Search - Growing Up Wild: Fun Family Frolics on DVD

I'm not buying it

R. Ernst | Michigan, USA | 08/09/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This is a relatively safe video for young children. My 3 year old watched it several times. It shows what animals eat, including other animals--it doesn't show the full hunt but it does make several mentions about animals that are going to eat another animal. I like the documentary format as my son doesn't need constant change of topic to stay interested. This video changes from one animal to the next fairly quickly, a little more than I would like, e.g. sometimes the video clip is not long enough for a child to understand what the animals are doing. My 3 year old had trouble following which animal was which, so I'd rather have a long-documentary style where it shows one animal at a time. This video purposely shows all "Dinner Times" for each animal, then it shows all "Play Time" for each animal, an so on, so that you see the animal many times throughout the course of the episode rather than connecting all of one animal's activities together. There are 6 episodes on the DVD and each episode contains about 6 animals broken down into groupings like "Play Time" and "Dinner Time". We viewed it from our library, but I'm holding off on buying til I check out some other animal videos. Also, I believe this is narrated by Marc Summers, that famous voice from Nickelodeon and FoodTV and it has some rhyming as well as lots of cliche's and narration that is supposed to be funny to kids, which is lost on me and my 3 year old. We just want animals and I'd like to see more information that is helpful to a 3 year old trying to expand his understanding of the world."