Average Price: $10-15
Official URL: http://www.newvideo.com/scholastic.html
Age Range: Toddler through Adult
Runtime: 35min
Rating:

This DVD is an interesting mix of brilliance and detraction. It’s three animated segments are both timeless, and yet dated. Despite what sounds like the beginnings of a mixed review, we wholeheartedly recommend this DVD to all families, with a nod to a few concerns some parents may have.

Like with most of the titles in the Scholastic video series, these stories are taken from classic illustrated books. This volume is based on works by Maurice Sendak, one of the world’s most celebrated children’s book author/illustrator. Coming from a book format, “The Wild Things” animation (by Weston Woods/Newvideo) adopts a somewhat limited-animation approach. This involves a lot of panning and zooming of the original art with just enough “in-betweener” frames added for animation effect.

This style of animation is rather dated by today’s standards, but don’t let that put you off. It only takes a few moments to adjust to this simpler style and appreciate its charm and warmth. More important, this approach to bringing a printed work to life keeps the original book’s essence intact. Another potential advantage is that depending upon the age of a child, many feel that limited-animation is also easier for the young mind to consume.

The title of this DVD highlights the fact that “Where the Wild Things Are” was far and away Mr. Sendak’s most well known work and what he will always be remembered for. Unfortunately the choice of title minimizes the other two included works, “The Nutshell Kids” and “In The Night Kitchen”. Both of which are debatably more creative works than the disc’s feature.

Let’s start off with what detractors have said about much of Sendak’s work, that it is scary to kids. This is no doubt true in many cases and even for adults his work carries a distinct dark side to almost every story. He simply was not the maker of pretty little stories of butterflies and summer days. Not his style. In truth his technique highlights contradictions, the dark and the joyful, the dangerous and the lighthearted.

This puts his work much more in line with the classic children’s stories that were traditionally a way of gently exposing children to the painful aspects of life. Think the death of Bambi’s mother or that of Hans Christian Andersen’s “Little Match Girl”. No, traditional children’s stories have never been what we today would deem child-friendly. And were it not for their status as classics, might not even get past your v-chip.

However like older classics, Sendak stories have a reason for the darker side, and a moral to go with them. They are presented in a way that is not intentionally shocking and in many ways very-very gentle. And they are always presented within the lushness and beauty that is his signature imagery. Imagery that in itself looks like classic engravings from a bygone century. They make sad or scary topics accessible to children too young to understand them, and make it so that if tragic or terrifying events happen in a child’s life they at least have some idea of the existence of these events and the language and knowledge to better cope with them.

GOING WILD (6:49)

“Where the Wild Things Are” tells the story of a little boy named Max who misbehaves and is sent to bed without his supper. Feeling unloved by his parents he soon imagines himself reaching outside the four corners of his bedroom and traveling across a large sea to an island of enormous wild creatures. They threaten to eat him alive, but are soon tamed by his powerful stare, and he is crowned king of all wild things.

But soon Max begins to miss his family and home, and decides to return home. Upon his return, he finds his dinner waiting for him in his bedroom. “And it was still hot”. The book ends on a loving note and conveys the message that even though parents become frustrated with misbehavior, the love is still there.

Converting this story from book to animation required, in addition to the animation itself, the creation of music and a narration track. Both of these were provided by Peter Shickele. The musical score was written and conducted by Schickele and must have been quite expressive for 1973 when this animated version was created (from the book which was originally published 10 years earlier). An abstract jazz-like score, the music creates an edgy feeling that enhances the storyline. Bravo!

The narration was not so successful and we found it to be a disappointing reading of the story. While not bad, it neither enhanced the work nor did it have an ideal tone or pacing. This is a shame, but overall does not terribly diminish the overall production.

NUTSHELLS (14:10)

In “The Nutshell Kids” we see a series of four separate small story-poems, all from separate books, made into full musical animations. The stories include “Alligators All Around” an alphabet story; “Pierre” on having a good attitude; “One Was Johnny” a counting story similar to the old lady who swallowed a fly; and “Chicken Soup with Rice that teaches the months of the year.

While they are presented here as separate stories, when first produced for PBS in 1975 they were all strung together into a half hour special called “Really Rosie” (which, as of this writing, can be seen in three parts on YouTube.com). This Scholastic version strips out the Rosie sections that held it all together and just delivers the parts reflecting the original book stories.

The Nutshell Kids may have been our favorite, not the least of reasons due to the fact that all music was composed and sung by Carol King. She was at the top of her career at the time these were made and the work is nothing short of brilliant. These are so good we recall that “Chicken Soup With Rice” broke off to be a heavily played single at the time.

The animations in this section are full-motion animations, fun, creative and thoroughly enjoyable. They are however of very poor reproduction quality, looking like a copy of a copy. Obviously the publishers could not obtain an original master and did the best they could. The material is SO good, you won’t mind one bit!

