(++++) A MULTIPLICITY OF MAGICS

Phoebe and Her Unicorn 11: Camping with Unicorns. By Dana Simpson. Andrews McMeel. $11.99.

Phoebe and Her Unicorn 12: Virtual Unicorn Experience. By Dana Simpson. Andrews McMeel. $11.99.

Phoebe and Her Unicorn 13: Unicorn Famous. By Dana Simpson. Andrews McMeel. $11.99.

     Although each of these books is subtitled “Another Phoebe and Her Unicorn Adventure,” singular, each is actually a set of adventures, plural, for Dana Simpson’s characters. And therein lies some of the charm of this long-running cartoon series: Simpson is constantly thinking up new ways for Phoebe and Marigold Heavenly Nostrils to interact, go places, do things, and generally cement their unlikely friendship. But not too unlikely: Marigold is not the only supernatural character in this world, and Phoebe’s parents and friends are well aware of unicorns and other magical beings (an unusual approach: parents in fantasies, if they are present at all, tend to be blissfully unaware of all the magic happening around them).

     Simpson’s multi-adventure approach means that each book’s title is at best slightly accurate, referring to a single element of the enchantments that readers will discover inside. Thus, Camping with Unicorns does indeed have a sequence in which Phoebe and Marigold go camping – along with Phoebe’s parents, Phoebe’s friend Max, his parents, and, as it turns out, Alabaster Goldwithers-Jones, a wilderness-loving unicorn who likes “roughing it” but also enjoys playing video games and therefore forms an instant bond with Max. But plenty of other small-but-enjoyable happenings happen here as well. Phoebe learns that unicorns call playing cards “inedible crackers” because, Marigold explains, “they are rectangular, bite-size, and often seen in the vicinity of onion dip.” Phoebe rereads a mystery because she already knows what happened and likes “feeling smarter than all the characters while they try and figure it out,” so Marigold says the two of them “can feel superior to fictional characters together.” The two friends see the apparently placid outside of Phoebe’s school during summer, and Phoebe thinks it must be “quiet and dark” indoors until Marigold reveals – and Simpson shows – all the magical activity going on inside, involving pixies, wood nymphs, and centaurs. Then, when school starts again, Phoebe brings Marigold with her behind the “shield of boringness” so the unicorn will not be noticed – and Marigold casts a walking-on-the-ceiling spell that has some unintended but not particularly serious consequences. Indeed, there are no serious problems of any type in the Phoebe and Her Unicorn books, which are more about exploring amusing elements of a somewhat skewed friendship than about anything portentous.

     The pattern of mostly mundane (but magical) adventures holds in Virtual Unicorn Experience. The title episode involves Phoebe wearing a magic helmet, invented by Marigold, that turns the world sparkly and colorful and tingly. It is a short sequence, but not the only technology-related one in the book. In another, Marigold’s laptop computer crashes, the cartoon panels display the notorious Windows post-crash blue screen with white lettering, and Marigold explains that a unicorn computer crash “resets everything in the immediate area.” But things are even better after the reset, with Marigold “getting many more sparkles per second.” More significantly here, to the extent that anything is significant, is a series in which Marigold auditions for a role in a unicorn play and fails to get it, leading to some very un-Marigold despondency. This is complemented later in the book when Phoebe gets Marigold’s help with a talent show: Phoebe’s act does not go well at all, but Marigold puts “the shield of boringness on in reverse mode,” so everyone thinks Phoebe was great. These little friends-helping-friends vignettes are at the heart of Phoebe and Her Unicorn, and there are always plenty of them in every collection.

