Product Review

Multisyllabic words and reference volumes pique Blue's interest in this double episode focusing on vocabulary and books. But the inquisitive blue dog and her preschool audience have the effervescent Steve, a talking end table, and silent signing librarian Marlee Matlin to help them through this wordy lesson. In "Words," Steve and his pet plow through their Big Bag of Words, coming up with contrasts like enormous and miniscule. Blue has sorted the pair's books into categories in "Blue's Book Nook," and she generously loans out her tomes to the neighborhood animals. But it takes a trip to the library to figure out which book she wants to read. This 50-minute program is perhaps more aggressively educational than most kids' fare, but it's so entertaining that preschoolers won't notice they're learning. And who doesn't want their 3-year-old using ferocious correctly in a sentence? Ages 2 to 5. --Kimberly Heinrichs