(++++) CUT IT OUT (PLEASE)

Peek-Through Picture Books: The Twelve Days of Christmas; Tree; Bee; Moon; Ocean; Home. By Britta Teckentrup. Text by Patricia Hegarty. Doubleday. $14.99 (Christmas); $16.99 each (Tree, Bee, Moon, Ocean, Home).

     One of the cleverest marriages of design and content for children in recent years, Britta Teckentrup’s Peek-Through Picture Books started out in 2014 with a seasonal work that loses not one iota of its charm over time. Teckentrup’s illustrations for The Twelve Days of Christmas use a time-honored children’s-book design element – pages with cutouts – in exceptionally attractive ways. Adults can see how the book works by starting at the back, where there is a well-laid-out page showing all 78 items given by “my true love” on the 12^th day of Christmas. Working forward from that final page, specific items are masked on earlier pages: one page back, the 12 drummers drumming cannot be seen; two pages back, the 11 pipers piping are also missing; and so on. The sizing and placement of the different items, and Teckentrup’s charming art, make this whole approach work exceptionally well – and of course, for the children for whom the book is intended, it is to be read forward, not backward, with each new item revealed as if by magic. There really is something magical in this well-thought-out use of exceptionally well-designed cutout pages, which start on the book’s cover with the partridge in a pear tree visible between a cute boy-and-girl elf couple (who adorn all the pages in various locations and poses).

     Teckentrup was clearly onto a good thing here, as shown in the Peek-Through Picture Books created in succeeding years: Tree (2015), Bee (2016), Moon (2017), Ocean (2019), and Home (2020, but just released in late 2021). The basic format remains the same for all the books, with the nature-focused ones showing increasing subtlety in what is presented and how: Ocean, for example, has a cover and opening page with three cutouts showing fish, while the other books have the same single-cutout cover used in The Twelve Days of Christmas; that single cutout is centered for Tree and Bee, but appears higher on the cover and opening page in Moon; and there are various other book-to-book changes as well.

     These comparatively modest modifications aside, the Peek-Through Picture Books manage to keep to their original formula while varying their content and appearance so pleasantly that kids will return to them again and again for the sheer enjoyment of the revelatory pages. Teckentrup’s art is clearly the dominant element in all the books, but Patricia Hegarty complements it very well indeed with nicely composed rhymes for the later books, after Teckentrup uses the words of the classic Christmas song for the first one. In every book, Teckentrup chooses topics to illustrate with considerable skill. Tree initially shows an owl within the tree, then two bear cubs climbing the tree as winter turns slowly toward spring, and then other animals: “Squirrels scamper here and there./ Playful fox cubs sniff the air.” The squirrels are accurately shown amid the tree branches, the foxes romping on the ground below. Later cutouts reveal birds and pollinating bees, and eventually, as the seasons continue to change, the tree itself changes, bearing fruit (apples) and eventually losing its leaves for another winter – by which time all the cutouts are finished and even the owl is no longer seen. Then the owl peeks out again at the end of the book, and the cycle begins anew.

     Teckentrup handles the other books with similar skill. Bee opens with a hexagonal cutout that becomes central to various pages showing birds, trees and flowers as the bee goes about its life: “Dusty with pollen, the little bee/ Buzzes, buzzes, busily” – and at this point, there is no cutout at all, even though the book is nowhere near the end. Turn the page, and the hexagonal cutout is there again, but now in a new position, suitable for continuing the story of the bee carrying pollen back to the hive and alerting other bees about nectar-heavy flowers. And then, several pages later, suddenly there are multiple cutouts, each showing a different bee, until there is an entire swarm producing “a tiny miracle,” with the book concluding, “So many plants and flowers you see/ Were given life by one small bee.”

     Then, in Moon, Teckentrup starts the book with a narrow crescent, cleverly having the moon get larger page after page without changing the size of the cutout: it all has to do with what she shows adjacent to the cutout, which on one page is a dark sky and on another is an additional portion off the moon itself. Eventually there is a full moon – no cutout on the page – and then, as the book continues, the cutout is used on the left-hand page rather than the right-hand one, so the full moon gradually shrinks on the pages just as it does in the sky. And at the very end, on another page with no cutout, Teckentrup enlarges the now-crescent moon above a scene that she illustrates to Hegarty’s concluding words: “Shining down with a silvery glow/ As we dream our dreams in the world below.”

