Come along and take my hand, and let's all go to Dragon Land
There's Ord, he's the biggest
Not so brave of heart.
There's Cassie, so shy
Oh, so very smart.
There's Zak and Wheezie in these tales of fun,
''Cuz you know two heads are better than one!
"Dragon Tales" started airing on PBS in September 1999, as part of the PBS Kids lineup. Sesame Workshop brought it to the air in conjunction with Sony-Columbia/TriStar. Each 12-minute story (there are 2 per episode, separated by a "DragonTune" sing-along break) featured the adventures of two human kids, Emmy and Max, and their dragon friends Ord, Cassie, Zak, and Wheezie. The show wasn't the only way to get Dragon Tales: it was a phenomenon in books, tapes, toys, clothes, music, videogames, and on-line. Is it any wonder that it came to DVD home video before the first anniversary of the show's TV debut?
Columbia has now brought out the 4th and 5th DVD volumes in the Dragon Tales series, both of which I am reviewing. This review will concentrate on Volume 5.
PBS describes the show at their website this way: "Dragon Tales is a school-readiness project created especially for preschoolers...designed to nurture young children's curiosity and enthusiasm for learning". I can tell you from personal experience: this show engenders strong feelings in the smallest of children...even my own! When the show debuted, my son was 1 1/2 years old, and had been enrolled in a daycare program for half a year. As part of the PBS Kids lineup, he and his classmates had it on regularly in the background while they played and learned. My wife and I didn't know much about the program's details, only that it was fun and educational and "from the Sesame Street folks", which was good enough for us to not object. We had no idea how strongly our son felt about the show.
Then, one day about a year after he enrolled in daycare, we picked him up a bit early one Wednesday and went shopping for DVD's. We were in Circuit City, and he was rather disappointed that we were "shopping" instead of, say, going to the park (it was a nice spring day). He wasn't, to our knowledge, very up on the idea of shopping or the concept of paying for items in order to own them. So we understood why he was rather grumpy, but still we shopped. Until suddenly he pulled his hand out of mine, took a couple of steps over to the Kid's rack, grabbed a DVD and ran straight up to the nearby cash register for the media department, and reached waaaaaaay up to put it on the counter. He was babbling over and over again, "I like Dragon Tales; let's take it home!"
To say the least we were both surprised. Our son had NEVER shown such a deep interest in owning a particular title before. He wanted it so badly that he also demonstrated his knowledge of "paying for something", which also bowled us over. He was so enthusiastic that I wanted to pick it up right away, but our funds were limited and we had already picked out a title for him, plus I wanted to learn more details about the show and the disc. My research revealed much of what I've already described at the beginning of my review for "Dragon Tales Vol. 4: Yes, We Can!": that this is a highly acclaimed, award-winning show with strong educational goals and values. We got that first volume for him very quickly, and he's enjoyed it immensely and each of the new volumes as they've been published.
Insofar as awards go, soon after my review copies of the two new Dragon Tales DVD's arrived, Columbia was nice enough to inform me that "(This) television show...continues to win acclaim. The April issue of Parenting Magazine publishes the results of a poll in which "Dragon Tales" was named as the favorite show by young viewers. The series has also just been nominated for a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Children's Animated Program." I would believe that they are proud of these achievements, which simply demonstrate the enduring and endearing charm of this show!
The DVD: "It's Cool To Be Me!"
Again, Columbia's put together themed collection of 5 stories from Season 1. The idea of these stories is to demonstrate that we are all different and unique, and that it's okay to be yourself.just don't forget to co-operate with others! Just about all of the main characters take turns to shine on their weakness, and how they can turn them into strengths:
#01 Story 1-13a Not Separated At Birth
#02 Story 1-24a The Greatest Show In Dragon Land
#03 Story 1-19a A Tall Tale
#04 Story 1-09b Dragon Sails
#05 Story 1-16b Staying Within The Lines
4 DragonTune songs are also included: Shake Your Dragon Tail, Hello, Zoo, and Round & Round.
The Packaging:
The disc comes in a white keepcase, similar to what Disney uses for most single-disc releases.
Menu Design & Navigation: Screenshot: Main Menu - Screenshot: Story Selection
As with Volume 4, the main menu is again easy to navigate..but not quite as colorful (a bit to heavy on the greens, if you ask me). Again you can either play one story at a time and then return to the story menu, or play all the stories straight through, with opening credits once at the start and all the closing credits (for 5 stories, plus corporate sponsorship) at the end, or else you can choose a continuous loop of all five stories plus credits. As I warned on the last review, the danger of the continuous play option is the temptation to use the TV as a babysitter for far too long. However, this is a great feature for daycares and parents who just want something on in the background while the child also plays or colors or is otherwise involved.
