The Charge

Seasons greeting.

The Case

Alrighty kids, some more stories for your viewing pleasure! Scholastic has yet another lineup of similarly themed narratives to whet your appetite for bite-sized animated niblets.

The theme for this collection is "the seasons," with each story focusing on some aspect of the changing weather seasons. As is the playbook for these releases, three stories are featured as the main program, accompanied by two bonus offerings. It's all very exciting, I assure you.

Let us not waste any more time and dive right into this treasure trove of kid-friendly fare!

• "Bear Snores On"
By Karma Wilson

Here's how this story shakes out: Bear is curled up in his cave, sitting winter out and getting his hibernating on. While he snoozes, a steady parade of woodland animals march in, build a fire, cook food, make hot beverages, and basically enjoy wanton revelry while Bear is out cold.

When he awakens he:

a) quickly devours the animals and picks their flesh from his teeth with their bones

b) determines that the animals are a sign from the benevolent Bear God and quickly converts to Bearstianity, dedicating his life to proselytizing about the coming of the Great Yellow Pooh.

c) is confused after such a long, sustained slumber and fears his animal guests are actually spies sent over by the antelopes.

d) ends up making friends with animals and laughing a lot.

• "Waiting for Wings"
By Lois Ehlert

This musical cartoon documents the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly. It's five minutes long, very colorful, and that's about it.

"Come On, Rain!"
By Karen Hesse

Young Tess and her neighborhood friends are broiling in the hot sun, their inner city block having been deprived of moisture for a long time. Her resourcefulness has served well thus far, but as the thick heat continually wears her down, Tess recognizes that a downpour is necessary to defuse possible tensions within the local gangs of street toughs (note: this is not seen in the story).

At the end of the story what happens?

a) Tess, driven insane by the unending, oppressive heat, flips out and starts murdering all the neighborhood puppies.

b) The city public works department drives up and down the streets, pelting children with ice cubes.

c) The Lord returns and there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

d) It rains.

The bonus stories, "Snow Cat" by Dayal Kaur Khalsa and "Time of Wonder" by Robert McCloskey, continue the season theme. Both are quite long ("Snow Cat" clocks in at 22 minutes) and aren't terribly compelling. The former is pretty creepy and the latter is antiquated and boring.

Read-along, trailers, and auto-play comprise the usual gang of quirks for the DVD.

Similar Decisions

• Stuart Little 2
• The Wheels On The Bus... And More Sing-Along Favorites (Scholastic Video Collection)
• Team Bravo Bears: Mission One
• Are We There Yet? (Travel Disc)

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