You won’t often see on DVD
on my shopping blog. Actually, you will hardly ever see a DVD on my blog…until
today. —
I prefer wooden toys to plastic, and outdoor play instead of
time in front of the screen, but this is one multimedia bit that I just have to
share with the wider world out there. (You there? Good.)
Presented by HBO and the Poetry Foundation, A
Child’s Garden of Poetry is a gentle yet inspiring introduction to the
world of poems for young children. Parents, trust me. This is something worth
watching. The half-hour DVD consists of work
from great writers like Robert Frost, e. e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, Langston
Hughes, Robert Louis Stevenson, Wordsworth and Shakespeare (to name a few). And not
only will you and your children hear timeless poems narrated by award-winning
performers such as Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ziggy Marley and Dave Matthews, but
you will also get to see some bright young things offer their perspective on
the written word. One of my favorites is an interview with a little girl who breathlessly
describes poetry as something that “zaps into your brain and into your
imagination and that’s all you can think about after that.” I couldn’t agree more.
Accompanied by colorful illustrations and animation that
will enchant young minds, this DVD captures some
of the written word’s most classic and heartfelt pieces—poems to be treasured
long after childhood.
$9.97, for children ages 3 and up, hbo.com
