The Book of Pooh - Fun With Friends (2001)

From the heart of the Hundred Acre Wood comes this imaginative and magical video series. It's honey-packed with fun-filled stories that introduce children to the wonderful world of preliteracy, wordplay, and language appreciation. These four stories teach preschoolers the lessons of friendship, caring, and cooperation with the help of Winnie The Pooh and his pals. Watch as Pooh must find a way to make it up to his friends after he mistakenly believes he has the power to grant wishes by making up rhymes. Original songs punctuate each of these warm and wonderful tales. They're a great way to get your young ones excited about learning and sharing with their friends.

Enjoyable and worthwhile

Although I haven't had cable TV for some time now, it seems that Disney has decided to bring Pooh & Co. back in yet another incarnation, this time as a series on the Disney Channel and as puppets with computer-generated backgrounds. Kanga and Roo are MIA, but the rest of the gang (Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, Tigger, Owl and Eeyore) are still around, and are joined by a newly generated (and blandly generic) bluebird character named Kessie. Each "episode" (of which there are four on this release) claims to have a lesson to impart, but these are pitifully simple lessons, such as the definition of a map, or that communication can be accomplished without words. Perhaps the developmental psychologists can do better than I can in determining how all of this educates our youngsters--for my part, I think it's probably as worthless as all television, if (in this case) relatively harmless.

Regardless, my daughter loves all the "Book of Pooh" tapes (there are, as of this writing, three of them, including this one, "Fun with Words," and the "Book of Pooh" general release). Viewers should be warned of the high variability in quality among these tapes--and also that this tape in particular is by far the best of them. "Fun with Friends" is from a different world than the execrable "Fun with Words"--the stories are fun, the songs almost memorable, and the characters about as close to their original incarnations as one can ever expect from Disney. That this makes "Fun with Friends" only an average kiddie video should dissuade no one from allowing their child to become addicted to its pleasures. March 10, 2002

A Magical Pooh

I knew I had purchased a winner when my son and I laughed out loud together for the fifth time when watching this new video. That doesn't happen often when I we watch shows together, but it sure did in this case.

My favorite story is the one in which Pooh's friends - Tigger, Rabbit and Piglet - attempt to make Pooh eat something other than honey. The bees have gone on strike and if Pooh doesn't eat something soon the "grumbly in his tumbly" threatens to bring down the whole 100 Acre Wood. Of course, the end is a great surprise which I never saw coming...another plus!

The best part is that each story within the video strenthens the idea that friendship is important and something worth working on. In times like these, that's an important message to get out.

My son and I both loved this video and we recommend it highly. October 5, 2001

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