SONG COLLECTION FOR TYKES GIVES BARNEY A REST.Byline: Chris J. Parker Correspondent IT'S HARD TO EXPLAIN to nonparents why Barney is so hugely important. To a pre-kindergarten child, Barney sings songs, teaches lessons and provides a big object to follow on the television screen. To everyone else, he's an annoying purple dinosaur. The key to Barney's success is the music. His PBS PBS in full Public Broadcasting Service Private, nonprofit U.S. corporation of public television stations. PBS provides its member stations, which are supported by public funds and private contributions rather than by commercials, with educational, cultural, television show - and the countless videos it has spawned - connects to its young audience with a flow of song-and-dance numbers that puts MTV MTV in full Music Television U.S. cable television network, established in 1980 to present videos of musicians and singers performing new rock music. MTV won a wide following among rock-music fans worldwide and greatly affected the popular-music business. to shame. All of which explains why a series like the recently released ``Fun Songs for Kids'' can be so good considering how little there is inside the box. ``Fun Songs'' is Barney without the big, purple dinosaur. In it, children sing the songs but there's no prehistoric accompaniment. This is just kids dressed in some bottom-of-the-hope-chest costumes, singing their hearts out. It's high on the hokey hok·ey adj. hok·i·er, hok·i·est Slang 1. Mawkishly sentimental; corny. 2. Noticeably contrived; artificial. hok scale, but then again so is Barney, and that's worked fine for a generation of fans. ``Fun Songs'' does have one feature that beats Barney: on-screen on·screen or on-screen adj. & adv. 1. As shown on a movie, television, or display screen. 2. Within public view; in public. lyrics. The words scroll too fast for even young elementary-school kids. But parents can keep up with the songs and help teach the words to their children as a dozen kids sing the songs while frolicking and dancing on a lightly decorated stage. Most of the time, either their costumes or the set tie into the songs. They sing familiar nursery rhymes like ``Old MacDonald Had a Farm,'' ``Row, Row, Row Your Boat'' and ``Humpty Dumpty.'' There are two DVDs (``50 Fun Songs for Kids'') and four videos and four CDs (``25 Fun Songs for Kids''). The DVDs come with printable song books for anyone whose computer includes a DVD-ROM DVD-ROM: see digital versatile disc. A read-only DVD disc used to permanently store data files. DVD-ROM discs are widely used to distribute large software applications that exceed the capacity of a CD-ROM disc. player. Unlike Barney videos, there's no story line to this video. It's just songs, which might be a downside for some parents who enjoyed Barney videos for the lessons they taught. FUN SONGS FOR KIDS - Two and one half stars Produced by: Madacy Entertainment Group. Age appropriate: 2 to 5 years old. What you should know: This is MTV for the pre-kindergarten set, with songs lasting just over a minute each. No attention span is needed or expected. There are lots of familiar songs and on-screen lyrics so you'll finally know the words to those nursery rhymes that have haunted you since your childhood. Suggested retail price: $6.98 for VHS (Video Home System) A half-inch, analog videocassette recorder (VCR) format introduced by JVC in 1976 to compete with Sony's Betamax, introduced a year earlier. , $14.98 for DVD DVD: see digital versatile disc. DVD in full digital video disc or digital versatile disc Type of optical disc. The DVD represents the second generation of compact-disc (CD) technology. , $5.98 for CD. |
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