Gustafer Yellowgold's Wide, Wild World

My kids are loving this CD/DVD set and so, quite frankly, am I. Keeping this fact to myself to keep the rest of you from placing a hold on it would be greedy. I put a purchase request in for it awhile back-- just long enough ago for it to have felt like a pleasant surprise when it arrived.

Now, if you know our family very well, right now you are saying, "I thought your kids didn't watch TV, you big... TV WATCHERS!" And it's true. We do try to live by the AAP recommendation that kids under two eschew TV as much as possible. And beyond that, we also limit the amount and type of media that our five-year old consumes until she is old enough to be able to deconstruct the media messages which bombard today's youth. I mean, really-- I get sucked in by marketing sometimes, and I think the fact that it's used so relentlessly on kids is merciless! But we do watch a small, selective amount of programming with our kids from time to time.

The DVD portion of Gustafer Yellowgold's Wide, Wild World, which has been aptly described by the New York Times as "Dr. Seuss meets 'Yellow Submarine'", is actually a string of animated music videos that explain how Gustafer Yellowgold came to Earth from the Sun and lives here now with sundry strange friends. When we watch it together, it gives us a great springboard for discussion (or dance), and Fiona calls the separate songs chapters, so it's very easy to turn off at virtually any point when we need to move on. What's more, the lyrics are below each frame in the Weston Woods-esque animation. It's quite a lot of fun.

Holy cow! In linking for this post, I've just noticed that the new Gustafer Yellowgold album, Have You Never Been Yellow?, just won the Fids and Kamily Awards this year! I think I feel a materials request coming on...