TV – Hannah Montana

☻☻☺☺☺
(two smiley faces out of five)

Since I just did an iCarly review, I thought I’d review Disney’s television sitcom offering to female ’tweens, Hannah Montana.

Only I ain’t gonna be quite so nice. In fact, I'm not even really sure why I'm giving this show two smiley faces instead of just one, except that it's so gosh-darned popular that I'm going to give millions of screaming little girls some benefit of the doubt.

Hannah Montana is about a 'tween girl, Miley Stewart (played by Miley Cirus, country star Billy Ray Cirus’ daughter), who lives a double life as a pop star. During her everyday life, she’s plain ol’ Miley Stewart with brown hair. But when it’s time for her to throw-down at a pop-country concert, she busts out her blonde wig and appears on stage as Hannah Montana. It’s this double life that allows Miley to have some privacy and friends.

Speaking of friends, Miley’s friends, Lily and Oliver, know her secret and keep it for her. Miley is also joined by her annoying older brother Jackson and her real-life father, who also plays her father on the show. Miley’s mother died a few years ago, but sometimes shows up in flashbacks and is played by Brooke Shields.

The main problem with Hannah Montana is the writing. It’s just terrible. It’s that same old tired, boring, trite sitcom writing that’s been employed by such “winners” as Three’s Company (yes America, I’m sorry to inform you that Three’s Company completely sucked), the Brady Bunch, Different Strokes and a whole litany of bad, bad, bad sitcoms that have been produced in this country over the years.

Hannah Montana plots are, in general, completely insipid and uninspired.

As far as the acting goes, Miley Cirus’ acting skills aren’t stellar, but I really think that she could move forward from this show and learn to be a competent actress. I think her dad does a pretty good job as an actor, as well. I also think that the periphery actors might be good, but it’s really hard to tell as they’re forced to work from scripts that are downright poopalicious.

Heaven help you if your daughter is a Hannah Montana fan. Your eyes might get stuck in the back of your head from all the rolling.

iCarly

☻☻☻☻☺

(four smiley faces out of five)

iCarly is a show aimed at ’tweens that  airs on Nickelodeon, though my 6-year-old daughter and her 7-year-old friend are HUGE iCarly fans. As it turns out, so am I. (So is my husband, but don’t tell anyone I told you.)

The show is about three good friends who are freshmen in high school who have their own weekly web show called iCarly. Carly lives with her older brother, Spencer, who is 26, and conveniently, he's the only adult around as Carly's father is on an aircraft carrier somewhere and her mother is ... well, we don't know where Carly's mother is.

In the world of kid’s sitcoms, iCarly is a breath of fresh air. The plot-lines aren’t those tired, recycled old sitcom plots you’ve seen for years. (You know. Someone is stuck in an elevator. A pregnant woman goes into labor in an inconvenient place. So-and-so has to ride on a plane, even though they have a plane phobia. Blah, blah, blah, YAWN.)

Whoever the writers are for iCarly sure know what they’re doing. The writing is fresh, witty and genuinely funny. My husband and I often catch ourselves looking at each other thinking, That was actually funny. Can you believe it? No. Me neither. And then we laugh out loud.

And the actors are absolutely top-drawer. And I mean everybody on the show. Miranda Cosgrove is a pre-teen acting powerhouse. You may have seen her as Summer in the Jack Black movie School of Rock. Jerry Trainor, who plays Carly’s older brother, has a genuine comic talent and I expect to see him moving on to greater things. Carly’s friends, Freddie and Sam, are also talented kids.

Each character is well-written and well-rounded, and some of the running character attributes are hilarious. Freddie’s mother is overprotective to the point of absurdity, giving him “tick baths” and making him wear “anti-bacterial underwear.” I find Carly’s best girl friend, Sam, interesting as well, as Sam is … well … pretty much white trash. There are often jokes about various members of Sam’s family being in jail or stealing things. And Sam’s mother’s parenting skills are often called into question. But again, I find this to be refreshing and a little edgy.