     The latest book, Unicorn Famous, again has a title that refers to one specific element of what happens: humans decide unicorns are cool and start displaying unicorn photos on everything from billboards to clothing – so Marigold decides that unicorns should start to find humans cool, which turns out to be a bit more difficult than the other way around. One of the funniest lines in this book occurs when Marigold takes Phoebe on a “maintenance errand,” pronouncing those two words (as Simpson’s lettering shows) so they are gleamingly attractive, and leading Phoebe to say Marigold has almost managed to make the task sound magical. Marigold then replies, “Things can be magical and also dull.” That is a really good line – but not really reflective of the way Simpson handles magic or friendship in the Phoebe and Her Unicorn books: neither is ever dull. More typical, when Simpson goes for a bit of warmth, is a dialogue in which Phoebe gets upset, but thinks the reason she feels that way is dumb, so she does not want to tell it to Marigold. Marigold tries to promise not to think the reason is dumb, but Phoebe knows it may not be possible to keep that promise, so Marigold promises not to mind if it is dumb – leading Phoebe to remark, “That’s a really good quality in a friend.” And ultimately, the magic of friendship rather than the comparatively mundane magic of unicorns and other imaginary creatures is what all the Phoebe and Her Unicorn books are about. In fact, when some subsidiary characters temporarily share center stage with Phoebe and Marigold, this becomes especially clear – for instance, when Phoebe and her unicorn attend a ceremony where the goblins, who appear from time to time in these books, give an award to Phoebe’s “best frenemy,” Dakota. Simpson manages again and again to explore pleasantly amusing aspects of friendship through these books, with no sign of her inventiveness flagging and no fraying whatsoever of the relationship between Phoebe and her unicorn.

(++++) IN SEARCH OF THE ESSENTIAL

Bruckner: Symphony No. 9, with reconstructed Finale, transcribed for organ by Gerd Schaller. Gerd Schaller, organ. Profil. $22.99 (2 CDs).

Bruckner: Symphony No. 6. Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks conducted by Mariss Jansons. BR Klassik. $16.99.

     There is no easy route to the core of Bruckner. The composer himself made it difficult to get to his innermost thoughts, despite the devout Catholicism that was foundational to his life and his musical thinking. Equally foundational was the organ, on which he was famous for his performances. But he wrote virtually nothing, certainly nothing of significance, for his chosen instrument, instead using the full orchestra to convey organ-like sounds and textures. And then he was so unsure of what he was doing, at least for a time, that he allowed friends and colleagues – misguided, although well-intentioned – to revise much of his symphonic output, or persuade him to do so himself. Despite all this, or in light of it, there is a growing belief in some quarters that getting to the essence of Bruckner requires delving into the organ – deriving the organic from the organ-ic, if you will. And that has led to several wholly unauthorized, inauthentic, yet fascinating arrangements of Bruckner symphonies for performance as organ works: No. 0 by Erwin Horn, for example, and No. 5 by Matthias Giesen. Now the most ambitious, effective and revelatory transcription/arrangement of all has appeared, of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9, made and performed by Gerd Schaller. And talk about over-reaching, or at least reaching farther than anyone has before: this is Schaller’s own four-movement version of the Ninth, including an excellently completed finale that Schaller himself has conducted to remarkable effect in a recording for the Profil label. The same label’s release of Schaller’s organ version of the symphony is either a huge stride forward in getting to the essence of Bruckner or an unjustifiable overreaching that shows the salient characteristics of Schaller, perhaps, but not of Bruckner. In either case, it is really a must-hear for anyone who loves Bruckner’s music and is fascinated by its ethos and the thorny problems of performance and understanding that it inevitably produces. Schaller is a formidable organist and an exceptionally thoughtful Brucknerian, as he has shown time and again not only with his handling of the Ninth but also with his determination to present a complete set of the symphonies by the time of the Bruckner bicentennial in 2024. Schaller is a conductor, scholar and organist who resolutely refuses to take the easy way out, as is clear throughout the organ version of the Ninth. He plays the magnificent Eisenbarth organ in the former Cistercian Abbey Church of Ebrach, Germany – an instrument with enormous capabilities for generating a thoroughly Romantic sound. And then he refuses to use it that way, virtually eliminating swell effects from the Bruckner Ninth and opting instead for tremendous clarity and an overall sound that is polyphonic rather than harmonically blended in 19^th-century mode. The fascinating result is that Schaller’s organ version of Bruckner’s Ninth sounds like a closely related organ symphony by Bruckner, not like a transcription at all. The loss of tremolo effects, which the organ, as a wind instrument, cannot produce as strings can, is one reason for this. The linear clarity that Schaller brings to his work and his performance is another. From time to time, listeners have to remind themselves that this is the Bruckner Ninth and not something akin to it, closely related but fundamentally somewhat different. The shadowy character of the Scherzo is a particularly clear example of this: in Schaller’s organ version, there is less mystery and less schattenhaft character to the movement, but there is greater flow than in the orchestral original and a strong sense both of integration with the first and third movements and of the Scherzo as a bridge between them. As for the fourth movement, which Bruckner almost but not quite completed, Schaller’s very fine version is thoroughly Brucknerian in orchestral guise, while on the organ there is a greater Baroque flavor to the music, a use of polyphony that fits the organ version very well and ensures that the movement is a capstone of the whole work rather than, in any sense or to any degree, an afterthought. It is certainly possible to argue that organ versions of the Bruckner symphonies are wrong-headed from the start, and it is inarguable that they are inauthentic. But when well done and well played, they can be genuinely revelatory – and Schaller’s organ version of the Bruckner Ninth most certainly is.