MIDNIGHT SNACK (6:58)

“In the Night Kitchen” is the most creative and oddest story on this disc. It is a free-flowing, free-association romp into a small child’s dream turned fun nightmare. A story about a boy named Mickey who is awakened by a noise coming from the bakery below where he lives with his parents. After yelling at the bakers to quiet down he begins to fall transparently through the floors until he finds himself tumbling into a large vat of batter.

At this point the 1920’s style music swells and three heavy-set bakers stroll in – each one identical to the next and all looking just like old movie star Oliver Hardy. Mickey proceeds to get thrown into the oven, a “Mickey Oven”, and soon pokes his way out explaining that “I’m not the milk and the milk’s not me, I’m MICKEY!”

He makes his escape to a pile of bread dough that he forms into a propeller airplane and pilots to freedom. Piloting over the city we see it is made up of items from the 1920’s and 30’s. Tall building made of glass milk jars, and a plethora of branded containers of the day.

Mickey soon jumps airship and dives into the tall glass container of milk, and as he does his clothing comes falling off to reveal some frontal nudity. A few parents have objected to this finding it in some way obscene. Our feeling is rather neutral on the issue in that we did not see how it added to the story, but it was not done in a way to be objectionable. And frankly, as the boy is still of diaper wearing age, any parent of similar aged children should be quite accustomed to seeing such a sight. As are the children themselves.

In the end, Mickey floats back into his bed and we realize, like in the “Wild Things” is was all just a childhood dream.

EXTRA EXTRA

The main extra on this disc is the “Getting to know Maurice Sendak” which spends a bit of time interviewing him at his country home. He speaks about how the “Wild Things”, his first large picture book, came about. It is a charming segment and does indeed help one understand the thinkings of this beloved children’s author.

AGE (IN)APPROPRIATE CONTENTThere are quite a few items that parents may find questionable on this DVD, they didn’t bother us in the least.

The nudity in “In The Night Kitchen” was similar to any nudity you might see in a potty training book, as the boy was quite young and still seemingly of diaper-wearing age and it was all done with a cartoonish innocence and didn’t strike us as being graphic. The image to the left is a snapshot from these brief few seconds of frontal nudity. If you object to any nudity at all, you may want to skip “In the Night Kitchen”.

There was some violence in “Pierre” where a lion threatens and eats Pierre, although the eating of Pierre is hardly graphic and it’s actually rather non-violent as Pierre dances up to the lion’s mouth and climbs in. Later, Pierre’s parents beat the lion with a purse and chair to try to get the lion to spit Pierre out. As with all classic literature and animation, these scenes are cute and not graphic and do not seem to encourage violence in any way as it all seems more like a pillow fight than anything else. The level of violence was much lower than what one might see in other classic children’s cartoons. The violence failed to yield results which shows that violence is not always productive as the lion will not spit Pierre out in response to the beating. Pierre is only set free after the parents rush the lion to the doctor. The doctor shakes the lion upside down and Pierre climbs out.

There were quite a few instances of children being naughty or impertinent in the Wild Things and Pierre, but there always seemed to be a moral to the story. The boy in the Wild Things was punished for mischief making, and Pierre was eaten by a lion because he simply couldn’t motivate himself to care. In the end of each story the naughtiness and impertinence is resolved.

As for the “scare factor”, children are generally much more resilient than we give them credit for. Sendak’s “Wild Things” is scary in the same way that shouting “Boo!” is scary. Some toddlers and children may be afraid of this, but most will find it to be a fun and engaging game. What children do you know that don’t enjoy a good game of “I’m going to get you!” as you chase them around the house making scary growling noises?

PACKAGING

This disc is packaged in a standard (although a colorful orange) DVD case with a simple wrap-around and no real liner notes, instead there is a Scholastic Video collection booklet that shows the covers of quite a few of the countless DVDs that Scholastic Video has released. The colored DVD cases seem to be slightly more prone to breakage than cases used for movies or software, but it’s not unreasonably flimsy.

MENUS, NAVIGATION & FEATURES

This disc will first play the standard FBI copyright warning, followed by a brief promo for the scholastic video line. The “scene skip” button will not work here, but you can use your DVD player’s “Direct Navigation” or “Menu” buttons to skip ahead to the menu. (Or if that fails, fast-forward always works.)

The menu system is basic (pictured above) and shows the three main features with “Play All” and “Extras” at the bottom. If you want to turn captions/subtitles on you can use the “Extras” menu to choose “Read Along” or you can simply set this through your DVD player’s subtitles settings.

Navigation is likely to annoy you a bit in the Nutshell Kids section, as hitting “next scene” does not work and will simply return you to the main navigational menu. Fast forwarding always works, however. Another navigational issue is that “Play All” continues into the Extras rather than simply playing the main features. None of these are the most annoying things in the world, but it would have been nice to have this disc contain a few more navigational features that we’ve come to expect.

BOTTOM LINE

We recommend this DVD for both young and old. This is not a disc that will have parents sneaking out to do something else while it is on. Rather most parents will be as captivated by the visuals, if not always the stories, as we were. Just one note of caution, you will never again be able to see the words “chicken” or “rice” without the catchy music from “Chicken Soup with Rice” popping into your head.