There's a recurring character, Neville, who's a foil to the iCarly crew, and ... well, you'll just have to see Neville for yourself. He is so funny he almost makes me pee my pants.

I do, however have a couple of complaints about the show. For one thing, these kids are pretty blasé when it comes to money. It’s pretty much no big thing for Carly to pull 50 bucks out of her pocket to pay off some kid in some scheme that she and her friends have cooked up. I can’t do that without a trip to the ATM and even then, there’s no guarantee they’ll be 50 bucks in there to pull out.

I also have a good friend who is also a mom who thinks that Sam’s character is “too mean”. And she’s right; Sam can be pretty darn vindictive, especially to Freddie. However, there is an episode when Sam goes too far, her friends call her on it and Sam really lowers herself to make amends. Sam’s “meanness” is written to be flip and funny, and it’s fine for your ’tween who will understand the humor. But my six year old and I often talk about when Sam is being overly malicious.

Overall, I find iCarly to be a show that the whole family can enjoy together and I really appreciate Nickelodeon's effort to produce such a well-written, funny sitcom.

TV - The Electric Company

☻☻☻☻☺

(four smiley faces out of five)

Hey you guuuuys!

The Electric Company has recently returned to television courtesy of the Sesame Workshop, and I’m happy to say that like the original, the new version is pretty freakin’ cool.

The Electric Company is a show that emphasizes language development, is aimed at kids from the ages of three to seven or so, and airs on PBS.

The Electric Company has changed from the original in that there are now six central characters in the show, each with a different sort of “literary superpower” that helps them to read and understand language. Now, I’m not going to detail those superpowers here, as that’s the one aspect of the show I find a little silly. I didn’t even notice as I was watching that the extraordinary gifts the characters displayed were … extraordinary; I just thought that some of the cool graphics and rearranging of scrambled letters to make words was part of the Electric Company being the Electric Company.

The episode we most recently watched at my house focused on the letter “C,” and the concepts of hard C and soft C. The show discussed various words that start with the letter C and their meanings. But a second focus was the concept of humanity: what makes humans, well, human.

Sounds like it could be pretty boring, right? Oh, you would be so wrong. The Electric Company is hip, urban, diverse and highly watchable. The writing is exemplary and the acting is excellent. The show incorporates rapping, hip-hop and beatboxing to help illustrate various language concepts and it’s done in such a fun, non-geeky way that I think you’ll find you and your child drawn in to the rhythms and rhymes.

Overall, I found the new Electric Company to be highly entertaining and educational, and I would gladly sit down with my kid to watch the Electric Company anytime.

TV – The Doodle Bops

☻☺☺☺☺
(one smiley face out of five)

The Doodlebops is a sort of live-action, acid-induced, cartoon-like, Broadway-musical-gone-awry airing on the Disney networks and produced by our Canadian friends (or possibly enemies) to the north. The show is aimed at kids aged three to five or six, but really, no one should be watching it.

The Doodlebops are a three person band consisting of two guys and one gal who are inexplicably covered in pastel paint, impossibly bright clothing and clown wigs. The point of this show, I guess, is to get kids up and dancing rather than sitting on their butts watching television. But I would recommend that instead of turning on this show, you turn on some Kidz Bop or ‘80s music and let them have at it.

The formula of this show is that there’s usually some lame “problem” the Doodlebops have to overcome in order to make it to their “gig,” but there’s no real lesson or educational value that kids can take away from the Doodlebops.

Frankly, this show stinks. The (over)acting is hideous, the music is bad and the plots are so saccharine-ly simple as to be almost be non-existent.

Don’t waste a second of you or your child’s precious, precious brain time on this show. Unless, of course, your child loves it, and then, well, you’re pretty much screwed.

TV – Caillou

☻☻☺☺☺

(two smiley faces out of five)

Caillou is an animated show airing on PBS aimed at preschool-aged kids. It’s about a little boy, Caillou (pronounced Kai-you), who is four years old and his family: his little sister Rosie, his mom and dad and his grandparents. What’s with the weird name? Well, the show is produced in Canada, and apparently Caillou is French for “bald” or “stone” and Caillou has no hair. Why? I don’t know. The kid isn’t a cancer patient or anything.

