'The cow goes moo,' 2008 edition
Speakaboo this week rolled out its holiday edition, which simultaneously allows you to bond with the kid in your life, contribute to a worthy cause, and have Principal Skinner tell you a story. How's that for multitasking?
The Speakaboos site itself, if you are a quart low on primary-school computer users around your place, features celebrities reading and singing classic fairy tales, fables, and lullabies under storybook-style animations. It's all streamable (if you've got serious, non-dialup bandwidth), and favorites can be purchased for download at 99 cents a track.
There are around 30 offerings so far, and the cast list is pleasingly odd. Harry Shearer brings a whiff of Skinner and (yikes) Comic Book Guy to "The Emperor's New Clothes," while stars such as Kelly Ripa, Kevin Bacon, Kerry Washington, and Crispin Glover step up on other kiddie hits. The most popular offering, according to associate site publisher Noelle Millholt? Nick Cannon working it out "Old McDonald Had A Farm," which the four-year-old in your life can now play over and over and over and over and over...
...while learning to read it for her- or himself. The site, more or less alone among the kid-vid set, aims to combine fun and literacy; videos include subtitles, and though even the littlest ones can be left alone on the site without incident, some titles are clearly meant for reading time with grownups. (A couple, including a charming seasonal abridgment of "A Christmas Carol," are fairly rich vocabulary for smaller kids, and move quickly enough that a slow reader will get frustrated unless liberal use is made of the Pause button.)
The site's founders worked closely with focus groups of teachers to figure out the best balance between entertainment and pedagogy. And the collaboration paid off; the National Education Association has taken a keen interest in using the site in schools, and Speakaboo returns the appreciation by donating 15% of top-line revenues to NEA literacy programs and The Creative Coalition, the entertainment industry's nonprofit social-advocacy organization.
On the home-holiday front, offerings for the holidays include the Dickens classic and, interestingly, a slightly altered version of Hans Christian Andersen's grim "The Fir-Tree." The site adds about one new offering per week, not counting the new holiday-themed offerings, and in the near future expects to roll out its "Record Your Own" option for parents and grandparents wanting to karaoke-read a track over one of the site's pre-animated stories.
We enjoyed spending some quality time with Speakaboo's new offerings, but it's the non-celeb option to record a story for the kids that's a genuinely exciting idea -- and, perhaps, the one that would really capture the holiday spirit.