The New York Times Guide to the Best Children&39s Videos [Paperback]

The only guide you'll need for choosing the best videos -- and CD-ROMS -- for your family.
INCLUDES:
More than 1000 entries of kid-tested and adult-approved videos currently available.
Listings organized by age -- from infancy to adolescence -- as recommended by child development specialists.
A wide range of categories with special attention to gender and ethnicity: Educatioinal/Instructional; Fairy Tales; Family Literature and Myth; Special Interest; Foreign Language; Holiday; Music; How-To; and Nature.
Review ratings in a clear, easy-to-read format.
Evaluations by panels of adults and children.
Outstanding programs from independents and major studios.
Ordering information, running times, and suggested retail prices.
Evaluations of more than 100 CD-ROMs
500 recommended feature films for the family...and more!Chapter One: TV for Girls

Jan Benzel

My daughter Julia quickly discovered a great advantage of learning to read: it allowed her to decipher the television schedule.

Let me stop right here and say for the record that I began parenthood as one of those sanctimonious mothers whose personal goal it was to lower the national TV-watching average among children -- now something like three hours a day -- by turning in a paltry few hours a week for our family. We'd finger-paint! Bake! Read the classics! Go camping!

I soon realized there were big problems with that approach. First, as the parent who walked into a room and turned the TV off, I was very unpopular.

Second, TV -- and video -- have some practical applications from a parent's point of view: Appeasing children left under protest with a new baby-sitter. Distracting children while parents gobble down dinner. Allowing an exhausted parent to take a Saturday afternoon nap (for this,Mary Poppins,at 139 spellbinding minutes, is recommended). And sometimes kids, like adults, just need to escape, cool out, calm down, be entertail†