KID VIDS TO THE MAX PLENTY OF COOL, EDUCATIONAL OFFERINGS MEAN FIRST-RATE VIEWING FOR CHILDREN.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Staff Writer

Fred Levine makes videos featuring big machines blasting stuff. He has sold more than a half million of them. Before Levine came along, Bob the Builder hadn't been born and nobody else was making live-action videos featuring trucks and bulldozers doing their thing.

Levine himself probably wouldn't be making them if he hadn't seen a 60-second segment on ``Sesame Street'' that featured a bulldozer pushing around a pile of dirt on a vacant lot. Levine's two boys, then ages 5 and 3, were mesmerized. Levine figured other kids would be, too.

``Kids love big machines,'' Levine says from his home in Exeter, N.H. ``They are just fascinated by big contraptions and what they can do.''

Kids are fascinated by a great many things, and since Levine made his first movie, ``Road Construction Ahead,'' in 1991, countless producers and documentary filmmakers have taken their own kids' interests and turned them into best-selling videos. There are movies about manners and mountains, dinosaurs and natural disasters, bats and ballerinas. Ambitious parents can teach their children a foreign language, get them hooked on Mozart or have them gaze at the work of Monet while listening to Haydn's Symphony No. 9 in G Major.

Disney movies and TV-related titles may still dominate the retail shelves, but the wealth of other types of videos makes it a little easier for parents to assuage their guilt when they prop their kids in front of the TV for a half hour so they can cook dinner, pay the bills or take a shower.

And that's important. Parents are bombarded with cautionary tales about using the television as a baby sitter (there goes your kid's chance for an Ivy League education!), so when they find a video or DVD that doesn't have guns blasting or characters calling each other ``stupid'' or a scene of a mother or father being killed, they treat it like the treasure that it is.

``What is a family movie?'' Arnold Schwarzenegger asked me when discussing the subject a couple of years back. ``My wife played 'The Lion King' for my daughter once and in the middle of the night, she came running into my bedroom, screaming, 'Daddy, Daddy, are you going to die?' And I said, 'Maria, why do you play this movie for the children? Now I cannot get any sleep.' ''

Who hasn't been there? If it's not Simba watching his lion father, Mufasa, die in a stampede of wildebeests, it's PBS' Cailiou whining about this, that and the other or Disney's Stitch shooting off another weapon of mass destruction. Finding a video that will both entertain and educate can sometimes feel like a Herculean challenge.

The good news is that for parents willing to invest a little time and energy, there's no shortage of quality titles available. Experts may be divided on the overall health of the medium - Joanne Oppenheim of Toy Portfolio says it's in a ``sad state, largely Saturday morning cartoons in a can,'' while Parents' Choice evaluator Claire Green believes ``parents just need to do their homework to find the right things'' - but there's total agreement on the sheer avalanche of quantity.

``I've got more than 500 titles in my catalog,'' says Tamara Carlisle, a former children's video producer who founded kids catalog giant Big Kids Productions. ``Now I'm not saying that every one of these is going to be a hit with every child. But I will tell you I've got 20 great titles on multiplication and phonics alone. And I could probably say the same thing about almost every subject out there. Producers these days know how to take the toughest topics and make them cool.''

Take the Mazzarella brothers of Connecticut's Thinkeroo Learning Company. Tom, Tony and Mark started off making corporate commercials, then gravitated toward making educational programs for use in classrooms once they started having kids of their own. Now, their ``Way Cool Science'' series and ``Look Mom! I Have Good Manners'' movies are becoming small sensations by taking difficult subjects - geology, weather, etiquette - and making them interesting for children.

``We just looked around and saw there wasn't much for kids on these subjects,'' says Mark Mazzarella, the youngest of the siblings. ``Parents want their children to learn, and it's a battle out there with all the different things available for kids these days. But educational stuff doesn't have to be boring. You just have to have a sense of humor about it.''

And not talk down to kids. Bill VanDerKloot jumps back and forth between documentary ventures for PBS and Turner and making kids' movies for his company's ``Big Adventure'' series. The idea is to take kids behind the scenes at auto plants or on board the space shuttle or a submarine and show what it takes to make one of these things run.

``Kids are curious about the way things work, and they grasp more than adults give them credit for,'' VanDerKloot says. ``It's exciting looking at the world through a kid's viewpoint. To them, a light switch is an amazing thing. They could flip it on and off for an hour. So if you take them on board something like a submarine, there's an endless amount of possibilities for discovery.''