This will be one time when I’ll bow to public opinion. I don’t think I have ever, ever, ever spoken to a single parent who likes Caillou. I hear the same complaint over and over and over again: CAILLOU WHINES. In fact, many parents think that Caillou encourages whining in their own children, so they’ve banned the show completely. Others try to leave the room while their child is watching, because their kid is in love with it, but they can’t stand to watch it themselves.

Now here’s the weird thing: Caillou actually doesn’t bother me that much.

I know. I can’t believe it either.

Unfortunately for parents, Caillou is extremely appealing to small children. And the reason he appeals to small kids is because he is one. He whines. He’s demanding. He’s selfish. He’s a pain in the butt.

I think it’s Caillou’s realism that actually kind of appealed to me when my child used to watch it. Frankly, the character is extremely realistic.

The adults on the show, however, do annoy me because they’re too patient, too kind, too sweet-syrupy-drippy goodness and light, and they always seem to say the right thing. Ugh.

I felt compelled to give this show two smiley faces rather than just one because of the realism of the central character. But there’s nothing about this show that is so stellar that your child is going to be harmed if he or she misses it, so by all means, don’t feel guilty about keeping your kid(s) away from Caillou.

TV - The Fresh Beat Band

☻☻☺☺☺

(two smiley faces out of five)

The Fresh Beat Band is a new show aimed at kids aged about 2 to 6 that airs on the Nickelodeon networks. The Fresh Beat Band is a live action show that stars the four members of the Fresh Beat band: Kiki, Marina, Twist and Shout. The show is bright and colorful and there’s lots of singing and dancing and everyone is very clean-cut and kind to one another, but there’s absolutely nothing that makes this show stand out as … well … good.

The Fresh Beat kids appear to be in a music school of some sort, but it’s kinda hard to figure out exactly what age they’re supposed to be since the actors are in their early twenties but the show is aimed at young children. Obviously the Fresh Beat kids are not supposed to be in college, but they’re way too old to be in grade school … so, where are they, anyway?

Since these kids are a band, this of course means that there’s lots of singing and playing of instruments, but the songs are these happy, sappy, uninspired tunes that you’ll (thankfully) forget a few minutes after you’ve turned off the television.

The very non-offensive, cookie-cutter squeaky-clean kids of the Fresh Beat Band say things like "cool beans," "ready, steady, play" and "kickin"! Are you falling into a sugar coma yet? Shudder.

I honestly can’t figure out what the point of this show is. It’s not particularly entertaining. There are no real lessons to be learned here and no great songs to take away. Just a bunch of kids who are too old to be toddlers and too young to be parents trying to connect with small children. In a word, the Fresh Beat Band is fresh, yes. It’s also bright, and youthful, and kinda loud, but completely lacking in any sort of substance.

DVDs – Pink Panther I & II

☻☻☻☻☺

(four smiley faces out of five)

If you’re tired of all the movies that play in your home in the daytime being animated and your child is aged 6 or older (or the age at which your child can follow the plot of a movie), you just might give the new Pink Panther movies, starring Steve Martin, a try.

Our family rented Pink Panther II on a whim a couple of months ago. The three of us, aged 6, 37 and 41, laughed ourselves silly. And to my husband and me, it was like a miracle had occurred: here was a movie that the three of us could genuinely enjoy together.

So this weekend, we sought out to rent Pink Panther I. But Hastings didn’t have Pink Panther I available to rent. What they did have was a used version for sale, and since the movies were buy-one-get-one free, we ended up purchasing both Pink Panther I and II.

After watching Pink Panther I last night and laughing a few times until we were almost on the floor, I’m thrilled that we own them both.

These movies are rated PG for suggestive humor, brief mild language and action. I personally couldn’t recall any “bad language” from either of these films, so I looked them up on a Christian movie review site and apparently the word “hell” is used twice in Pink Panther I. I couldn't find any bad language detailed for Pink Panther II. And the “suggestive humor” is so brief and so over a small kid’s head that it’s really pretty negligible. (If your kid DOES understand the “suggestive” humor, then you may have more than these movies to worry about.)

