Babble

Thomas and Friends features the adventures of a gang of sentient model trains with creepy frozen facial expressions who live on the Island of Sodor. The Sodor Railway is ruled with an iron fist by a nattily-dressed plutocrat named Sir Topham Hatt, who extols the virtues of hard work, subservience and conformity. The trains have human drivers, who apparently do nothing, because almost every episode ends in a violent collision or derailment, prompting my two-year-old to reliably shout, "oh no!" Episodes are usually packaged as three six-minute segments. My son and I have seen roughly ten thousand of them by now, but we can still sit through most, especially the earlier episodes narrated by George Carlin and Alec Baldwin. Beware if your kid gets hooked, though: the TV show serves as a front for a huge merchandising juggernaut of Thomas toys, videos and clothes. - Matt Wood

Absent parents, funky music, a snack at the end of the day: The Backyardigans has all the elements of preschool TV gold. In this Nick Jr. show, five pals in leafy suburbia share a backyard and use their imaginations, plus a few key costume changes, to go on crazy adventures in the wild West or ancient Egypt. The characters — Pablo the penguin in his little bow tie, Tasha the hippo in her funky red Mary Janes — are goofy and cute. So I almost feel guilty saying I just don't like it. I find the animation a bit cold and sterile and the kids are a tad too sassy. Sure, the music is addictive and I love the range from reggae to rockabilly. But I'm not crazy about the dance numbers (which are actually choreographed and performed by real people, then transformed into animation by the magic of CGI). I mean, watching Uniqua and her friends doing "the running man" in unison? It just doesn't feel right. — Jennifer V. Hughes

Plumbing, carpentry, road work: you name it, Bob the Builder can do it. He's a contractor extraordinaire who does a surprising amount of work in a town that seems like it only has a dozen residents. The typical episode involves Bob — along with his strictly-platonic business partner Wendy and their crew of anthropomorphized construction equipment — scoring a new job from someone in town, usually Mr. Bentley, the building inspector, Farmer Pickles, or Mr. Sabatini, who runs the local pizza parlor and has the corniest Italian accent this side of Super Mario Brothers. It's usually a rush job, but Bob and his crew always overcome supply shortages, accidents, or the comic meddling of Spud, the flamboyant talking scarecrow, to get the job done. The stop-motion animation is a little jerky, but my son loves it. Considering his endless fascination with anything on wheels, it was a natural fit, but throw in some tools and "Ooh, talking dump trucks!" and Bob gets the job done in our house. — Matt Wood

There is something so mesmerizing about this Nick Jr. offering, starting with the "photo-puppetry animation," which is weird in a good way. The plot is cute but not cloying: three classroom pets — Ming Ming the duck, Turtle Tuck and Linny the Guinea pig — rescue animals in danger by answering a tin-can phone. "What's gonna work?" they shout. "Teamwork!" And get this — almost the entire show is sung as an opera. I mean, it's just so kooky, it's perfect. Tuck wears water socks (ha!), while Ming Ming dons an aviator's hat for adventures and quips, "This is se-wious!" at moments of danger. All the pets wear capes (capes = funny!). And kids learn cool animal facts; for example, while saving a baby owl, the pets explain that fireflies flash to talk to each other. The first time my 3-year-old daughter saw the show, she was dashing around with friends when she caught a glimpse of the pets on a mission to help a penguin trapped on an iceberg. She literally stopped in her tracks, her eyes wide, her mouth hanging open. The Wonder Pets just have that kind of effect. — Jennifer V. Hughes

Based on Maurice Sendak's drawings for the classic stories by Else Homelund Minarik, Little Bear stands in marked contrast to most children's cartoons. No fast-paced storylines and bright modern graphics here — the characters are charmingly drawn, the score soft and melodic, and the plots gently paced. Little Bear and his friends never break the fourth wall to invite your kid to sing or clap along; they simply carry out a narrative without the audience-participation conceit that is almost omnipresent in children's television. And frankly, it's a nice, peaceful change from overstimulation. Far from being boring for the lack of bells and whistles, the show's characters are well-developed and the storylines are captivating, built around family relationships, deep friendships and the wild imagination of Little Bear himself. It's always puzzled me that Little Bear runs around naked while his parents dress in full Victorian garb, but the kids are too enthralled by his adventures with his close-knit gang of animal pals and his human friend Emily to notice or care. After a busy day of bouncing off walls, the words "Can we watch Little Bear?" are music to my ears. — Patti Nichols

Dissing a show as earnest as PBS's Dragon Tales seems a little harsh. But worse than Blue's Clues and almost as bad as Barney, Dragon Tales is so relentlessly upbeat that it literally makes my skin crawl. Max and Emmy are 2 oh-so-sweet siblings who venture into Dragon Land, where they learn painfully obvious lessons about kindness and taking turns and bravery. Ord the dragon is the big dopey ninny, afraid of everything. (Although he's my daughter's favorite, because he's "a nice dragon and he can fly and he's blue.") Cassie the dragon is such a POSITIVE FEMALE ROLE MODEL, it makes me wish they had made her a trashy dope. Two-headed dragons Zak and Wheezie are supposed to be funny, but their catch phrase — "looove it!" — is not. Everyone cooperates and loves each other. Rainbows! Sunshine! Ice cream! Unicorns! Fairies! Yay!

