Reading and Language

F-U-N. With alphabet aids that include a wipe-clean workbook, 49 flash cards, and a music CD, this set spells fun for every child! Short and long vowels, the letter Q, and both upper- and lowercase letters are only a few of the valuable literary lessons. From Twin Sisters Productions.

Elmo and Abby are trapped in a magical video game world where they must defeat a mischievous elf with their knowledge of the alphabet. The program encourages early literacy skills such as recognizing the names of letters in the alphabet, and understanding the relationship between letters and sounds. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

Young children can learn early word recognition with the 140 word magnets in First Words Magnetic Poetry.

Decca's Elektra is a remarkable account of the opera. Recorded in 1968, produced by John Culshaw with an all-star cast, this performance captures the opera's brutality and atmosphere of nearly uninterrupted hysteria. Georg Solti conducts the Vienna Philharmonic, one of the great Strauss orchestras, in a searing reading of the frenzied score. Solti's control of the opera's waves of tension and fury makes the moment of Elektra's recognition of Orest almost unbearably triumphant, and the ending a cataclysmic summation of Elektra's passion. Birgit Nilsson fully inhabits the title role, sustaining an exhausting, obsessive level of rage. Her voice is wonderfully colorful, and she uses it to create a character of complex, conflicted motivations. Regina Resnik's singing is rich, even voluptuous,... Less

Sterling Alphabet Dot To DotIn the Sterling Alphabet Dot To Dot, children don\'t follow the numbers to connect the dots; they follow letters instead! It\'s easy, it\'s instructive, and it\'s enjoyable to watch a bunny with a kite, a child on a life-size toy train, and a zebra on a wagon come into view. When it\'s done, youngsters can color in the entire picture however they please.

Give your youngster all the tools they'll need to build a strong foundation in reading with this Warner Brothers Home Video release that combines entertainment with education. All of your favorite green friends are here, including Leap, Lilly, and Tad -- and they're ready to put their wacky word machines to work for your youngster! So get ready to take a trip to the Word Factory where the Word Whammer, the Sticky-ick-o-rama, and an assortment of other innovative machines work hard to teach your young reader the use of vowels and consonants, word-building, rhyming, and vocabulary. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Practice letter and sound recognition!

In 1952, the comedy team of Abbott and Costello entered into a joint agreement with producer Alex Gottlieb and Warner Brothers, whereby two color musical comedies would be produced: Bud Abbott would serve as producer--owner of one of the films, while Lou Costello would do same for the other. Costello's contribution to this agreement was Jack and the Beanstalk, a kiddie-matinee adaptation of the famed fairy tale. Constructed along the lines of The Wizard of Oz, the film begins in black and white. Jack (Costello) is a professional baby-sitter, while Dink (Abbott) is Jack's agent. After a run-in with a gargantuan cop (Buddy Baer) and a statuesque waitress (Dorothy Ford), Jack and Dink show up at the home of Eloise Larkin (Shaye Cogan), there to look after Eloise's troublesome nephew Donald... Less

Upon opening the CD case of So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter, one is greeted with a picture of an automobile shop with a sign reading, We Believe in God -- America -- Trucks. One imagines that Ani DiFranco and her fellow New Yorkers find a number of similar sentiments as their progressive folk show travels across small-town America. Despite such nativist impulses, DiFranco also finds a warm, responsive audience wherever she travels. Her first live album in five years, So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter documents the Righteous Babe in a number of settings, captured between September 2000 and April 2002. Like 1997's Living in Clip, one can't really hope to reproduce a DiFranco concert on a single disc. The performances are seamlessly sequenced, meaning one can put both discs in the CD... Less