     Like Tree, Bee and Moon, Teckentrup’s Ocean focuses on animals, and here the cutouts are even more varied than before. Each of the three on the cover carries through to the opening page – the page before the title page – but the title page itself reproduces two of the three fish as drawings without cutouts through which to see them, leaving only a single fish visible through a single cutout. As the book progresses, the use of cutouts changes again and again. The fish swims along, and then there is a second cutout, through which a seahorse is seen. Then that cutout disappears, but the first cutout is now joined by a different second one, through which a smaller fish is visible. The narrative, meanwhile, deals sometimes with fish seen through cutouts (such as the seahorse) and sometimes with ones portrayed elsewhere on the page: “A baby dolphin swims with its mother./ They leap and dive around each other.” Later in the book, there are pages with no cutouts at all, but with some very well-done art: on one page, multicolored tropical fish swim along in the shape of a single, much bigger fish. And then a few small cutouts reappear toward the end, highlighting additional fish and underlining an ecological message about the importance of oceans.

     The latest book, Home, again takes the cutouts in new directions. There is a large one in the middle of the cover, showing a big bear and a small bear in the den they call home. But in this case, the cutout does not carry through into the book’s pages at all: open the book and there are introductory lines from Hegarty on the book’s topic. After the title page, though, the den-entrance-shaped cutout returns, and now the small bear and the human reader are looking out, from the cave toward a tree in which sits an owl (likely as not the one first seen in Tree). And as the bear cub explores, as the cubs did in Tree, the cutouts here are used in ways that are quite different from those in the earlier books. Cutouts create pine-tree shapes; one cutout actually removes a portion of the entire top of a page; another removes a different page’s lower-right corner, while a kidney-shaped one on that same page reveals a bird flying; and the art is arranged so that on one page, the bear cub is looking from the bottom left side of the left-hand page toward birds’ nests, while on another page, the cub (thanks to that missing corner) is looking toward a river where salmon swim and splash. Cutouts reveal underground burrows, Arctic terns flying toward their distant home, and more – and some cutouts, small round ones, reveal nothing but the color white, which turns out to mean that these are snowflakes. And sure enough, as Home nears its end, the cub is back in its cave den, ready to sleep until spring – as if a year in the forest has passed as surely as a year did in Tree. Like the earlier books, Home beautifully combines carefully rendered scenes from nature with well-chosen rhyming words to form a poetic story that is at once wide-ranging and clearly focused on its titular topic.

     Although the Peek-Through Picture Books share basic design elements and Teckentrup’s artistic sensibilities, each of them looks different enough from the others so that the entire set has charms that go far beyond those of more-formulaic volumes using superficially similar visual approaches. Whether as individual books or as a group, Teckentrup’s volumes will continue to engage and enlighten young readers through multiple readings – something that most other books with special designs fail to do, since their novelty wears off quickly. This is a very special series both in content and in appearance.

(++++) THE MORE THINGS CHANGE….

The Office Is a Beautiful Place When Everyone Else Works from Home: A “Dilbert” Book. By Scott Adams. Andrews McMeel. $14.99.

     Have you ever considered the plight of cartoon characters during the COVID-19 pandemic? Not the cartoonists – the characters. Yes, cartoonists have issues of their own, since their strips must be turned in weeks or a month in advance, sometimes even more, and any reference to COVID-19 matters may be obsolete by the time a strip is actually used. But that is a small matter in comparison to the issues faced by cartoon characters, whose actions and reactions during the pandemic must make sense when their strips first appear and must continue to be readily understandable in the future, when the pandemic is but a distant, horrible memory. Hopefully this will not be too far in the future, but who knows?

     Any comic strip that focuses on family matters, for example, has to deal with how the cartoon children are educated during the pandemic, how (indeed, if) they have playdates, what their parents do to cope, how the kids interact with non-parental adults such as grandparents, and so on. But even these familial depredations pale beside the plight of Scott Adams’ character Dilbert and his associates – because the entire Dilbert strip is built around in-office white-collar corporate life, the exact element of everyday existence in society that largely ceased to exist in early 2020, has never returned to its pre-pandemic form, and may in fact be changed forever (at least to some extent). What can poor Dilbert do?