Yuck.

I know kids' TV is supposed to be for kids, but c'mon. During one episode, Max complained that he didn't want to take the toy. "I wanted to share," he whined. Yeah, right. If my 3-year-old ever said that, I'd fall over dead. — Jennifer V. Hughes

This offering from the Disney/Baby Einstein Children's Entertainment Industrial Complex is the epitome of the "edutainment" foisted on parents and children today. A little multi-culti band of brainiac kids flies around in their rocket ship, solving problems by means of . . . culture. (Their knowledge of the solar system, their ability to pirouette, that sort of thing.) Each episode features a "guest composer" in the form of six or eight bars of classical music, played over and over to guarantee that, later in the day, you will catch yourself whistling it and wonder why on earth you have Aaron Copland stuck in your head. The "guest artist" likewise manifests him or herself as famous paintings, which are rather cleverly blended into the show's otherwise run-of-the-mill animation.

Naturally, the show encourages interaction; the characters urge viewers to clap, hum, or follow their motions in order to successfully complete whatever mission they're on, and my children happily comply ("Mama? You're supposed to be waving your arms so the rocket can get out of the quicksand."). For all its posturing, the show is essentially The Backyardigans with more pretension. But the kids seem to like it okay, and while I wouldn't want to be trapped for eight hours in a minivan with it, I can't complain about the back-to-back episodes the Disney Channel runs on Saturday mornings — even though I'm wasting valuable coffee-drinking time clapping my hands to help return a missing ring to Saturn. Little Einsteins won't make kids smarter, but it probably won't make them any dumber, either. And just yesterday in the car, one of the girls came up with, "Jupiter's the biggest planet!" out of the blue. She didn't get it from me. — Patti Nichols

There's a lot to love about PBS's Curious George, starting with the urban setting (George lives in a doorman building, natch). There is an oddly soothing narration by William H. Macy. There are lessons, but you don't feel bashed by an educational hammer. Still, I can't shake my lingering anxiety. George does a lot of desperate "ooh-ooh-ah"-ing, screwing up his cute little face with worry as he tries to communicate. Once, George tried to count every star in the sky. He fell asleep. He lost track. My heart pounded as I watched him whining and grunting, trying in vain. Another time, George tried to take home an ice cream cake before it melted. He ended up destroying, like, six cakes in various cataclysmic ways, and at one point I was screaming in my head, "Oh God! No, George! Don't wash the cake! Nooo ..." Of course, my daughter is fascinated by George, impervious to his peril as every self-respecting 3-year-old should be. Maybe I just see George as the symbol of my own little primate and all the dangers that await her in life. — Jennifer V. Hughes

The first time we watch Ellen's Acres, I have to explain to my four-year-old when the story is taking place within Ellen's imagination and when it's "real," because she appears confused by the quick back-and-forth. I briefly have a complaint with the show's format (two segments per episode, each with full credits before and afterward) because it seems to suck up valuable entertainment time, but then my kid expresses delight at getting to watch two shows ! It becomes a bonus feature immediately. On day two, she explains the show's conceit to her two-year-old sister (the confusion was short-lived) and when it's over, they run off to act out what they've watched (this has only happened before with Wonder Pets). On day three, they sing the theme song word for word. I think they like it. And so do I. — Patti Nichols

The nominees for creepiest kids show are in, and the winner is a frenetic little program called LazyTown. Here's the premise: a pink-wigged girl named Stephanie has moved to a town where people prefer to stay inert, but Stephanie likes to move and groove. Incessantly. While singing showtunes. Stephanie is bummed out by the local kids (played by weird plastic puppets whose mouths don't move), who would rather do things like play video games, eat candy or count money instead of actually moving. There's also a superhero in town named Sportacus, who looks like a cross between an aerobics instructor and a Nazi, and a local villain named Robbie Rotten, who lurks around in a striped spandex jumpsuit. Lazytown will get your kid moving, all right — far, far from the TV set. — Barbara Rushkoff