

     On the other hand, Prelutsky’s “Level 3” book (“complex plots for confident readers”) is very directly tied to Valentine’s Day, containing 14 silly and not-too-complex poems with very apt illustrations by Marylin Hafner. Some of the poems are sincere, such as “A Valentine for Teacher,” which notes, with eager anticipation of delivering a carefully homemade card, that “it’s colored in with crayons/ and it’s trimmed with purple lace,/ it has flowers, hearts, and cupids –/ I can’t wait to see her face.” Other poems are much more amusing, in a style to which Prelutsky gravitates, such as one addressing a best friend: “You are ugly, you are simple,/ and your brain is like a pimple,/ you should soak your head in brine –/ WON’T YOU BE MY VALENTINE?” There is a comparatively long and very cute poem about an attempt to make a cake for Valentine’s Day, another poem about the futility of giving valentines to pets, and one about accidentally eating all the chocolates that were supposed to be a gift for Mom. And there is a final poem that sums everything up – depending on what “everything” means, of course – in a mere three lines: “I only got one valentine,/ and that was signed,/ Love, Frankenstein.” Hearts, flowers and chocolate are all well and good for Valentine’s Day, but Prelutsky’s humor and amusement will get young readers through any day in style.

(+++) OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES

The Office of Mercy. By Ariel Djanikian. Penguin. $16.

The Dumbest Idea Ever! By Jimmy Gownley. Graphix/Scholastic. $11.99.

     A novel for people who have never read 1984, Brave New World, Soylent Green, Ender’s Game or any other dystopias in which apparent benevolence is soon unmasked as concealing great evil, Ariel Djanikian’s debut, The Office Of Mercy, telegraphs – starting with its title – that things will not be what they are professed to be. This is the sort of book in which readers immediately know something is amiss when Natasha Wiley, the protagonist, gets instructions that include the phrase, “ensure the cleanliness and efficiency of the Crane sweep.” Words such as “cleanliness and efficiency” are fraught in books like this, and sure enough, it turns out that Natasha’s work with the Office of Mercy – which involves humanely ending the lives of nomads living outside the cloistered safety of an underground survival encampment called America-Five – is really all about perpetuating the absolute power of a shadowy group of ruthless rulers who will stop at nothing to achieve their end of continuing dominance (along the lines of “we had to destroy the world in order to save it”). This is so standard a plot that readers who are familiar with the book’s many, many antecedents risk being turned off by Djanikian’s writing within a very few pages. But giving up on the book too soon would be a mistake, because even though the tropes of modern dystopias pervade the plot, The Office of Mercy is a smartly paced, well-written entry in its field, and one that raises some intriguing (if scarcely original) questions about the price of peace, the value of long life and the meaning of freedom. Getting to those questions, though, involves dealing with some creaky elements. Natasha, who is 24, seems so naïve that her developing doubts about her life and work are difficult to accept. Other aspects of the book are, too, such as the use of tremendous violence in the name of ending suffering and the notion that Earth had 59 billion people (59 billion? How is that possible?) before drastic action was taken to “relieve” the suffering of the vast, vast, vast majority. Perhaps all this is intended as Malthusian, but Djanikian never makes that connection clearly enough for the reader to be sure. In the same way, the America-Five residents’ use of the Wall – a habit that locks one’s emotions away so decisions can be made entirely rationally – is difficult to accept unless one simply takes it as a premise, an axiom underlying the story, rather than as something developed within the context of the world where the tale takes place. The concept of The Office of Mercy is that ethical training produces people who so abhor suffering and are so determined to eliminate it that some are assigned to kill free-roaming bands of humans who live uncontrolled, unmanaged lives and exist in a constant state of hunger, disease and eventually a potentially painful or protracted death. Surely something quick and painless is better. Explained in this bald way, the book seems worse than it is, more superficial and thoughtless. It is in fact better than its flaws indicate – but those flaws are nevertheless real. It is not entirely clear for whom Djanikian is writing: the book is most appropriate as a young-adult novel, but seems to be intended for older readers as well, although it will work far less well for them. The dystopia concept, the notion of an apparently positive society that is rotten at the core – and a world built on what appear to be good intentions that have, to put it mildly, gone seriously awry – remains a very effective and sometimes provocative one, and Djanikian certainly understands how to make it work. There are, however, just a few too many improbabilities, plot holes and unexplained background elements in The Office of Mercy for the book to succeed with readers who are already aware of the many more-tightly-plotted, more-thoughtful and more-original works on whose foundation Djanikian constructs her deeply flawed world.

     The world is more everyday and the flaws of character and circumstance more internal than external in Jimmy Gownley’s graphic novel, The Dumbest Idea Ever! But this book too is based on a well-worn premise – several of them, in fact. It is the usual coming-of-age story, and because it is a graphic novel, it uses the common notion of being a graphic story about someone who wants to produce graphic stories – a budding cartoonist, that is. Furthermore, it is autobiographical. Drawn well but not with any particular distinctiveness, the book features the sorts of elements common to many graphic novels: changes in panel size and layout, use of color at times and black-and-white (or sepia tone) at others, and a story that includes the expected angst of a 13-year-old – told in a “flashback” from age 15, using a combination of real-looking scenes and fanciful ones (as when Jimmy, home sick from school, imagines being visited by the Grim Reaper, who tells him he is not dying and needs to stop whining and get on with his life). Jimmy writes and draws comics, has successes and failures in both the classroom and sports, has and loses a girlfriend – all the mundane accomplishments and difficulties of the teenage years, written in a forthright style and drawn attractively enough to keep readers interested and involved. Aimed squarely at teens, the book has enough resonance to be enjoyable for those who are going through or have gone through the usual ups and downs of their age group, whether or not they are interested in creating cartoons – an interest in using them for storytelling and enjoying books that do so is plenty. There really is nothing exceptionally new or unexpected in The Dumbest Idea Ever! But it is a well-made, pleasant book whose idea – the autobiography of a young cartoonist told in graphic form – may be less than unusual, but is certainly not a dumb one, much less the dumbest one possible.