I won’t bother to summarize plots here. I mean, they’re Pink Panther movies. There’s a murder (that's not shown, of course), France’s big pink diamond is in play, it’s all a big mystery, Inspector Clouseau is a complete bumbling idiot with a hilariously ridiculous French accent, yadda, yadda, yadda. The humor is downright slapstick and goofball, but not so crude as to be inappropriate for children. There is a fart joke in Pink Panther I, but … well … it made me laugh.

Before you go out and purchase one or both of these movies, you should of course give them a test run by renting them or checking them out from your library, but I would definitely recommend them for a night of popcorn munching, jammy wearing, family fun.

TV - Imagination Movers

☻☻☻☻☺
(four smiley faces out of five)

Imagination Movers is a television show that airs on the Disney Channel and is aimed at kids from the ages of three to seven or eight. The show stars the Imagination Movers, four guys who “work” together in a warehouse. Their job is to solve people’s problems imaginatively, problems that they refer to as “Idea emergencies”. The Movers consist of four cool guys named Rich, Scott, Dave and Smitty who are far less dorky than the four guys on the Wiggles, though the Wiggles is certainly not without merit.

The Movers’ website touts the show this way: What would happen if the Beastie Boys collaborated with Mr. Rogers? But I think that’s taking it a bit far on the “street cred” scale. Imagination Movers is more like a mix of the Bare Naked Ladies and Mr. Rogers.

The Imagination Movers are often joined by their grumpy neighbor Knit Knots who is very boring and always wears beige, and his niece, Nina. Knit Knots is actually one of my favorite characters on the show, as the depth of his boringness is seemingly unending and for some reason his straight guy act just cracks me up immensely. For you hetero dads and lesbian moms out there, Nina is apparently extremely hot.

The movers also play instruments and sing songs, so there’s lots of music on the show. Thankfully, it’s modern, catchy music that’s usually quite good. You might even find yourself tapping your foot and singing along, and maybe, just maybe, you’d find you could stand purchasing the CD and listening to it over and over again in the car with your kid(s).

Overall, Imagination Movers is fun to watch for adults and kids. The plots are inventive and original (in one episode, the Movers have to help a lady figure out how she can carry around her gigantic phone book), the writing is good, and the actors are excellent. I often find myself laughing along with my daughter.

So why did I only give the show four smiley faces? Well, the show’s main educational focus is teaching kids that there are always several ways to attack a problem, even if only one solution will ultimately work. It also teaches tenacity and stick-to-it-iveness, which is certainly not a bad thing, but it’s not really educational, per se. I dunno. I kinda figure that either a person has tenacity or they don’t. I’m not sure if it’s something that can really be taught; it’s more like a decision that each person much reach on his or her own.

Ultimately, Imagination Movers is a good, clean, half-hour of eye and ear candy for you and your kid.

TV – Dragon Tales

☻☺☺☺☺
(one smiley face out of five)

Dragon Tales is a cartoon produced by the Sesame Workshop that airs on PBS. It was made from 1999 to 2005, but is still regularly re-run on Public Television. It is aimed at children from about the ages of three to six years old.

Dragon Tales stars brother and sister Emmy and Max, and later, their friend Enrique, who conveniently injects a little Spanish into the show. The premise is that Emmy and Max have a magic dragon scale that occasionally “calls” them to Dragon Land, a magical place populated by dragons.

I think I would rather lick an electrical outlet than watch this show. First off, there’s nothing particularly educational about it, except that it’s a very “feel good” program that aims to teach about friendship and manners and treating others as you’d like to be treated, but aren’t our kids already completely saturated with that message from parents, television, preschool teachers and then kindergarten?

One of the dragons, Ord, is supposed to be lovably dimwitted, but he comes off as so straightforwardly stupid that he’s hard to like. Then there’s Zac and Wheezy, a two-headed sibling dragon whose voices are both so annoying that I can barely stand it when they’re on screen. (Zac sounds as if he’s got a chronic sinus infection and Wheezy’s voice is high and grating.)