     Another way to get to the underlying elements of Bruckner is to consider the only symphony he wrote that he did not extensively revise: No. 6. Although less often played than several of his other symphonies, the Sixth, with its strong philosophical bent and pervasive two-against-three rhythms, encapsulates much of what makes Bruckner’s symphonic approach distinctive. A new BR Klassik release featuring the symphony played by Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under Mariss Jansons is particularly sensitive to the care with which Bruckner constructed this symphony and the many ways in which it sums up his creative thinking – the use of organ points, for example, and the use of sonata rather than ternary form in the second movement. The noteworthy designation of the first movement, Majestoso rather than Maestoso, is probably a churchlike reference to sovereign power rather than the more-general notion of majesterial tempo indicated by the more-common word. Jansons, who was a very fine Bruckner conductor, takes full advantage of the extremely high quality of the orchestra here, for example in the quiet intensity of the main theme of the first movement – which derives from Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, in another indication of the ways in which No. 6 provides keys to the composer’s underlying thinking and feeling. The very solemn second movement, actually designated Sehr feierlich, is filled with yearning in this performance, and its many somber touches are effectively conveyed. The unique and distinctly odd Scherzo, in its slow speed and lack of any significant theme, is also revelatory, highlighting elements that, by their absence here, show up all the more strongly as crucial to Bruckner’s symphonic thinking elsewhere. And the finale, marked nicht zu schnell in a symphony whose entirety may be said to be not too fast, is a movement filled with refined structure and care of construction – not the pinnacle of refinement to be found in the Eighth, but a big step toward that symphony’s conclusion and thus, like so much else in the Sixth, a worthy summation of Bruckner’s symphonic thinking and a welcome window into the means through which he brought that thinking to fruition. It is tempting to see this specific performance not only as encompassing Bruckner’s thoughts and approaches but also as representing Jansons’ own last word on the symphony. That would be a touch misleading, however, for although Jansons died in 2019 and this release is new, the performance itself dates to 2015. Still, it is by any criteria a highly effective rendition of a symphony that, standing more or less midway in Bruckner’s oeuvre, explicates the composer’s underlying concerns and the way he presented them musically – even as it delineates the methods he uses to bring his interests and beliefs to the sometimes-unwilling ears of his listeners, still including some who find his music’s underpinnings difficult to comprehend despite the complex beauty with which those bedrock ideas are expressed.

(+++) WINDS IN FOCUS

Music for Trumpet and Piano by Bernstein, Hindemith, Gershwin, Poulenc, Ravel, Bartók, Scott Joplin, and Jean Yves Daniel-Lesur. James Tinsley, trumpet; Louise-Andrée Baril, Miles Graber and Paul Jenkins, piano. MSR Classics. $12.95.

Khachaturian: Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano; Milhaud: Suite for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano; Peter Schickele: Serenade for Three; Roger J. Henry: Trio No. 2 for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano. Ensemble Next Parallel (Yevgeny Dokshansky, clarinet; Enrique Reynosa, violin; Anna Nizhegorodtseva, piano). Heritage Records. $18.25.

Douglas Boyce: Chamber Works—Quintet l’homme armé; Etude No. 1 for Cello and Piano; Piano Quartet No. 2; Sails Knife-bright in a Seasonal Wind; The Hunt by Night. counter)induction; Schuyler Slack, cello; Ieva Jokubaviciute, piano; Beth Guterman Chu, viola; Trio Cavatina. New Focus Recordings. $16.99.