Again the user has the option to view the shows any way they want: pick a story from the "Choose Your Adventure" menu, watch a story, then afterward go over to the "Sing-Along-Songs" menu and watch a karaoke DragonTune segment, then run back to the story menu and pick a 2nd story. This lets you make viewing the show exactly like a PBS airing, or you can modify it to make any combination your child wants. It's too bad that the option isn't included to let the children steer the disc themselves...but I've found that parental supervision is better with DVD's in any case, at least at this age level.
Video
Video is 4x3 "Full Screen", preserving the Original Aspect Ratio of this show's PBS broadcasts. Colors are bright and picture is sharp; it is a better presentation than you will find on the television broadcasts! The look of the show is designed to keep children's interest, right down to the backgrounds that might resemble something by way of a drawing you might see hanging on a refrigerator (see screen shot's top left corner for an example). But the characters themselves are always drawn crisp and clear, and exude their own personalities. Screenshot: Dragon Teacher
Despite the single-layer nature of the disc, there are no compression artifacts in sight. As with Volume 4, the video remains sharp unless you are fast-forwarding or fast-rewinding the picture, at which time the lines pixelate and lose resolution. As I said before, this is a non-issue, as you can still easily find the scene you might be searching for.
Audio
Dragon Tales Vol. 5 is presented in stereo, but with little to no use of discreet left and right channels. This 2-channel "mono" style preserves the Original Soundtrack Presentation of the show's broadcast...it wasn't exactly a 5.1 surround show to begin with! The voices and music are both rendered in nice, rich tones. No distortion is present. Good, clean, rich sound. The Spanish-language broadcast PBS makes available to its stations is also available here as an optional track, and although no one in my house speaks the language, we listened to an episode this way and it was - to the best of our ability to judge - also rich and clean and clear. English subtitles are available for the hard-of-hearing.
On my review of Volume 4, I got onto my soapbox and ranted about the long list of "Special Features" listed on the back of the box, and how four of them together (the Sing-Alongs, the Spanish language track, the Play-All feature, and the 4 "Sneak Peeks" (just commercials for the same 4 Columbia products on both Dragon Tales Vol.'s 4 and 5: Dragon Tales, Bear In The Big Blue House, Trumpet of the Swan, and JayJay the Jet Plane), didn't really qualify as "extras". But, my generous nature has again shown through, and so once more I award a single rating point for all four of these, ahem, "extras"...combined. As a DVD consumer, it's hard to recognize these things as true "extras".
As a suggestion for Columbia: a better "Extra" for the next volume might be a DVD-ROM feature that demos the coming-next-fall PC game "Cassie's Quest"? Or, since everybody can't use such a feature, how about a new game that can be played on any set-top-box player using a DVD remote, where the dragons and kids help my child to learn colors, shapes, etc.? Something both fun and educational, which is what Dragon Tales is all about!
Summary
A year ago, when my son introduced me to the world of Dragon Tales and their amazing characters, I realized that time had moved on, and that The Electric Company was gone, Mister Rogers was on the way out, and that Sesame Street had been reinvented a few times more than I'd kept up with. His generation has some different educational TV options than mine did, and with DVD's has the ability to watch them on any schedule, with a presentation better than any publicly funded broadcast.
More than that, Dragon Tales puts a different educational spin on things than the PBS shows of yore. In the shows presented on this DVD, our heroes get to deal with more complex issues than the old shows ever dealt with: sibling rivalry (of a sort), broken limbs, not letting down your friends, not having the best vision, and being scared of all sorts of things.
One of these shows, "Staying Within The Lines", stands out. You see, the rain has washed all the color from Dragon Land, and the gang must help their teacher Quetzal to color everything back in! This chapter has several educational themes running through it: That it's okay to be yourself and be different from the others (as the DVD's title implies), that the world is drab without colors and that the right color isn't always the "right" color, and finally that following the rules isn't always the best way to get things done...but also shows the consequences of breaking those rules when you don't know what you're doing. Screenshot: Coloring in
I'm sure that the writers of this story didn't set out to teach all these things. They routinely set down entertaining stories with a central moral, but the wonderful characters and relationships of the stories allow the viewer to read so much more into it. These are wonderful life lessons for kids of all ages. The fact that my son is absorbing these ideas from such a young age just pleases me to no end!
Dragon Tales Volume 5: "It's Cool To Be Me!" is an entertaining, fun DVD filled with lots of ideas, centered on problem solving and self-respect. Parents will find this disc less "trite" than previous volumes might come across, because the stories chosen for this volume are more complex in nature than those on Volume 4.
This disc comes highly recommended; it should be in every nursery school's DVD library (if your child care program has gotten their technology up to speed that is!). It should also be one of your first choices the next time you're at the DVD store and you kid has a case of the "I Want's".
I'm looking forward to Volume 6.and so is my 4-year-old!
I wish, I wish to use this rhyme
To go back home.until next time!