     It turns out that he can do quite a bit, thanks to Adams’ creativity in the latest Dilbert collection, aptly if lengthily titled The Office Is a Beautiful Place When Everyone Else Works from Home. For example, the book’s cover shows Dilbert in an otherwise empty office, wearing a surgical mask over his nose and mouth. Well, it may be over his mouth, but since Dilbert does not actually have a mouth – except under extreme duress in occasional strips – it is hard to be sure. The basic notion of office happiness depending on the absence of co-workers, though, comes through clearly. In fact, it is doubly clear in the strips in this collection that are not pandemic-related – that is, ones in which Dilbert, prior to work-at-home necessities, does have to deal with co-workers. There is, for example, the strip in which Dilbert says a co-worker should ask if he needs help, the co-worker says he needs so much of it that Dilbert needs to come in at 8:00 a.m. and work late, and Dilbert has no choice but to explain, “This is awkward, but I didn’t mean a word of what I said.” See? The problem with in-office work is that there are other people in the office.

     Dilbert gets stuck with this other-people stuff a lot, and not just with co-workers. There are also vendors, such as the one who says the network upgrade will take three months, to which Dilbert replies that the job bid said it would take 30 days, which leads the vendor to reply, “If we’re allocating blame, I’m not the one who was dumb enough to believe me.”

     Ah, but then there is pandemic life, which proves to be comparatively wonderful. True, Dogbert is unhappy at having Dilbert under foot…err, under paw…all day, but Dilbert gets a nice couch on which to work instead of his usual fabric-covered box, and the absence of the sociopaths in other cubicles produces both contentment and productivity. In fact, COVID-19 may just be the best thing that has happened to the Dilbertian workplace. That is, until pandemic life gets infected by pre-pandemic life, in the form of the Pointy Haired Boss (who hires a stalker to peek in employees’ windows to be sure they are really working). And then there are the effects of social media (which prove even more addictive during the pandemic than before). And the effects of pandemic-specific items (speaking of addictions: hand sanitizer). It turns out that no matter which way Dilbert and his colleagues (or co-victims) turn, the same old problems come up again and again – except when new problems take their place. It is all enormously depressing, as if the pandemic itself weren’t depressing enough. But here’s the thing: it is not depressing to follow the pandemic miserableness of Dilbert, and Adams’ other characters, even when they are experiencing things that, in the non-cartoon world, lie somewhere between horrible and awful. There is something curiously refreshing about the basic lesson of The Office Is a Beautiful Place When Everyone Else Works from Home. And that lesson is that no matter how much things change externally in the workplace, and no matter what evil viral stuff is threatening everyone’s internal workings, the machinations of everyday corporate life will find a way to come through pretty much as they always have. True, that means things will be pretty awful for the cartoon characters subjected to this particular form of surreality, but they suffer for the greater good of lessening the suffering of all the pandemic-afflicted workers who do not have the good (or bad) fortune to have their lives chronicled by Scott Adams. It turns out that whatever new miseries COVID-19 may bring, the old miseries remain in place, lurking in the background just as viruses sometimes do in the body, biding their time, waiting for an opportunity to re-emerge and plague the continuing existence of cartoon characters – and those who follow their misadventures.

(+++) VOCAL WORKS, DISCOVERED AND REDISCOVERED

Benedict Sheehan: Vespers. The Saint Tikhon Choir conducted by Benedict Sheehan. Cappella Records. $19.99 (SACD).

Vivaldi: Cantate per soprano I. Arianna Vendittelli, soprano; Abchordis Ensemble conducted by Andrea Buccarella. Naïve. $16.99.

Mexican Song Cycles by Roberto Bañuelas, Manuel Ponce, Luis Sandi, Eduardo Hernández Moncada, José Rolón, and Rodolfo Halffter. Juan Carlos Mendoza, tenor; Jessica Monnier, piano. MSR Classics. $14.95.

