Engagement Parties

This month's notable children's audio and video releases spotlight a wide variety of musical styles, visual looks and educational agendas, yet all set out to accomplish one primary task: to keep keeps engaged while being entertained. To help them do it, the following CDs and DVDs feature a host of notable contributors, including Chicago blues legends, preschool television favorites, ballerinas in the making and child safety experts.

BabyFirstTV Home Entertainment, Los Angeles, recently unveiled its debut slate of DVDs based on programming from its TV channel devoted to entertaining infants and toddlers. Each title in the BabyFirstTV DVD Collection features programming created by child development experts and includes on-screen parenting tips and information. The current assortment includes the games- and activities-based Social Explorations; the art-themed Visual Inspirations (pictured); the word-building Vocabulary Seeds; and three other developmentally focused titles.

The Sippy Cups, the San Francisco kinderock band called “The Flaming Lips of the toddler set” by the LA Times, are captured on DVD for the first time with their self-produced The Sippy Cups Live at The Great American Music Hall. Recorded before a live audience at San Francisco's historic live music venue in December 2006, the DVD is a good introduction to the fun and energy of the six-piece band's live shows, which mix comic stunts, trippy visuals, puppets and original songs with unique covers of classic rock favorites from artists like The Beatles, The Velvet Underground, early Pink Floyd, David Bowie and The Who.

Harmonica Pocket, the Marrowstone Island, Wash.-based group known around the Puget Sound for its Dr. Seuss-style literary sing-along events as much as for its toe-tapping tunes, release their second children's CD this month, Ladybug One. The album features a genre-jumping selection of classic children's songs, like “Twinkle Twinkle” and “O, Susannah,” along with catchy, quirky original tunes with an ecological bent that blend alternative pop sounds with world music cues.

Shout! Factory, Los Angeles, continues to bring Nelavana's animated adaptation of Michael and Berry Paraskevas' Maggie and the Ferocious Beast children's books to DVD with two new titles: Recipes For Trouble and Rain Showers & Spring Flowers. Each contains five themed episodes relating to the DVD's title, plus another eight episodes for good measure. As an added bonus, each disc includes a DVD cover that kids can color on their own.

Thaddeus Rex brings his acoustic rock to CD for the third time next month with Shakin' in Chicago, an album mixing Rex's trademark wordplay with contributions from Chicago blues legends Koko Taylor, the “Queen of the Blues,” and Pinetop Perkins, the 94-year-old pianist; plus two tunes by Alan Gershwin, son of famed songwriter George Gershwin. The CD's songs give kids a blueprint for how to construct a life full of art, particularly of the literary kind, while at the same time saluting the Windy City.

Let's Dance! Dora The Explorer's Music Collection is New York-based Nick Records/Sony BMG's three-CD compilation of 65 of the most popular musical moments from Nickelodeon's Dora The Explorer series. The set's packaging includes a fold-out board game, reusable sticker sheets, poster and a tic-tac-toe game.

Safety4Kids, Stamford, Conn., has teamed with the American Red Cross for an entertaining lesson in fire safety and prevention in a new DVD, SeeMore's Playhouse: Fire Safety, the first of four releases planned for 2008. Designed for preschoolers, the DVD imparts its important lessons through puppets, jokes and songs.

Singer-songwriter, author and filmmaker Gunnar Madsen unleashes his latest project, I'm Growing, a new collection of 15 children's tunes, this month via Berkeley, Calif.'s Gee, Spot Records. In songs that range in style from Brian Eno-like choral richness to calypso and classical, Madsen offers up his silly take on topics like “Type A” parenting and advocates turning off your brain to enjoy the simpler pleasures of life.

Genius Products, Santa Monica, Calif., gives Sesame Street fans something to look forward to this month with the release of two new Play With Me Sesame DVDs. Let's Play Games sees game show host Guy Smiley invite kids to play interactive games. Imagine With Me sparks preschoolers' imaginations while they learn about social and emotional concepts like friendship or being afraid of the dark.

Prima Princess Presents Swan Lake, from Prima Princess Productions, Montclair, N.J., introduces kids to ballet through an animated fairy ballerina who magically transports a group of girls to see the Paris Opera Ballet perform segments from Swan Lake. Between acts, children learn simple ballet steps mixed into montages of toys, animals, children and young dancers from Lincoln Center's School of American Ballet, the official academy of the New York City Ballet.