Music for Wind Ensemble by Stacy Garrop, David Maslanka, and David Biedenbender. UMass Wind Ensemble conducted by Matthew Westgate. MSR Classics. $12.95.

     In chamber music as well as works for a larger instrumental complement, winds bring a special flavor that has been noticed and polished at least since Mozart and Weber brought the clarinet to heightened prominence – and in some ways long before that, with brass instruments fulfilling specific sacred duties in church music and gradually emerging in their own right in secular works. Just how full of character wind music can be is shown to good effect in a great many recent recordings. James Tinsley, supported by three different pianists, puts his warm, full and elegant trumpet tone at the service of works of several time periods, some of them written for trumpet and piano and others heard in transcription. Leonard Bernstein’s very brief Rondo for Lifey opens the recital in jaunty and slightly acerbic fashion and is followed by Hindemith’s Sonata for Trumpet and Piano, a large-scale and dense three-movement work in whose first movement trumpet and piano constantly vie for centrality – after which there is a brief and altogether gentler second movement, then a funereal finale (actually labeled Trauermusik) that evokes some of the church-music solemnity for which the trumpet was known in the distant past. Gershwin’s Second Prelude is also on the serious side, but its jazz inflections give it a different emotional coloration from that provided by Hindemith’s work. Poulenc’s brief Novelette No. 1 is considerably brighter, songful and upbeat, with prominent piano sections. The same composer’s seven-movement Suite française (d’après Claude Gervaise) sounds a good deal like one of Respighi’s forays into updates of older music: the spirit of the era of Gervaise (1525-1583) comes through clearly. Tinsley does an especially good job of varying the sound of his instrument to accommodate the differing moods of, for example, the Pavane and Petite marche militaire movements. The warmth of the penultimate Sicilienne contrasts especially well with the final Carillon – but all these short movements bring pleasures of their own. Tinsley next plays Ravel’s Habanera, which fits rather oddly here: its tonal world and its treatment of the trumpet are somewhat jarring after the Poulenc suite, although like everything on the disc, it is well-played. The Ravel is followed by the eight Slovak Folk Songs by Bartók, only one of which lasts as long as a minute: these super-miniatures set their moods very quickly and dissipate almost before a listener can absorb them. The “wa-wa” effects in the fourth song, Poco andante, are among the points of interest. Scott Joplin’s Paragon Rag is heard next, and its typical-for-Joplin swinging rhythm comes across well – somewhat more in the piano than the trumpet, however. Tinsley then plays the traditional Londonderry Air with warmth, although perhaps a bit perfunctorily. The CD concludes with Aubade by Jean Yves Daniel-Lesur (1908-2002), this being a tiny (49-second) but rhythmically complex piece that does not quite work as an encore but may whet listeners’ appetite for other music by this composer. The CD will certainly interest Tinsley’s fellow trumpet players – and some of the material, especially the hefty Hindemith sonata and very well-proportioned Poulenc suite, will be attractive to a more-general audience.

