4 stars (A little difficult for our 4 year o ...

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Sassy and smart, this charming CD-ROM series combines early-childhood education and humorous storytelling with a distinctly European flavor--something along the lines of Doctor Doolittle meets Monty Python meets Beatrix Potter. Our hero, Oscar, is a small, curious British boy who tours the world in a hot-air balloon that enables him to switch among the four seasons with the click of a mouse. His companion, Carmela, is a treasure chest who often goes missing. In this escapade, Oscar crash-lands his balloon on the thatched hut of a timid animal researcher named Balthasar Pumpernickel, who lives on a farm amid fields of talking pigs, cows, sheep, and chickens. Carmela is there, too, stocked with a dozen delightful animal-theme games to play. Children are free to go straight to the games chest or explore the farmyard--and talk to the animals--in depth, across all four seasons of the year. Along with this CD-ROM's elevated level of illustration, there's a fearlessness about content that is uncommon in America these days. The presence of dung on a farm, for example, is clearly acknowledged in the program with a special matching game (whose icon is a toilet bowl) that requires kids to "click and drag each animal to its droppings." As well, adults aren't the all-knowing educational founts here; Professor Balthasar, afraid of the animals, hides all day in his hut. "Outside lurk a thousand dangers!" he sniffs. Parents and kids alike will appreciate the goofy inanity of a farm-facts guessing game that poses such true-or-false questions as "Cows love to eat frogs," and "Sheep sleep on poles." Most powerful of all, however, are the stirring scenes of the animals: from sunny days in the fields to deliciously snowbound days inside the barn. (Ages 4 to 8) --Jean Lenihan

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