The plots are insipid. The animation is low quality. Max whines incessantly. The dialogue is banal. The first time I watched Dragon Tales I distinctly remember being very disappointed that it’s produced by Sesame Workshop, as this show shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath with such a stunningly brilliant children’s television show as Sesame Street.

Thankfully, my child was only “into” Dragon Tales for a few weeks. In my opinion, unless your child is just very attached to this show, there’s no point in wasting your child’s very valuable brain time in front of the boob tube for Dragon Tales.

DVD – Baby Einstein

☻☻☻☻☺
(four smiley faces out of five)

The Baby Einstein series of videos are targeted toward children aged a few months to about three years old. They consist of music—often classical—paired with the actions of brightly colored puppets and toys, and sometimes live-action shots of animals or babies or children. Each Baby Einstein video focuses on a particular theme, such as Beethoven or Mozart or animals or shapes or language. Besides videos, Baby Einstein produces toys and books. The Baby Einstein videos were started by mom Julie Clark and are now owned by Disney, though Ms. Clark is still in charge of the Baby Einstein company.

Now, there is some controversy surrounding the Baby Einstein videos. Some people think it’s horrifying to actually try to engage babies in television watching. And I do have to say that I always thought it was disturbing that these DVDs had as a menu option to either “Play Once” (ummm … yes, please) or “Repeat” (Seriously? What freakoid is putting his or her baby in front of a repeating Baby Einstein video, and why would the company even make that a menu option?). But maybe they’ve stopped doing that now; it’s been a few years since I’ve watched one.

Just yesterday I heard on NPR that the company is offering full refunds to anyone who purchased a Baby Einstein video between June 5, 2004 and September 4, 2009, because apparently an activist group (okay, mostly Harvard psychology professor Susan Linn) didn’t like that Baby Einstein was insinuating that its videos are educational. The Baby Einstein company denies ever claiming that their videos are educational, but c’mon. They’re called Baby EINSTEIN and Einstein was no idiot.

Obviously, making the decision to let your baby watch television is a highly personal one. Some people are going to be dead set against it, and that’s okay. It’s a free country.

But when you have a baby like mine, one who’s fussy and wants to be held and entertained all the time, it’s like a miracle to occasionally be able to put on a video and get a 30-minute break. I looked at it this way: the videos could shake a succession of toys and puppets in my baby’s face faster than I could, and the videos seemed to have a soothing effect on her. I never, ever thought of the videos as being educational, so I personally don’t even care about the whole educational vs. not educational controversy. Sometimes I just desperately needed a short respite from being a physically exhausted basket-case of a new mother.

And, as a sleep-deprived new parent, I have to say that I never minded watching the Baby Einstein videos with my baby/young child. Even if there was a segment I didn’t care for, I knew the next segment would be coming up quickly, and sometimes the animals and kids and toys are cute. The puppet work in the Baby Einstein videos is so-so.

Ultimately, you’ll have to be the one to decide whether or not to let your very young child should watch these videos. But if you do decide to purchase any Baby Einstein videos, I think you’ll find them not only tolerable, but on some days, the only thing that saves your sanity.

TV - Dora the Explorer

☻☻☻☺☺
(three smiley faces out of five)
Dora the Explorer is a cartoon airing on the Nickelodeon networks for young kids aged two to five or so. Dora is a seven-year-old Latina girl who travels the world with her monkey friend Boots on various adventures.

In each episode, Dora and Boots have a quest to fulfill, which usually involves helping a person or animal, and in each episode the antagonist is Swiper the fox. Swiper’s mission is usually to try and take whatever object Dora and Boots need that episode, whether it’s something they’re trying to deliver to someone else, or, for instance, a shape that they need to fix the road or bridge in front of them so that they may continue on their quest. Luckily, Dora has a magic backpack that can produce almost anything Dora and Boots might need to help them on their quests, from skis to wagons.