     Despite the quality of the performances, not all the works played by Tinsley seem quite to fit together – and the same may be said for the four pieces on a new Heritage Records CD featuring Yevgeny Dokshansky, Enrique Reynosa, and Anna Nizhegorodtseva. Khachaturian’s Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano opens with what is essentially a clarinet-violin duet, with the piano in a distinctly supporting role and the clarinet somewhat imitating the sound of the Central Eurasian zurna – which Dokshansky does quite neatly. The second movement has highly accentuated dance rhythms, while the third features Uzbek folk melodies and is a set of variations that eventually dissolves into a rather inconclusive pianissimo ending. The roots of Khachaturian’s work are clearly in the folk-music world – while those of Milhaud’s Suite for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano are in film. Both pieces are from the 1930s, Khachaturian’s from 1932 and Milhaud’s based on music he wrote for Jean Anouilh’s 1936 Voyageur sans bagages. But the works’ effects are quite different. Even when Khachaturian is upbeat, it is through the lens of folk material and within the Socialist Realism required of Soviet composers at the time. Milhaud’s suite is for the most part far jauntier, with a pervasive sense of irony. Its neo-Stravinskian first movement, gracious and rather surface-level second, and scherzo-like third (pretty much a violin-clarinet duet, in this one way akin to the first movement of the Khachaturian), all added together, are only slightly longer than the finale, which starts with the most-serious material of the whole suite before turning into something of a full-fledged romp with a rather Brazilian contrasting theme thrown in for good measure. Dokshansky, Reynosa, and Nizhegorodtseva play the music in spirited fashion but with a bit less abandon than it can handle: this is really a piece of no great consequence, simply a divertissement (the actual designation of the second movement) that is fun and mostly forgettable – although listeners will likely remember the near-references to the tune of For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow. The Milhaud actually fits comparatively well with the next work offered here, written by Peter Schickele but incorporating material from his nonexistent parody creation, “P.D.Q. Bach.” This is Serenade for Three, with movements called Dances, Songs and Variations, the last of those marked Fast, rowdy and managing to complement both the variation-finale of the Khachaturian and the overall frothiness of the Milhaud – all while being based on a theme from the “P.D.Q. Bach” opera/oratorio Oedipus Tex. The performers, to their credit, take the entire serenade none too seriously, and actually seem to have more fun with it than with the not-all-that-dissimilar Milhaud. And then there is the concluding piece on the disc, one commissioned by Dokshansky: Roger J. Henry’s Trio No. 2 for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano, where the clarinet is once again, as in the Khachaturian, the first-named instrument. And well it might be: this strongly rhythmic work, which contains numerous references to the music of Trinidad and Tobago, is a kind of “clarinet plus others” trio, effectively showcasing the wind instrument while tending to relegate the others to supporting roles (although not always). In its somewhat folkloric orientation, Henry’s trio recalls the intentionality if not the sound world of Khachaturian’s, although Henry’s is a work of greater maturity – perhaps because he wrote it in his 50s, while Khachaturian created his clarinet trio when he was 29. Henry does have a good sense of sound balance and blending among the instruments, and he knows how to keep matters lively on the one hand and somewhat more sober, if not somber, on the other. This trio is, like all else on the disc, pleasant, but everything here comes across as music of no great consequence – this is a chamber recital that is decidedly on the lighter side, and while there are, here and there, elements that the pieces have in common, the CD as a totality is a bit diffuse. Still, each of the individual works offers enjoyment on its own: people who separate the four pieces from each other and listen to them at different times will likely have a more congenial experience than those who simply play the CD straight through from start to finish.

     The clarinet is a partial feature on a New Focus Recordings CD of chamber music by Douglas Boyce – but viola, cello, guitar and piano are also heard prominently in performances by a number of very fine soloists, including members of one of those ensembles that seem determined to prove their originality by making it hard to spell their names: counter)induction, starting with a small letter and broken up by a parenthesis because…well, just because. Thankfully, the music is appealing enough to overcome any silliness of spelling. It is, however, of interest mostly in smaller doses, except for listeners who unhesitatingly accept pretty much anything with a contemporary and more-or-less avant garde sound. Quintet l’homme armé (2003) for clarinet, violin, viola, cello and piano is cacophonic by intent and sounds much like the chittering of somewhat out-of-tune birds rather than anything to do with an “armed man” or the 15^th-century tune on which Boyce’s work is loosely (very loosely) based. Etude No. 1 for Cello and Piano (2017), marked Stretto perpetuo, fits that designation rather well, with an ongoing ostinato motif for the cello – entirely atonal, not surprisingly – providing contrast with comparatively placid chords on the piano. Piano Quartet No. 2 (2008) handles the piano in quite a different way, the percussive keyboard writing contrasting with atonal glissandi in the high range of the strings, producing, eventually, a sense of having arrived at an unknown destination. Sails Knife-bright in a Seasonal Wind (2019), a trio for violin, guitar and percussion, includes some actual melodic handling of the guitar and some clever contrasts between the two stringed instruments – with their very different playing requirements – and the percussion complement. This is the most intriguing work on the disc in its exploration of differing sonic timbres and its alternation of close interactivity among the disparate instruments with tightly knit sections for the three together. The CD concludes with The Hunt by Night (2020) for clarinet, cello, and piano, returning to the clarinet focus of the disc’s beginning and also returning to the largely directionless bounce and lack of discernible progress or goal that appear in the CD’s first work. All five pieces here are intermittently interesting, but none really sustains cohesively from start to finish – indeed, cohesiveness seems quite far from the intentionality of any of this music. The compositions treat the winds and other instruments in recognizably similar ways, and all share a sense of determined modernity that will appeal to a limited audience and appears quite uninterested in anything beyond that.