Canadian Brass: Canadiana. Brandon Ridenour and Caleb Hudson, trumpets; Jeff Nelson, horn; Achilles Liarmakopoulos, trombone; Chuck Daellenbach, tuba. Linus Entertainment. $15.99.

     It is safe to say that contemporary sacred choral music is not to all listeners’ tastes. But it is also safe to say that this type of music has a strong attraction for its admittedly limited audience. The reasons for this are apparent in the new Cappella Records recording of Benedict Sheehan’s Vespers. The Saint Tikhon Choir, led by the composer, is fluid and fluent throughout this impressive hour-long work, inspired by Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil. This is expressive music of subtlety and considerable beauty, and it is not necessary to know Rachmaninoff’s work to appreciate Sheehan’s – although knowing the inspiration for Sheehan’s Vespers does deepen the experience of listening to this recording. Sheehan’s use of frequently changing meters, with frequently altered strong and weak beats, marks his Vespers as a modern composition, but the essentially Romantic harmonies show this piece and its composer to have a firm grasp of musical as well as liturgical tradition. And Sheehan has an impressive feeling for the meaning behind the words he sets: he favors the inclusion of complete Psalms rather than portions of them, at various points presenting Psalms 103, 140, 141, 92 and 33. He also has intriguing ways of turning this hour of choral music into an aural experience almost as varied as would be that of a chorus with instrumental accompaniment. He does this by clever use of solos and small groups within the broader choral landscape – the three male voices in Blessed Is the Man, for example, and the use of a countertenor soloist in The Lord Is King. For that matter, Sheehan effectively contrasts vocal ranges, using both countertenor and baritone in The Opening Psalm. Liturgically, there are both differences and parallels between this Vespers setting and the more-familiar Western versions of words and music on the same topics: Ave Maria here becomes Rejoice, O Virgin, for example. But the declamatory passages of Sheehan’s work, such as  Interlude: The Trisagion Prayers, make an immediate connection with listeners even if the specific words and forms are likely to be less-known to a Western audience. Both the religious sincerity and the adept musical handling of the material come through quite clearly in all 13 portions of Sheehan’s Vespers, and if the work may not have significant reach in a largely secular world and largely secular century, it nevertheless speaks feelingly of revealed thoughts and truths that transcend any specific age and that, through Sheehan’s heartfelt music, reach out toward eternal verities.

     If Sheehan’s Vespers is an affirmatively sacred work in a largely secular age, Vivaldi’s 30 or so cantatas, mostly for soprano and basso continuo, were worldly at a time of much stronger religious feeling. That was 300 years ago: Vivaldi wrote these works mainly in the 1720s and 1730s. Six of them receive excellent performances by soprano Arianna Vendittelli and the Abchordis Ensemble under Andrea Buccarella on Volume 68 of Naïve’s very expansive “Vivaldi Edition” collection. The point of this multi-decade-long endeavor is to record about 450 Vivaldi works found in the National University Library of Turin – many of the works known from their appearance elsewhere, but just as many (if not more) having languished in obscurity for three centuries. Vivaldi is familiar to listeners, including many not otherwise interested in classical music, for a handful of purely instrumental works, the four concertos of The Four Seasons chief among them. But he was a highly prolific composer of vocal music as well, and his operas show him to have had a fine sense of the dramatic (within the structures and strictures of his time). The six cantatas sung by Vendittelli – RV 650, 652, 669, 667, 660 and 665 – are easy to hear as opera in miniature, or rather as individual scenas from larger (albeit nonexistent) works. Each of the pieces uses a mixture of recitative and aria to create a single impression that would fit quite well into a more-extended stage work. Vendittelli clearly knows this: she has previously appeared in the Vivaldi Edition recordings of the operas Il Giustino and Il Tamerlano. She has a bright, slightly tight voice that makes the recitatives especially compelling, and a command of ornamentation that turns the arias into real display pieces. Her pronunciation – a sometimes overlooked element of performance of works like these – is exceptional, the words as well as the mood of the cantatas coming through quite clearly. And her high register is quite equal to Vivaldi’s requirements, which can be considerable (as toward the end of Allor che lo sguardo, RV 650). The ups and downs of love are the main topic of these cantatas, and Vendittelli – ably abetted by Buccarella, who plays the harpsichord in addition to directing the ensemble – brings forth all the works’ sometimes-over-the-top emotional intensity. The sadness of Aure, voi più non siete, RV 652, for example, contrasts very effectively indeed with the bright and upbeat (and bassoon-accompanied) Tra l’erbe i zeffiri, RV 669, while the high drama of Sorge vermiglia in ciel la bella Aurora, RV 667, is as clear in its first, moderately paced aria, as in its far more intense second. The exceptional performance quality throughout the Vivaldi Edition makes any disc in the sequence worth hearing, although admittedly a great deal of the material – including the cantatas on this new CD – is somewhat on the rarefied side.