Dora the Explorer does a good job of teaching fairness and kindness to others, and it does a great job of injecting a little bit of Spanish into small kids’ vocabularies. The show often tries to teach kids about shapes and colors, and there’s often a pause in the dialogue that’s meant to allow little kids to be able to verbally interject their answers to Dora’s questions. The show also tries to get little kids to get up and move around while touching on the fact that there are different cultures all over the world.

But because this blog is about children’s shows that adults can also enjoy, this show receives only three smiley faces out of five.

Dora’s voice is nasal to the point of bordering on maddening. Boots is cute if you’re three, but not when you’re twenty-three and especially not if you’re thirty-three. He’s just a sidekick who’s kind of … there. There’s nothing particularly clever or funny about Boots.

Same goes for Swiper. About the only amusing thing Swiper says is “Oh, man!” when his moderately evil plan is foiled. When Dora and Boots succeed on their missions, there is this bizarre little mariachi band made up of a grasshopper, a frog and a slug that play a quick happy tune, and that’s about the only thing that ever makes me crack a smile.

The other recurring characters that pop up are just as uninteresting, and the guest characters are usually weird, but not in a good way.

Dora’s plotlines do tend to be odd—for example, Dora and Boots often get caught up in a fairy tale—but still not unusual enough to be inventive. The dialogue is almost never clever or witty.

Because of Dora’s popularity, it’s probably going to be difficult to keep your preschool to kindergarten aged kid away from this show. But it’s certainly not going to hurt him or her, either. Just try to unload the dishwasher or fold some laundry in the next room while it’s on.

TV - Sponge Bob Square Pants

☻☻☻☻☺

(four smiley faces out of five)

Sponge Bob Square Pants is a cartoon airing on the Nickelodeon networks that’s enjoyed by kids and parents aged four and up. (Wait; what?) Now, I’ve met a few people who don’t care for Sponge Bob, but most people with even the smallest speck of a sense of humor genuinely enjoy watching this cartoon with their kids.

Sponge Bob Square Pants centers on a little square yellow sponge (named Sponge Bob, obviously) who lives in Bikini Bottom (are you cracking a smirk yet?) with his pet snail that sounds like a cat and his dimwitted best friend Patrick the pink star fish. Sponge Bob works as a fry cook at the Krusty Krab for his notoriously cheap boss Mr. Krabs—whose daughter, oddly enough, is a whale—(and by the way, I LOVE this running gag in Sponge Bob because they NEVER explain why Pearl is a whale or who Pearl’s mother is or was). Sponge Bob works alongside Squidward, a grumpy, artistically frustrated squid who also happens to be Sponge Bob’s neighbor. But the main antagonist in Sponge Bob is Plankton, a really, really tiny, green, evil genius who owns a competing restaurant in Bikini Bottom—the Chumbucket—and is married to his computer wife, Karen.

(Can you even believe how *&$@ing crazy this cartoon sounds? Can I fit any more parentheses into this review?)

Some of the best episodes of Sponge Bob are as good as any of the best episodes of the old Looney Toons cartoons. The writing is witty and fresh and far superior to almost every other cartoon being made right now. The story lines are deliciously clever and sometimes border on the brink of insanity.

I’d give this cartoon five smiley faces out of five if the quality hadn’t started to fall off a bit a couple of years ago. But Nick has to keep churning out new episodes because Sponge Bob is so gosh-darned popular and makes more money than a chastity belt salesman at a Promise Keepers convention.

Of course, if you’re an extremely straight-laced person with a strict moral code, then there will definitely be material in Sponge Bob to offend you and you should avoid it at all costs. There is also a danger of your kid becoming seriously addicted to Sponge Bob, and eventually, you might start to get tired of it, as Nickelodeon keeps it in heavy rotation.

Overall, though, Sponge Bob gets a huge thumbs-up from everyone in our household and most of our friends with kids’ households.

TV - Sesame Street

☻☻☻☻☻

(five smiley faces out of five)

Let’s start this blog with the mother of all children’s television shows. Debuting in 1969, Sesame Street is the longest-running children’s television show in U.S. history.