     The three works on an MSR Classics release featuring the UMass Wind Ensemble under Matthew Westgate also have little of significance in common except the scoring. Like Boyce’s chamber offerings, these are all very recent pieces, with that by David Maslanka (1943-2017) dating to 2016, that by Stacy Garrop (born 1969) to 2017, and that by David Biedenbender (born 1984) to 2019; all are world première recordings. Maslanka’s piece is for piano (played by Nadine Shank) and winds, Garrop’s for saxophone (played by Jonathan Hulting-Cohen) and winds, and Biedenbender’s for wind ensemble without a specific instrument highlighted. The CD appears to be as much a showpiece for the wind grouping as for the composers and their music – which means it will be of special interest to people who themselves are wind players, but perhaps less so to non-wind-performing listeners. It opens with Garrop’s three-movement Quicksilver, which is nominally about the god Hermes (in Greek myth) or Mercury (Roman). Listeners who know the musical portrayal of Mercury, the Messenger by Gustav Holst will find little of similar lightness or flightiness here, even in the concluding movement, Messenger of Olympus. Garrop’s extensive use of dissonance and his method of using the saxophone mostly within the overall ensemble rather than, as might be expected, in front of it, mean that this becomes less of a “personality portrayal” than an audience will likely expect. The actual writing for winds is skillful, but there is insufficient differentiation among the movements to give a fully developed sense of the aspects of the god, despite the implications of the movement titles – the first being Antics of a Newborn God and the second Guiding Souls to the Underworld. Next on the disc is Maslanka’s Concerto No. 3 for Piano and Wind Ensemble, an extended single-movement work bearing the subtitle “Do You Know My Name?” The piece expresses many moods, some more effectively than others, and gives the piano a role that lies somewhere between solo and obbligato. Like all three works on this disc, this one is performed skillfully and for the most part convincingly. The final piece on the CD is Biedenbender’s What Is Written on the Leaves. This is a three-movement work, like Garrop’s, and is on the same scale – indeed, the two are almost identical in length. Also like Garrop’s, this piece features movement titles that are intended to be evocative: I No Longer Recognize My Hands, Coming Home, and And the Trees Clap for Winter. Biedenbender’s sonorities are more varied and his work’s construction somewhat more complex than that of Garrop: there is a very definite percussive undercurrent throughout What Is Written on the Leaves, even in the more-inward-looking second and longest movement (which lasts almost as long as the others put together). The movements’ titles are at best an imperfect guide to the sounds of the music, which range from massed dissonance to rather tenderly accentuated longer lines that, however, can never quite be described as lyrical. The work is tied largely to a poem that provides its overall title and the title of its first movement, but it conveys meaning without requiring knowledge of its literary roots – a welcome difference from the situation in many other contemporary works. The massed sound of the first movement and the more-delicate (and more-intricate) sound world of the second lead to a dancelike finale that cannot seem to decide whether to use dark or bright colors and ends up juxtaposing both, somewhat uneasily. The unusual sound world of What Is Written on the Leaves makes it the most interesting of the three pieces on this disc, although some of its repetitive gestures, especially the percussive ones, become tiresome after a while. Listeners interested in the most up-to-date compositional uses of wind sounds will find a good deal to think about on this CD, although all the works on it have a tendency to make their points and then make them again and again at somewhat greater length than the material can readily bear.

(+++) THE BEST INTENTIONS

Mutts Go Green: Earth-Friendly Tips and Comic Strips. By Patrick McDonnell. Andrews McMeel. $11.99.