     Even more specialized vocal material is heard on an MSR Classics recording featuring Mexican song cycles written within the last century. Neither this music nor these composers will likely be familiar to the vast majority of potential listeners, which means the 33 songs on the CD – ably sung by Juan Carlos Mendoza with piano accompaniment by Jessica Monnier – must stand or fall almost entirely on their own, not (in most cases) on the reputation of those who created them. Just as Vivaldi used the musical expectations and forms of his time to convey emotions in ways suitable for his audiences, so do these post-revolutionary composers (the revolution ended in 1917) use the methods of their era to put across their feelings at a time when Mexican music was striving to move beyond European models (although not beyond European influence, by any means). To varying degrees, these seven song cycles by six composers (two are by Manuel Ponce) are Impressionistic, expressive, Romantic, dissonant, folkloric and straightforward. The cycles contain between three songs and seven, and there are poetic connections among the songs to a greater extent than there are musical ones. There are surprises here and there, such as the insistent dissonance of Romance de la luna, luna by Roberto Bañuelas; the uncomplicated prettiness of Desciende el valle by Manuel Ponce; the effectiveness at very brief length, just one minute and a minute and a half, respectively, of La hora tranquila and La batalla by Luis Sandi; and the ultra-miniaturization of the set called Dibujos Sobre un Puerto by José Rolón, which has seven songs in less than six minutes. Mendoza sings all the works with feeling, and Monnier’s pianism contributes significantly to the effects of the songs, the keyboard often taking an equal and sometimes even more-prominent role than does the voice. These songs contain elements of European-style lieder as well as folk-music and popular-music elements, crossing genres in an unassuming way that shows the exploratory nature of Mexican vocal music at the time these cycles were created.

     Genre-crossing has become far more deliberate and extensive for many more-recent composers, and sometimes it can involve not only different forms of music but also a different way of approaching vocal works. In the case of the new Linus Entertainment CD featuring the Canadian Brass, the ensemble’s usual silky-smooth playing and underlying sense of humor are at the service of 11 vocal works that are here essentially turned into non-vocal ones. The underlying assumption is that listeners are already quite familiar with the original versions of these songs by Lara Fabian, Shawn Mendes, k.d. lang, Joni Mitchell, deadmau5, Drake, Rush, Daniel Cesar/H.E.R, Bruce Cockburn, and Leonard Cohen. Without that familiarity, the disc makes little sense, although the sheer quality of the brass playing certainly comes through clearly enough. The CD’s title, Canadiana, reflects the fact that all the original songs were by Canadian artists, and this is the first all-Canadian disc the Canadian Brass has released since its founding in 1970. Listeners for whom those nationalistic and historical elements matter will of course be mightily pleased by this release, and readily forgive the fact that it is very short, lasting not even 45 minutes. A wider audience will not likely be swayed by the Canadian-ness of the material, but there are other reasons to find the CD attractive. For example, Cockburn himself participates on guitar in his Thoughts on a Rainy Afternoon, a track that does include his vocals, and the Canadian Brass is joined in Rush’s Overture 2112 by Sean Kelly (guitar) and Tim Timleck (percussion). A couple of the songs here are exceptionally well-known and therefore extra-interesting to hear in these brass versions: Both Sides, Now by Mitchell and Hallelujah by Cohen. As for the remaining material, it is uniformly well-played and nicely arranged, but its attractiveness depends on how well a listener knows and likes the originals and is interested in hearing them in different guise. The CD includes Je Me Souviens, Señorita, Constant Craving, I Remember, Laugh Now Cry Later, Best Part, and 13^th Mountain, and anyone for whom any of those titles is not instantly recognizable is likely not a member of the intended audience for the CD. It is those who are highly devoted to the original songs, those who may well find themselves singing along with the Canadian Brass versions of them, for whom this disc is clearly designed.