Sometimes, though, kids just want a good story. And for any adult old enough to remember reading Maurice Sendak's ``Where the Wild Things Are'' and then seeing the 16mm movie at school or the neighborhood library, there will be a certain thrill in discovering that it's alive and well in Scholastic's Video Collection. The children's publishing company has been transferring its award-winning films to video and DVD as well as producing new titles. The results are a slam-dunk for parents looking for good storytelling that encourages reading.

``The idea is always to build on children's imagination and bring them back to opening up books,'' says longtime Scholastic producer Melissa Reilly. ``Our motto is: Enhance the reading experience.''

And that's a sentiment all parents can get behind when they pop that movie into the player.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

RESOURCES

For videos, DVDs and CDs: Big Kids Productions offers the widest assortment of independently produced children's entertainment, including dozens of titles covering trains, planes, automobiles and whatever else might interest your kid. The company has a 30-day, money-back guarantee, which makes spending that $15 for an unknown title a little less threatening. Go to www.bigkidsvideo.com.

For product reviews: The Oppenheim Toy Portfolio (www.toyportfolio.com) and the Parents' Choice Foundation (www.parents-choice.org) offer highly selective recommendations on the best children's entertainment.

RECOMMENDED TITLES

This is just a sampling, of course. Specialty titles are listed with their specific Web sites; others are widely available, including at your local public library.

Cody's Crew: Kind of like ``Bob the Builder'' but with a better story (teamwork is fun!) and cooler trucks. (Ages 2-6; www.codyscrew.com)

Disney Sing-Along Songs: Hear Gaston sing ``Be Our Guest,'' but not the mob chanting ``Kill the Beast.'' Listen to Phil Collins' ``Brother Bear'' noodlings without having to watch the Mommy Bear kill and be killed. In other words, the best music from Disney's animated films without the requisite death and dismemberment. (Ages 3 and older)

DK Eyewitness Series: From the folks who make those really cool travel guide books comes a series of videos that are equally informative and just as visually dazzling. (Ages 4 and older, although the shark video might be a little much for the little ones - which means, of course, that their older siblings will love it.)

For the Love of Art: Toddler videos are a dime a dozen, but this title engagingly combines classical music and fine art in a thoughtful, eye-popping manner. Big kids (not to mention parents) will dig it, too. (Ages up to 4, www.babylaureate.com)

Laurie Berkner's Video Songbook and Ralph's World: Say Hello!: Two of the great voices in kids music offer the best of their songs in thoroughly engaging, low-budget outings. There will be singing; there will be dancing. (Ages 1 and older)

Little Mammoth Media: Fifteen different titles take your kids behind the scenes of aquariums, space shuttles, submarines and auto plants. No child can resist ``The Big Boom!'' compendium of things that explode - volcanoes, imploding buildings, jets passing the speed of sound. Fun and fascinating. (Ages 3-8, www.littlemammoth.com)

Look Mom! I Have Good Manners: The vagaries of sharing, nose picking and what to do when you're at a friend's house and the mom serves some mysterious casserole are explored in this fun look at etiquette from the wise guys at Thinkeroo. (Ages 5 and older, www.thinkeroo.com)

My Many Colored Days: Classic Seuss title about the mood of colors is brought to life by the Minnesota Orchestra and narrator Holly Hunter. Brisk, beautiful, thought-provoking. Seuss the way it should be done. It will wash away any stench left over from last year's feature film version of ``The Cat in the Hat.'' (Ages 3 and older; hard to find but available through Big Kids Productions)

Scholastic Video Collection: Weston Woods takes the best children's stories and brings them to life. Some of the segments were animated 30 years ago (parents might remember watching them at school); some just last year. Each DVD has three primary stories along with three bonus tales and the occasional fascinating author interview. Start with ``Chicka Chicka Boom Boom,'' move to ``Pete's a Pizza ... and More William Steig Stories'' and go from there. (Ages 2-8, depending on the title)

- Glenn Whipp

CAPTION(S):

5 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) That's children's Entertainment

The best kids' DVDs and videos

(2 --3) For parents looking for an educational alternative to the likes of ``The Lion King,'' above - and who want to limit exposure to the darker themes of such stories - Big Kids Productions offers videos and DVDs exploring many topics of interest to children, such as ``The Big Aquarium,'' top.

(4) A giant jellyfish is among the real-life wonders captured in the DVDs and videos of Big Kids Productions.

(5) ``CODY'S CREW''

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Resources (see text)