     It is almost impossible not to want to like Mutts Go Green. It is a book for young readers, designed to increase their environmental/ecological awareness, provide specific suggestions for things they can do to help the planet, and amuse them at the same time by featuring some of the many marvelous strips in which Patrick McDonnell espouses the cause of environmentalism. The book opens with four admonitions, each of which then becomes its own section: “Keep it KIND, Keep it CLEAN, Keep it WILD, Keep it GREEN.” A “How to” page of bullet points specific to each section follows each “Keep It” urging, and then there are illustrative Mutts strips of all sorts on display until the start of the next section.

     It is all done with care and concern and genuineness – a hallmark not only of this aspect of Mutts but also of other elements of the long-running strip, such as its “Shelter Stories” (which have also been made into a standalone book), in which McDonnell strongly argues the case for animal adoption. But Mutts Go Green comes across as a bit too argumentative, a bit too smug, a bit too self-satisfied to be fully satisfactory – at least for the adults to whom young readers will likely turn for further information and for help in implementing whichever McDonnell suggestions they find appealing.

     For example, one thing McDonnell urges is, “Go vegetarian or go vegan.” Well, maybe: there are health issues associated with doing so (which McDonnell never mentions), and there may be cost issues as well for many families (again, not mentioned); and it is an unspoken irony of the strip and of this book in particular that cats (such as central character Mooch) cannot survive on a vegetarian/vegan diet, while dogs (such as central character Earl) can do so only in limited circumstances and with costly supervision. McDonnell’s recommendation to “make kind food choices, and go meatless at least one day a week,” is far more reasonable.

     Similarly, there are issues with simplistically saying, “Avoid using pesticides. Bugs pollinate plants.” True, some bugs do. But others destroy plants, including plants that well-meaning humans may be trying to use to grow some of their own food. “Avoid using pesticides” is extremely simplistic in the absence of any recommendation about how to fend off harmful infestations; and while, of course, being simplistic is understandable in a book for young readers, an admonition that says simply to stop something – without explaining the consequences or providing any alternative – is a recipe for disappointment. A strip showing Mooch lifting a gigantic pumpkin and proudly showing it to Earl, stating, “It’s organic,” adds to the potentially disappointing result of Mutts Go Green on this topic, since many organically grown fruits and vegetables come out far smaller and far less evenly shaped than those grown using non-organic methods – and, in addition, cost substantially more. McDonnell misses an opportunity here: he could have drawn a comic showing a small, unevenly shaped pumpkin being admired by his characters because of being organic, instead of implying that organic produce is going to be bigger and more beautiful than examples that are non-organically grown.

     Some of the strips in Mutts Go Green do, however, make their point extremely effectively. Two single-panel ones on facing pages both show Mooch and Earl in a small boat, with Mooch saying, “It’s just you and me, pal.” In the first strip, McDonnell shows the huge variety of unseen water dwellers just beneath the boat, bringing home the message that those of us who live in the air are all too often unaware of the tremendous richness of life beneath water – which we neglect at our peril. The second strip then shows the below-water area without a single living organism – filled instead with humanity’s discards and waste products. The two strips together clearly show how the mistaken “just us” belief has led to unthinking pollution that humanity has a moral obligation to stop (besides which, reducing pollution is in people’s own best interests). Also reproduced here is one of the now-classic Mutts strips, a single panel divided into three thin ones stacked upon each other, the first showing an impressive collection of African animals, the second showing the same animals in outline (as if fading), and the third showing the scene with all the animals gone – above the ellipsis-led caption, “…right before our eyes.” That drawing has the power to engage, enrage and motivate, and if it is something of an overstatement, that is fine: McDonnell often uses Mutts as a bully pulpit, and pulpits are, after all, where preaching is done.

     The problem with Mutts Go Green is that it is too simplistic, even for its intended young readership, to have the kind of effect that the best Mutts advocacy strips have on their own, within the context of a comic strip that entertains as well as educates. In one strip in this book, the little cat formally named Jules but usually referred to as Shtinky Puddin’ proclaims, in his determination to save the tigers, “I’m a BIG believer in positive thinking.” Obviously, so is McDonnell. But positive thinking is scarcely enough to promote environmental activism, as McDonnell wants to do; and there are a few too many cases in Mutts Go Green in which the uplifting intent of McDonnell’s message is undermined by the rather heavy-handed way in which the message is delivered.