(+++) UPS AND DOWNS, INS AND OUTS

A-Maze-ing Peanuts. By Charles M. Schulz and Joe Wos. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

     A very clever reuse and updating of the adventures of classic Peanuts characters – one that turns out to be a bit too clever for its own good – Joe Wos’ set of Peanuts-based mazes is a great way to revisit some classic elements of the half-century run of the strip, a great way to remember just how good Schulz (1922-2000) was at giving characters individuated personalities without any dialogue being needed, and a pleasant (if not great) chance to play a batch of traditional get-through-the-maze pencil games that incorporate Peanuts characters and themes in various ways.

     The chance to revisit beloved and long-familiar characters is the main attraction here for those who know Peanuts. But the book is presumably for young readers, who will hopefully enjoy the mazes even if they are not highly familiar with Schulz’s work. However, there is nothing in the book explaining Schulz or Peanuts for those who may be less knowledgeable about the cartoonist and strip, so A-Maze-ing Peanuts may be of greater interest to adults than to the children for whom it presumably was created.

     The mazes themselves have some issues. There are 100 in all, divided into five sections, presumably according to difficulty (since the sections are labeled as “levels”). But the differences in complexity are not significant. What is significant is a convention of the book that is never explained and that readers/users will have to find out on their own – or by looking at some of the maze solutions, all of which are helpfully provided at the back of the book. That convention is that it is necessary to travel over and even through the Peanuts characters in virtually every maze in order to solve it: yes, the characters are solid and appear to block various pathways, but they can and in fact must be drawn on for a maze to be solved. This can be very confusing. For instance, Lucy’s “Psychiatric Help 5¢” booth takes up most of maze #88, and the path to solving the maze requires drawing a line right in the middle of Lucy’s face, between her nose and mouth. Maze #45, featuring Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin, similarly requires travel across Linus, between his nose and mouth. Maze #29, featuring Snoopy and Woodstock, requires drawing a line from behind Snoopy’s ear, across his face, and out through a place near his nose. And so on.

     These draw-on-the-characters elements are not per se unfair, since Wos modifies Schulz’s art by erasing a small part of the line delineating a character’s features at the point where a maze-player needs to enter or exit. But the net effect of following the mazes this way is an awkward one: it feels as if maze-players need to scribble on the characters in order to get through the mazes, and that is not far from the truth. And the results can at times be quite odd, as in maze #17, showing Charlie Brown playing marbles: the maze-player must draw a line cutting his head in half; and maze #43, which shows Charlie Brown drawing – here the maze path requires creating a line that lops off the upper third of his skull, as if giving him a lobotomy. This is not the sort of thing with which lovers of Peanuts are likely to be comfortable – although it may not bother children who are less familiar with Schulz and his strip.

     What is most enjoyable in A-Maze-ing Peanuts is certainly a matter of viewpoint, or of age. Seeing the characters ensconced in mazes is really a lot of fun: Snoopy lying atop his doghouse with multiple portrayals of Woodstock all around (#22); Lucy famously pulling away the football when Charlie Brown tries to kick it, in a maze featuring footballs all over the place (#36); Snoopy happily riding a skateboard in the middle of a maze filled with swirls (#49); Snoopy as the World War I Flying Ace, seeking the Red Baron (#64); an entire maze filled with Charlie Brown poses (#81); an entire page filled with Snoopy in Joe Cool positions (#87); and so on. All this is pleasurable for those immersed in the Peanuts world – but for those focused mainly on the “maze” part of A-Maze-ing Peanuts, there is less here that is out of the ordinary or special. And the mazes themselves are in no way unusual for their type. So before purchase, it is worth considering what will happen to the book after all the mazes have been done. Some readers/users will want to keep it for the nostalgia value of the Schulz illustrations and the cleverness with which they are incorporated into many of the mazes. Other readers/users, focusing on the word “maze” in the middle of the book’s title, will be ready to discard it and move on to something else after completing these 100 journeys.