MCCORMICK'S QUICK TAKES ON ELEMENTARY JUSTICE.

* Dinosaur (Buena Vista, 2000). Raising the special-effects bar higher than a pterodadyl can fly, the animators at Disney have created a dino-mite children's adventure that doubles as a breathless National Geographic tour of the Cretaceous era.

Aladar, an orphaned dinosaur raised by a friendly and fun-loving brood of lemurs, develops a sense of compassion and fair play uncommon among his reptilian relatives. Concern for the weak allows him and his cold- and warm-blooded buddies to survive their pilgrimage to the sacred nesting grounds, where they hope all will be well.

If sharing and altruism could have saved the dinosaurs, just think what it could do for us. ***

* The Emperor's New Groove (Buena Vista, 2000). Love may mean never having to say you're sorry. But as the narcissistic adolescent emperor Kuzcco (David Spade) learns in this lightly comic mix of The Prince and the Pauper and The Shaggy Dog, growing up into a real emperor usually means you need to mend your ways--and show some sympathy for the common folk who do most of the heavy lifting in your kingdom.

Changed into a llama by a scheming advisor who had meant to poison him, the young emperor becomes a beast of burden for the very peasants he has long ignored and abused, and must eat some humble pie before he finds the potion (and the compassion) that will let him become a good ruler. ***

* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Buena Vista, 1996). The point of this sometimes unsteady but not unlikable version of Vidor Hugo's tale is that we need to show kindness to life's outcasts. Quasimodo is a poor creature whose outer ugliness frightens children and invites all sorts of cruelty. But his tender heart and compassionate concern for others makes it clear that life's real monsters often have a charming exterior.

Hugo and Disney remind young audiences that what makes us human is our ability to recognize our neighbor, and the image of God, in every human face. ***

* To Kill a Mockingbird (Universal Pictures, 1962). If there's a better film about justice from a children's point of view, I don't know it.

In Harper Lee and Horton Foote's tale, Scout and her brother Jem not only learn about the big injustices of racism and lynch mobs, but about the small ads of justice that make us human.

Their father, Atticus Finch, teaches them to show kindness and respect to the dirt-poorest of their neighbors, black or white, to show hospitality to classmates others would reject, and to refrain from making judgments about anyone "`til you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it." *****

By PATRICK MCCORMICK, an associate professor of Christian ethics at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.