It’s also one of the absolute best. Mostly aimed at the pre-kindergarten crowd, Sesame Street airs on Public Television.

I loved Sesame Street when I was a child and continue to love it today, as did my child when she was pre-K. The writing is exemplary, the educational value is outstanding, the cultural diversity and sensitivity give me hope for humankind, and the performances of the actors and puppeteers are always top-notch.

Sesame Street has always managed to deliver all of this while being genuinely entertaining, both for children and adults. I can’t count the number of times I’ve watched Sesame Street as a grownup and found myself laughing out loud at the jokes or being delighted by a special celebrity guest. (And let’s face it, the guest celebrities are for us parents; most of the time, little kids don’t even know who those people are.)

Sure, some parents find Elmo’s high voice to be a bit annoying, but most people can give Elmo a pass when they see how their little boy or girl’s face lights up when Elmo appears on the screen. And then there was that flap several years ago when some moronic preacher declared that Ernie and Bert were gay (where’s your head at buddy?) but most of us non mouth breathers know that even if Ernie and Bert were gay, it just wouldn’t matter, because Ernie is freaking hilarious.

I sincerely hope that until the day I die I can remember the lyrics to this song whenever I need a smile:

One-two-three-four-five, six-seven-eight-nine-ten,
Ten tiny turtles on the telephone
Talking with the grocery man
(Ya da da da!)

We would like some lettuce,
Will you send us ten heads please?
And ten sweet potatoes
And ten rutabagas with the dimples on their knees.

And send us 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 artichokes;
Ten eggplants—over easy
That's one of our little jokes (ha ha ha).

Ten leafy, leafy collard greens
And please make sure they're washed;

Light up our eyes
Brighten our lives
With ten banana squash.

We'll need ten cans of black-eyed peas
They give you good strong muscles
Ten of those tasty sprouts—
The ones that they call Brussels
We'd also like ten mangos
They're the favorite of our sister Gert;
And one last thing,
Please do include ten apples for dessert.

TEN!

FAQ

Why are you so mean?

I dunno. Maybe it’s because my parents didn’t raise me right. Maybe it’s because I have too many (or not enough) aberrant hormones raging through my sagging, middle-aged body. But mostly I think it’s because that poor entertainment in general just cheeses me off, and just because a television show, movie or book is created for children doesn’t mean that people (grownups!) should cut corners on quality. If something is crap, I like to call it like it is and warn others. If you disagree with my opinion, that’s great! Please feel free to say so.

Why are so many of your reviews for television shows or movies on DVD?

I am a stay-at-home mom. This means that we’re a one-income family and we just don’t want to spend the money on the movies out at the theater. When we do go see a movie, you can bet I’ll write a review about it. And though we own many, many children’s books, we tend to buy the classics and not so often the ones that are hot off the press.

If you have produced a new movie, book or television show for the children’s market, please feel free to email me at afraley @ sunflower (dot) com, I'll give you my address, you may send the material my way and I will be more than happy to review it. Keep in mind, though, that just because you go to the trouble to send me your material doesn't mean I'll show it any favoritism.

What makes you think you’re qualified to write these reviews?

Well, nothing, really, other than I have now watched hours of children’s television and movies and I’ve always loved children’s books. But I did earn a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Kansas and I’ve worked as a writer, reporter and editor for various newspapers and magazines for about twelve years now. Finally, between my connections with parents in the stay-at-home mom club I belong to, my kid's grade school and Daisy Scouts, I quite often find myself speaking with fellow parents about kids' shows--which ones they like, which ones they don't, which ones they won't let their kids watch under any circumstances, which ones they dread their kids watching ... those sorts of things.

Do you really let your kid watch that much television?

Our child’s viewing habits are probably a lot like your child’s: some days yes, she watches waaay too much and other days she watches nothing. It depends on whether or not she went to school that day or she’s home sick, whether or not it’s snowing or raining outside, whether or not I’m sick or dead-dog tired, and about a million other factors.