Stalky and Co.

A group of boys in a nineteenth-century British military boarding school has great fun playing pranks on one another, and later preparing for real life in the real military. Rudyard Kipling's classic, according to the introduction, is loosely based on the author's own experience. Shelly Frasier performs the narrative portions in a straightforward, solemn Midwestern dialect, while imparting various British accents to every speaking character. While her accents, in and of themselves, are reasonably accurate, the deepened tone in which they are delivered suggests middle-aged men, rather than schoolboys, and renders students indistinguishable from their teachers. She presents the entire book as a tragedy, rather than the lighthearted comedy it is. R.P.L. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine